Un maternal cousin attached to tradition and self-taught artist taught me about the curious mode of creation among ancient Bété. The artist would place a piece of wood, started with charcoal, at a busy crossroads. The initiated passers-by understood that they were invited to trace with this charcoal suggestions on the form sketched in the wood, suggestions that the artist appreciated and took into account and so on until at a certain point in the creation no more suggestions presented themselves. The work was then supposed to be finished and the artist would end the initiates' "call to co-creation" by storing it in the sacred box reserved for the supports of "domesticated" spirits. The creative activity took place under the sign of the collaboration of "those who see clearly" no doubt because the art object, "Kouè-you" (from Kouè: Death and you: child) in other words the "child of the Other world", was intended to bring the message of the ancestors to the society of the living and to serve as a principle of cohesion. The desire to justify this unusual mode of creation requires us to postulate that it must have made its appearance probably when the conditions conducive to the meetings of the initiates in the sacred caves were no longer carried out probably prohibited by the colonial authorities. The imperative need to keep in touch with the ancestors could suggest this approach which consisted in fortuitously collaborating with the initiates of passage. Along the same lines, I cannot resist the desire to talk about the "didiga": the "didiga" or the "art of the Bété hunters" adapted for the theatre by the great playwright Bernard Zadi of the Bété ethnic group. Didiga literally means "tell the rubbish". In fact, in the ancient society, during the evenings preceding a hunting expedition, the adult men met and had the duty of verbally evacuating all the "naughty things" that inhabited them until, at least, morning of the dangerous expedition, the "net of the word" appears symbolized by the net of hunting. The main interest of "telling the waste" before the hunt was the need to prevent possible accidents where, believing that the animal was trapped in the nets was mortally wounded his neighbor object of unconscious hatred. The didiga thus proved to be a purifying, cathartic activity, preceding the hunt. The Bété initiates thought that life in society was comparable to a hunting expedition and that didiga was necessary to initiate men to "live together". This is why psychart therapy considers itself the natural heir of didiga because, by promoting the preverbal forms of the structuring language, it initiates it. also to social life.
According to Larem the Bété say they came down from the sky on a chain. We allow ourselves to add: Language which they themselves have created thanks to the artistic activity underpinned by the Word. The conception of artistic creation that I have just mentioned is a stinging denial inflicted on ethnologists like Denise Paulme who, in her book on Bété "a society of yesterday and today", claimed that the objects of art did not exist among the ancient Bété, a people warrior who would have devoted all his energy to the war, affirmation that we reject: if there is a theory of artistic creation, there must be creative activity and products of this creative activity! The Ivorian ideology made its "fat cabbage" of the windfall offered to it by the colonial prejudice: to know that the Bété is a lazy being, a savage without culture who ignored the art of carving masks. The new leaders did not hesitate to take advantage of this opportunity to confine this "Nigger of the Negroes" (singularly the Bété de Gagnoa) on the sidelines of the life of the young nation. This is why I am personally happy to learn from my friend Larem that there are indeed collections of masks Bété and he offers me to preface the edition of his next book on "Masks Stupid". In truth, I have never accredited the propaganda that Bété is a savage without culture. My living environment, rich in traditional values, did not allow me to do so: when I was little, in the living room of my uncle Grobli Gnébri, a customary judge, I had seen statuettes of ancestors and I do not think that this reference personality had fun. to decorate his living room with foreign creations! And my mother had told me that when she came back from the field to the "sun district" of Gagnoa, she used to put her load on the Dianke hill where the Dioula merchants sold masks, for the sole satisfaction of contemplating these "koue-you." If the Bété had ignored statuary, why did the statuary's productions have a name in the dialect and why a housewife took pleasure in contemplating them by the side of the road instead of returning quickly home to rest hard country labor? My mother assured me that the contemplation of these kouè-you "spoke" to her and rested her day! Having given my enthusiastic agreement, Alain sends me his text and the reproductions of the Bété masks by email. I discover these in the dazzling. Hallelujah! I hasten to turn the pages and gradually I discover works of an invoice that fills me with astonishment and pride! Masks whose originality undoubtedly brings a "More" to the knowledge that the world has of African artistic creativity. It is deplorable that the basely political motives have kept these works in drawers so far. Singularly these so-called “spider” masks (p17) in which I would rather see woodlice or centipedes lying on their backs: to express their capacity to “embrace” the terrestrial globe? And funeral masks (p 11) to sadness and nostalgia none.
It was believed to have said everything by proclaiming that the masks bete are imitation masks wè. I would rather say that the bété dida niaboua wè guéré masks have a family resemblance because they are the products of the diverse creative expression of the area of the “krou civilization”. For the analysts of the "African Art" (our friend Larem too) the masks bété, as the masks wè or niaboua generally inspire the terror because their function is to frighten the uninitiated population in order to hold them in the submission status. Our experience as an artist and psychoanalyst (psychart-therapist) allows us to think that the preoccupation with the original creation is the requirement to "control" the impulses that threaten the body internally. In other words: the intention that determines the creation is to kill ferocious beasts: leopard panther lions hippopotamuses infesting the inner forest just like the outer jungle. This is how primitive man pays his right of entry into the society of men. The primitive function of the art object is therefore not "pure pleasure of the eyes" which exists only for the esthete of today alienated to the "enjoy" because it is delivered from the mordant worry of subsistence, but the conquest of the Language which confers the symbolic control of Nature. And if the creative artist adorns his works with the fangs of leopard pantons or hippopotamus skulls it is to proclaim his triumph over these ferocious beasts that reign over the inner forest: these are the trophies whose function is to testify of his symbolic mastery. The mask and its accessories thus constitute a language through which man has made the transition from the imaginary field to the symbolic field and we are justified in saying that the more terrifying the mask is more dangerous was the confrontation to achieve human by the conquest of language !
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