

This effort has been significantly extended in what is known as Black Aesthetics, a movement rooted in the 1960s anticolonial movements in Africa and the civil rights struggles in the United States. Yet, Abraham's position is typical of African aestheticians whose objective is mainly to elaborate the general aesthetic laws of African art.
#Aesthetic realism in literature professional
For that reason, despite being a pioneer of professional or rationalist African philosophy, he is nevertheless classified as an ethnophilosopher (Oruka, 1990, p. Abraham's broad concern is to show African culture, including African art, as expressions of an essential African cosmology. 111), thus demonstrating that African art is both realistic and figurative, depending on its specific social function. Abraham observes, "The Ashanti wooden maidens, which epitomise epitomize the Ashanti ideal of female beauty … were reasonably life-like." (p. Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) had only looked at one particular African art form, and proceeded to make inferences about the general character of African art. If they seek life-like representation, they should turn to secular art, the art which was produced for decorative purposes or the purposes of records, rather than moral art, the art whose inspiration is the intuition of a world force" (p.

William Abraham argues, "When critics like Gombrich say that the African artists were incapable of realistic representation, they quite miss the point of African art. A particular area of debate has been the negative assessment of African art, such as the claim that the category of realism does not apply to African art. One of the concerns of aesthetics has been the refutation of the colonialist definition of African aesthetics.
