Please write a critical analysis paper on “Ife Head Brass Statue, from Nigeria”, addressing TWO of the following points:
• How do we, today, understand the meaning of your object? Do we need to understand its intended meaning to value it?
• How does it measure our common humanity? Or how does it illustrate our differences?
• What does this work tell us about the role of the artist or maker in society?
• What is the significance of trade, travel and migration in the making of your object and in its reception? How do these factors affect its meaning and value?
• How does your visual object advance ideas of power?
• Discuss ideas of representation (abstraction, naturalism, realism)in the understanding of your object? How did these choices address or reflect larger cultural traditions?
• What questions would an art historian ask about this object? What questions would an anthropologist or an archaeologist ask of it?
• What are the politics surrounding the collection and display of your object?
• Are we to consider this object an artwork or an artefact and why?
