FEATURE 120 esoteric and powerful historical ideas, narratives, energies, and places. This merger of aesthetics with spiritual and royal powers is the essence of Luba sculptural arts, as analyzed in Polly Roberts’ extensive research and publications. TO CONCLUDE: SEMANTIC AND METAPHORIC ELABORATIONS In several African cultures (or segments thereof), the mother is the center point—a hearth or furnace32 from which other beings, crucial substances such as iron, and activities emerge or radiate. The semantic, metaphoric, and philosophical elaborations seen in all the foregoing examples of mothers with children are common in areas where this icon is a major focus, sometimes the major focus, of belief and ritual process, whether spiritual, political, social, or all of these. Most of the sponsoring institutions also orchestrate aesthetic values, whether visual or, frequently, aural and kinetic forms and processes. As a dominant image and concept, maternity is a transformative, generative reality, a centripetal nexus that extends outward from its prototype in nature to embrace and amplify many other aspects of life. The mother-child group thus simultaneously represents a complex of values and ritual actions, even as these vary in different regions. As an artistic unit, the sculptured maternity might seem to be a fi xed image, but it is not. It represents and evokes a temporal process akin to a mother’s activity in raising her children, as demonstrated by the transient nature of Igbo Earth sculptures and the ritualized building of her mbari house, the symbolism of a Pende chief’s house and its construction, or a Luba king’s installation rites. In childbirth, a woman is refashioned into a mother while creating new life. Not static, as fi re and motherhood are not, maternity images are dense, compressed symbols of human development and social change that depend on nurturing, teaching, and many other activities for success and prosperity. The rites central to these maternity images are also transformations of the institutions and places in which they take place. This archetype, then, goes far beyond a mother nursing her infant, to education and its conversion of children into responsible adults, and on to the succession of leaders and the regeneration of entire communities. 33 Indeed, mothers understand that motherhood for them ends in their death but is carried forth in their offspring. The above essay is adapted from a portion of the preliminary text for the upcoming book Maternity: Mothers and Children in the Arts of Africa By Herbert M. Cole To be published in English by Mercatorfonds, autumn 2017. French edition to follow. 29.7 X 24.5 cm, 384 pages, 350 illustrations, most in color ISBN: 978-0-300-22915-8 Hardcover, 90 dollars/79.95 euros NOTES 1. The male and female couple, the equestrian, the hero, and in many respects the stranger could all be described as archetypal. See Herbert Cole, 1989, Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa and Alisa LaGamma, 2011, Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures. I am aware of the freighted controversy attending the word and concept “archetype,” but I believe if there is any one universal theme that it applies to, it is our subject. See Erich Neumann, 1963 (English edition), The Great Mother. My thanks to Kate Ezra for reading and commenting on an early version of this essay. 2. Other female deities are shown in mbari houses in similar poses with children. Still, Earth is the preeminent local god over a large area. 3. Polytheistic, the Igbo believe in several tutelary gods, many associated with aspects of nature (rivers, forests, the sun, thunder and lightning) and with the four days FIG. 21 (below): Bowl fi gure. Luba, DR Congo. Wood, beads. H: 13.7 cm. Museu Carlos Machado, Pont Delgado, Azores, inv. 256.
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