Culture of Art and Imagination is a living tradition and its art inspiration derives from traditional models employing new techniques and materials, eclipsed in popular mind by mass produced artifacts.
There have been many attempts to classify the heterogeneous art traditions. A geographical classification emphasizes the relationship between art objects and ecology;’ sculpture in stone or wood, painted or pyrographic decoration, metal work, pottery, basketry, weaving, pattern dyeing, embroidery, leather work, beadwork, applique, ornaments, jewelry, architecture and body art; has given rise to theories of cultural regions.
The anthropological approach classifies art according to its social uses — art associated with religious rites, cultural art, palace art, society art, funeral art, commercial and entertainment art.
Art must be perceived in its socio-cultural context and the social function of the artist must be taken into account, because art is a form of social technology. However, art is not a mere social performance. It produces an art object which can be directly and subjectively experienced.
The transcultural approach of the art is also valid, the viewer reacts imaginatively to aesthetic experience of the art object, thus discovering an elemental meaning.
Appreciating art is an invitation to enter a social world that is reinterpreted by the artists. Anthropological analysis cannot replace the subjective and aesthetic appreciation of art objects. It is an indispensable element in the appreciation of art objects.
Art objects have an artistic function, quite apart from religious function. The religious functions are secondary though most popular art is functionally secular, however, art reflects a religious understanding of the universe and can be described as a “cosmic liturgy”.
Traditional religion certainly stimulated artistic creativity, creating a wealth of art objects into a religious act, subject to rites of purification and taboos.
The artist respects the wood he carves and the metal he forges. Art here, helps to create the psycho-social zone of the sacred. Many religious art objects were regarded as living things.
This was true of mask, Ekpo-masquerades, Ancestor figures, gods, reliquaries and so on. Even where art had no immediate religious function, it reflected cosmological beliefs or beliefs about divine kingship as in the case of palace art.
Christian Art began with the Christian artifacts in the sixteenth century, many of which have survived. In modern times it first received official encouragement from church authorities in the 1920s when pope Pius XI held a missionary exhibition on the grounds of the Vatican.
The Benedictines of Katanga and Tanzania took initiatives in the liturgical arts and the catholic hierarchy held an exhibition of Christian art in Kinshasa in 1936. There were well known follow up: Christian Art centre was founded at Ekiti, Arts and Crafts shop in Benin City and other flourshining Arts centers as well as the famed schools of fine Art.
The appreciation of Christian Art is undermined by foreign mass produced repository art and by the debate between the so-called realism” and the stylization which claims to express “inner reality” and theological truth.
Christian Art needs to dialogue with surviving cultural traditions and to re-educate the public theologically as well as aesthetically.
From the middle ages, the art of the carver has played an important role in the development of interior decoration and the embellishment of furniture in later centuries, carved decoration became so much the dominant feature in furniture that it was tempting to describe a piece as sculpture.
The most fashionable tables, chairs, stands and looking glasses have richly carved legs, stretchers and frames. The Rococo style at its height in the middle years of the eighteenth century was a style superbly suited to the art of the carver.
Carvers working in the nineteenth century were able to use a wider range of woods than their predecessors. They produced some remarkable results such as the “naturalistic” furniture carved with highly crowded allegorical scenes.
The old English word “treen” meaning of trees, occurs frequently in culture of art and imagination, inventories and wills in reference to such items as platters, bowls, and drinking vessels. In early days these were made straight from the tree, the main section of the trunk would provide simple furniture while other parts of the tree were used for domestic vessels and implements.
Much of the appeal of timber frame architecture of the late middle ages lies in the wall elements of the buildings. There were no exception; constructed purely as infillings while frame carried all structural loads.
With the increased availability of glass in the seventeenth century, the advantages of carved timber framing could be further exploited. Windows became prominent feature of town houses, easily accommodated within the traditional frames.
Strictly speaking, culture of Art and imagination is the social process by which people acquire material and non material elements of culture, behaviour and ideas that originate from in-built culture.
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