The Art Institute`s gallery of African art is tucked away in a corner of the museum that many people might not visit. But images of powerful African kings and astonishing spirits are by no means sleepy ones.
As we visit these objects, in Gallery 103 (on the ground floor), it might help to know that this was the assessment of Picasso, who saw haunting, magnetic power in the masks and sculpture of African art.
It is also the recent assessment of the Art Institute, which is strengthening its African collection, and which has hired a new curator to explain and care for it.
Visitors need only a few minutes with a huge ``fire spitter`` mask to appreciate not just the carving skill but the rich symbolic life that produced such pieces.
Ramona Austin, appointed in September as assistant curator for African art, points to this piece and others in the glass cases, noting the
``incredible visual sophistication`` of the artists behind them.
As part of Black History Month, Austin will lead a tour of this gallery, at 12:15 p.m. Feb. 29, to help visitors understand a part of art history that is of increasing interest to scholars and the public.
The fire spitter, for example, is from the Senufo tribe in western Sudan and, like most of the pieces in this gallery, was probably made in the last 100 years.
This is a religious image, combining elements of the antelope, warthog, hyena, chameleon and other animals, incorporated into a spirit having the strengths of each one. In the ceremony in which it is used, coals would be spewed out the mouth.
Spending time with this and other objects on display can be moving. But to know something about the minds that created it is even more rewarding.
African art was little studied some years ago, but now ``we know much more about the esthetic criteria of these people,`` Austin says.
She points to some masks that were made by some Yoruba artists, from southern Nigeria, which were made for ancestor-worship ceremonies. ``They wanted masks to be natural, but not too natural,`` she says. Dead ancestors were considered part of the social group, so their likenesses were
recognizable. But they also required abstraction; the spirits needed also to remain separate from the real, naturalistic world.
Somewhat like modern artists, African carvers sought to elicit emotional response through distortions such as huge, bulging eyes or creatures that appear only partly human.
Furthermore, Austin says that Picasso`s technique of painting a face both frontally and in profile can be traced to African masks.
Austin regards the collections of African art, along with pre-Columbian art from Latin America, as having special importance at the museum.
``We have two large populations in this city who should be able to come to the museum and feel that their cultural traditions are represented,`` she says.
Austin`s small gallery is perhaps more important than its size, because
``the interplay between our art and Western art,`` as Austin puts it, will do much to add to our enjoyment of both.