Christendom’s Narratives and the Stained Glass Designs of Yusuf Cameron Adebayo Grillo

Stained glass paintings, the most distinctive accessory in the interior repertoire of Christian ecclesiastic spaces, is the subject matter of this study. This paper attempts a recast of Christendom’s narratives in the stained glass designs of Yusuf Cameron Adebayo Grillo as the distinctive overarching mechanism of the evangelisation paradigm of the post Vatican II Church. It, therefore, draws attention to the delimitation of time frames in the history of the art form. Using the Grillo genre as the cipher that under girds the new evangelisation, the study narrates a new sense of time in the story of the development and growth of stained glass in the constellation of Church art. Yusuf Grillo’s images of the post Vatican II Church, albeit Nigerian independence era, with its unique modern representation imageries is the kernel of this study. For in spite of their peculiar imageries, they recite the same Bible and Christos story that the earlier European ones served. Utilising the adage “God lies in the details”, the iconographical details in the new images crafted by Grillo are employed as a distinctive typology that defines the style of the new evangelisation. This study presents a story of the emergence of a new art form. It, however, points to a set of new imageries that reflect the place of Christ as a central magnet that holds the entire Bible and Christos story together. That story-line emphasises the liturgical transmission of a new experience of time. It is a theological history in which the past, present and future make contact in the presence of the living Christ.Key Words: ecclesiastic, evangelization, cipher; representation, iconographic, centralmagne

The reupholster of stained glass designs and “the deceptive silence of stolen voices”

Reflecting on the seminal theme of Biography as a provisional means of accessing artistic substance, this study dares a reading of the metamorphosis of the artistry of the Nigerian glass designs of Frank Ugiomoh and Nsikak Essien. Utilising an empirical analysis, principal art works of these masters are examined. However, a hermeneutic investigation is engaged to aid an unraveling of the tooling mechanisms and the art making traditions that the artists deployed in their engagement with the natural synthesis cognomen in affecting the ecclesia in Africa paradigm. The designs of Frank Ugiomoh are discussed with a hermeneutic detailing that draws attention to the peculiarities of his artistry as emblematic in the growth and development of glass designs. However, that investigation revealed (I) that the artist Nsikak Essien in re-upholstering his pictures diligently sourced his devises on mimetic reinstatements of the canons of academe; but introduced lineal schemes culled from the art forms of his Nigerian art world, specifically Uli and Nsibidi; while (II) Ugiomoh toed the intellectually subtle repositioning of themes and tooling mechanisms, declaiming the prime masters’ narratives but implanting a language of pictorial codes that deter the dearth of symbols.Keywords: biography, provisional, metamorphosis, hermeneutic, paradigm shift, re-upholster, deceptive silence of stolen voice

‘Many Lamps Same Light’: The Stained Glass Paintings of Nigeria’s Prime Artists, Y.C.A. Grillo and D. H. Dale

Many lamps same Light’ investigates the place of agency in the transmutation of indigenous imageries in the art works of the pictorial turn. Through an investigation that entailed an empirical analysis of the works of two Nigerian prime stained glass artists, Yusuf Grillo and David Dale, this study established that in spite of their diversity in picture making tooling mechanisms, both artists met the purposes of the “new thinking” paradigm shift in the post Vatican II evangelisation regime. In a hermeneutic discourse, however, the study investigates Grillo’s exclusive use of indigenous thought systems’ imbued lexiconology as visual tooling mechanisms to affect imagery for the episteme of ecclesia in Africa. In effect that novel art form did not only affect the enlargement of the series in images of this, otherwise, European art form but also a change in imagery in the entire constellation of Church art. In fact, through art as agency utilsing the iconographical imageries from Nigeria as ciphers of the pictorial turn, distinguishing the paradigm shift in Christianity, it was possible to tell the Christos story with Christ as the magnate holding the ecclesiologies together.Keywords: stained glass, pictorial turn, evangelisation, iconographical imagery, tooling mechanism, agency, light, lam

PHCN, Please Help Clean Nigeria. “Ise Ni Ounise, Mura Si Ise Ore Mi” - Work Is an Antidote for Poverty: An Exhibition of Paintings by Master Water Colourist/ Artist and Social Critic, Ijalobomo

This essay is a critique of the “Nigerian condition” engaging the medium of painting. Categorising Ijalobomo’s water colours as “Windows” enables an understanding of messages captured within the paintings’ frames; and what statements they make as artifacts. Hence, it makes possible an analysis of the data, and evaluation beyond contemporary margins of subject matter in art, to understanding their functions as social symbolisms. In an empirical analysis, therefore, that is kernelled on the hermeneutic, specific images are looked at and evaluated beyond the customary margins of subject matter, to the understanding of their function as social criticism. Hence, subsequent information on statements about subject matter, medium and form engages Erwin Panofsky’s style Iconological/Iconographical analysis to give meaning to the paintings contents through a coherent merging of original, internal and external contexts. This coherent merging takes into consideration the subject matter of the picture, Ijalobomo’s social background, cultural conventions lyricised in a tableau of versed wisdom; and how such conventions have informed his themes. With a combination of theoretical frames drawn from Marxist and materialist perspectives on art are employed to address culture and economics as it functions in society. The strengths of the methods of interpretations of the images yield insights for critical social commentary. The PHCN water colours reveal Ijalobomo’s effectiveness at engaging a discourse of “change in the Nigerian condition” via the genre of tragedy lyricised in versed form, but couched in the vituality of painting. A return to the choreographed values rhymed in childhood and the hard work ethos is the recipe for change!Keywords: critique, “the Nigerian Condition”, Windows, Mirrors, Contexts, Chang

Dak’Art 2016, Novelty and the Pale of History

This essay attempted a comprehensive and encompassing narrative that strides towards connecting the DakArt 2016 exhibition as a discourse of African artists’ search by African artists for personal quests centered on self for endogenous visions directed at deconstructing perceptions and fixed notions of self (with notions of identity shifts, nomardism and cross-culturalism as) key to originality in creativity. The approach is historical; grounding the subject “the use of recyclables and ready-mades for the creation of art” as the cynosure of the historicity of the new in the disentanglement from Dakarois Negritude inspired art. Investigating the effect of colonial materiality employed by three artists, utilising colonial era aesthetics in their work while circumventing its indexicality; finding instead new methods with which to represent individual experiences. That new art form, thus, reflected the political, social, consciousness and avant-gardes’ whirlwind stepped up in the 1990’s via the Texts Revue Noire and NKA. In their “complexfication”, the cognomen as a scaffolding of Euro-African postmodernism smuggled in an international message of Conservation via creative utilisation of commonplace products for art making. The strengths of the hermeneutic discourses of the art works yield insights for critical social commentary and education. DakArt 2016 points the way forward.Key Words: DakArt 2016, Comprehensive, “Encompassing narrative”, Deconstruction, Conservation, Creative, Postmodernis

Drivers Dexterity: George Osodi’s Oeuvre on Safety on the Nigerian Road

This paper attempted a reading of the Nigerian condition using the censure of images culled from an exhibition by the Nigerian photographer George Osodi. Drawing attention to the shapes of the images and imageries that constitute the profile of the condition of a major infrastructure, the road and transportation, I have employed these as vestigial to a narrative that embodies diverse contexts. These inflect the identity and history of the Nigerian nation in general. Using the photographic image as the censure on which the fleeting memoriam of the discourse of the day to day lives of the real people of Nigeria an essay ensues: “Art makes the experiences of time spatially perceptible by forcing what is ever fleeting into the calm framework of a symbol” (Beat Wyss, 1998) Reflecting, therefore, on the consequent rhetoric’s inherent in the linguistic/pictorial/cultural turn and the techniques deployed by the photographer to affect presence , I have engaged a reading of the existentialist world view that has shaped the mentality of the real people, hence their conditions of life in contrast to that of the privileged few; in the utilisation of a derelict infrastructure. The image is, therefore, utilised as the symbolic scaffolding that holds the story. The symbols inflect an identity and history. In furtherance of the employment of symbols, I have drawn attention to the place of the photo and the phono-centric images as invaluable synergy in the actualisation of a synchronic analysis. Drawing attention to the ‘pains of others’ this essay explores what is to be done.Keywords: G.O’s oeuvre, driver’s dexterity, shapes/images, “the real people

ELAnatsui, Visual Arts and Intersection with Knowledge

“Natural synthesis” compartmentalized the black art world. This essay unravels how with folkloric gleeEL Anatsui, in a “selective critiquing and re-evaluation of self” dared to “wriggle out” of that quagmire. Thusly, reactivating the dynamic terrain that lives and is animated from within the soul of artists, he forged a new path of creativity. With reappraisals of the intellectual dynamics that forged the artistic substance of the post 1960s; empirical analysis and the engagement of storytelling mechanisms, this essay unreels that artistry. Anatsui, in spite of his accademisisation and art practice, threads a detour to cloth making craft traditions, particularly the Kente weave and its autography; for inspiration. Hence, the “vital and enabling” intellectual paradigm “resumptions, disappearances, and repetitions” makes possible an intersection with arcane knowledge, while the “uniting representation” of the synthesis in the appropriation of Memory and Interview grounds the contexts within which each artwork is experienced. EL’s “non-fixed forms” make visible the temerity of new shapes and forms forged directly from the wellsprings and fecundity of African roots as exemplars of the art of the new dawn (Ben Shahn, 1965:53).A deconstruction of EL’s artworks reveals the groundings of his discourses on assemblages of “Forgotten Biography” and the engagement of “mythopoeia imagination” (Marina Paolo Banchetti-Robino, 2011) in the recalibration of personal expression in language and imageries that inflect spiritual ties to ancestry and the reality of memory. This is sufficient basis for the historical narration of the intersection of visual arts and knowledge

Star Clusters in M 31. IV. A Comparative Analysis of Absorption Line Indices in Old M 31 and Milky Way Clusters

We present absorption line indices measured in the integrated spectra of globular clusters both from the Galaxy and from M 31. Our samples include 41 Galactic globular clusters, and more than 300 clusters in M 31. The conversion of instrumental equivalent widths into the Lick system is described, and zero-point uncertainties are provided. Comparison of line indices of old M 31 clusters and Galactic globular clusters suggests an absence of important differences in chemical composition between the two cluster systems. In particular, CN indices in the spectra of M 31 and Galactic clusters are essentially consistent with each other, in disagreement with several previous works. We reanalyze some of the previous data, and conclude that reported CN differences between M 31 and Galactic clusters were mostly due to data calibration uncertainties. Our data support the conclusion that the chemical compositions of Milky Way and M 31 globular clusters are not substantially different, and that there is no need to resort to enhanced nitrogen abundances to account for the optical spectra of M 31 globular clusters.Comment: 72 pages, including 15 figures and 14 tables. Published by the Astronomical Journa

UBVRI Light Curves of 44 Type Ia Supernovae

We present UBVRI photometry of 44 type-Ia supernovae (SN Ia) observed from 1997 to 2001 as part of a continuing monitoring campaign at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The data set comprises 2190 observations and is the largest homogeneously observed and reduced sample of SN Ia to date, nearly doubling the number of well-observed, nearby SN Ia with published multicolor CCD light curves. The large sample of U-band photometry is a unique addition, with important connections to SN Ia observed at high redshift. The decline rate of SN Ia U-band light curves correlates well with the decline rate in other bands, as does the U-B color at maximum light. However, the U-band peak magnitudes show an increased dispersion relative to other bands even after accounting for extinction and decline rate, amounting to an additional ~40% intrinsic scatter compared to B-band.Comment: 84 authors, 71 pages, 51 tables, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Version with high-res figures and electronic data at http://astron.berkeley.edu/~saurabh/cfa2snIa