Nigerian Offers Art, Culture Courses

Westernization has eroded much of the religious basis of African art, but as an art historian. Nigerian visiting lecturer Babatunde Lawal accepts the inevitability of this change and remains interested in the evolution of art forms today.

Lawal, senior research fellow of the University of lfe, Nigeria, is teaching courses this semester in West African art history, Fine Arts 108, and Yoruba history and culture, History of Religion 190.

He is a member of the Yoruda people a Nigerian religious and cultural group of about '3 million people. He said he hopes to introduce the students to the philosophy aesthetics and religious beliefs of his people.

Art and Realism

Lawal's primary interest is art history but, he said, "when dealing with African arts you can't help talking about religion. It provides the main sort of basis for the arts, it is the chief patron."

Lawal's lectureship is under a joint appointment by the History of Religion department and the committee of Afro-American religious studies of the Divinity Schools.

John B. Carman, director of the Center for the Study of World Religion, said yesterday Lawal is part of an experimental program to bring different lecturers from Africa each year for the next several years.

Fine Arts 108 will trace West African art from the first millenium B.C. to the present. Lawal said. "However art is not created in isolation," he said nod added he would also discuss the also religious influences and uses of art.

Lawal, who teaches both African and Western European art history in Nigeria, said African art had acted as a catalyst for modern art in Europe. He said the Europeans found the forms "original and stimulating."

"Unfortunately one has to point out that the traditional form of African art had a spiritual motivation, while the modern European art has a hedonists art for art's sake motivation," he said.

Lawal received his B.A. from the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in 1966 in Fine Arts. He earned his MA and Ph.D. at Indiana University in 1968 and 1970.