Jonatnan Zilberg
The Radical Within the Museum:
Frank McEwen and the Genesis
of Shona Sculpture as a Cultural Struggle
at the Rhodes National Gallery
"... African artists are not so much
fighting for the freedom to be 'African'
(whatever that may mean),
but to be fully accepted as artists,
though this can only be articulated
through their Africaness,
since that is the site of their categorical
exclusion from a global art discourse
in the first place"
(Kasfir 2000:213).
" to understand more clearly 110w tl1e articula-
INTRODUCTION
This article describes the role of Frank
McEwen, the first Director of tl1e Rl10des
National Gallery, in stimulating the emergence
of Zimbabwean stone sculpture and in fra-
ming it, with tl1e artists' creative collabora-
tion, as a cultural struggle and as a Shona
tribal art revival. Since, as Sidney Kasfir writes
above, tl1e tribal legacy is tl1e site of exclu-
sion of contemporary African art from
modem art discourse it is perl1aps important
tion of this exclusive purist identity as tl1e
definition of tl1e artists' Africaness works
botl1 for and against tl1e artists inclusion in
tl1e larger world of contemporary art.
Situating Zimbabwean stone sculpture instead
in its full diversity and in terms of its mani-
fest and complex relation to European art
and tl1e complexities of recent African history
allows for tl1e incorporation of tl1ese artists
into the global art discourse at tl1e same time
as allowing tl1em tl1e freedom to express tl1eir
Africaness as tl1ey understand it. Tl1erein clai-
ming tl1eir Africaness in terms of an etl1nic
identity rooted in tl1e continuation of tl1e
past in tl1e present does not demand tl1e
disavowal of influences of and relations witl1
European art l1istory.
Differences and complexities aside, for tl1e
purposes of tl1is particular exl1ibition at
Bayreutl1 University, tl1e following analogy
may be useful. ln many ways Frank McEwen
was to Sl10na sculpture in Soutl1em Rl1odesia,
now Zimbabwe, wl1at Susanne Wenger was
to Osl1ogbo art in Nigeria. Tl1ese two particu-
lar examples of African art are mentioned in
tandem l1ere as tl1ey are of special significance
to lwalewa House tl1rougl1 tl1e person of Ulli
131
Beier-Wenger'sand McEwen'sclose friends emergent, of authenticity as always imagined
and staunch supporters. As European expatri- rather than innate. Yet Africanist art histori-
ate 'animateurs' (or 'patron-brokers') of the ans and commentators sometimes seem to
arts (see Horner 1993, Kasfir 2000), both have different views, apparently believing that
their projects, from their own stated perspec- art forms can resurface after centuries of
tives, involved 'reviving' ancient traditions for interruption and not simply imagined as such
new ends in new contexts. Both were deeply (Kennedy 1992, Peppiatt 1972, 1974, Pavey
interested in the mystical and the historical 1991, Wahlman 1974). Perhaps they do so
dimensions of Africa and both of them have because of their mission to support and pro-
left their fundamental beliefs about art as mote the artists at, ,all costs. Thus they are
sacred and African "tribal" cultures as immu- able to avoid overly critical analysis of the
table as bedrock formations in these two very creative construction of a purist authenticity
different contemporary art phenomena. through using ambiguity while incorporating
While Susanne Wenger revived the dying and yet brushing aside any such critiques as
Oshogbo cults and created in collaboration the "cold scrutiny of post-modernism" (see
with local artists a new synthesis of shrine Kasfir 2000:68, contra Bernardi 1988,
architecture building on the past, Frank Cousins 1992, Pearce 1993, Roberts 1980,
McEwen and the artists he sponsored belie- ~ibanda '1'984,Hodza 1980 and Zilberg 1988,
ved that they had revived an ancient Shona 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997).
tradition. Though the comparison of the
Oshogbo and Shona cases raise fertile possi-
bilities as Sidney Kasfir explores in her excel-
lent book Contemporary African Art, this
short article simply raises these basic similari-
ties in order to frame the emergence of
Zimbabwean stone sculpture as a Shona tra-
dition within a larger picture of a creative
engagement between European patron-bro-
kers and African artists. Herein, in revisiting
Frank McEwen's involvement, his original
idea that contemporary Shona sculpture is
directly connected to the stone monoliths
found at the archaeological site of Great
Zimbabwe is a remarkable though strategic
historical claim to make.
From an anthropological perspective, this
claim for roots deep in the past can be
understood as a form of constructivism basic
to historical invention and as a classic exam-
ple of cultural beliefs as processual and

32 I
A SHORT STORY
ABOUT SHONA SCULPTURE
The story of Shona sculpture is especially
interesting in that it provides productive and
positive chapters in the history of Rhodesian
race relations. Herein both Frank McEwen,
and Canon Paterson who preceeded him,
believed that art was the best medium for
promoting sympathetic inter-racial under-
standing in this highly unlikely socio-political
context [see McEwen 1960, Paterson 1942,
1949a and b, Zilberg 1996~61 ,95-96, 102,
1999b). 1t is also interesting because of the
framing of Shona sculpture in history; recent
and ancient, and how this has come to have
a perfect At with the cultural politics of libe-
ration and the hegemonic outcome of Shona
nationalism (see Turino 2000). 1t is abidingly
interesting in addition because of the consi-
stent framing of modern African artists as
innate tribal mystics connected to mythic
pasts and as the primary initiators of new
'inexplicably' magical art forms which repro-
duce Orientalist perceptions of Africa.
1n looking into these issues, I very briefly
reconsider Frank McEwen's own accounts of
his struggle in Rhodesia to foster contempo-
rary African art (for a more detailed account
see Zilberg 1996). In some respects, as Beier
put it, McEwen's attempt to do this was akin
to a lone 1sraeli farmer in the Negev desert
(Beier 1978). 1n other respects, this view was
somewhat partisan. Whichever position one
takes, the story about this struggle as it rela-
tes to the aesthetic and cultural politics of
the time is surely one of the stranger stories
in modern art history and recent Zimbabwean
history. That this art form emerged as a cul-
tural revival in the unlikely context of
Rhodesia in the sixties and seventies and
then exploded into a post-independence
anthem of the people's right to freedom, as
President Mugabe and former vice-president
Joshua Nkomo have put it (see Mugabe in
Mor 1985, Nkomo 1990), is an extraordinary
historical feat. As such it is a testament to
the artists' creativity and enthusiasm in
responding to McEwen's exhortations to cre-
ate original visions drawn from their 'tribal'
beliefs (see Zilberg 2001), as well as a testa-
ment to Frank McEwen's tenacious vision
and succesful promotion of their work [see
Aldridge 1999).
While the broader picture is a well
known story, what is far less well known is
the polemical and political battle McEwen
waged against the Rhodesian public, the
National Gallery's Board and the government
itself in his efforts to promote contemporary
African art at the Rhodes National Gallery. ln
briefly revisiting this conflict I consider some
of his "harangues," as he termed them, in
which he conceived of himself to be involved
in a "sacred" struggle against the Philistine
Rhodesian officials who had mandated him
to collect and curate European and not
African art. Herein, it is an interesting irony
in history, and a remarkable fact, that the
attempt to establish a National Gallery to
promote European culture in the Federation
was immediately subverted to fostering con-
temporary African art and that this eventually
led to the situation as we know it today.
Within this historical frame then, the story of
Shona sculpture provides a stranger than Ac-
tion view of pre-independent Zimbabwe and
the political uses of art, history and culture.
133

FRANK MCEWEN'S BATTLE AGAINST THE
RHODESIAN "PHILISTINES":
RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AT THE
NATIONAL GALLERY
It can be argued that it was precisely
Frank McEwen's cultural politics and virul-
ently anti-colonial/settler attitude which set
the stage for a protracted struggle over the
functions and duties expected of the director
of the Rhodes National Gallery while at the
same time earning him universal lionization
in the world of African art The precise details
of this struggle from the Boards position
have never been revealed,but suffice it to
say, the situation was more complex than
arguing that the Board members were mere
racist "Philistines". Thusthe cultural and
institutional politics were not so so simple a5
to be reduced to the position that McEwen
was simply blacklisted for fraternizing with
Africans (see Kasfir 2000:73). McEwen came
to the country with a specific agenda in
mind-to stimulate a new art form with
untainted artists in a new environment as an
anti-dote to what he perceived as the death
of European modernism. ln order to do so he
deliberately defied the National Gallery's
charter and the trustees agenda. As a conse-
quence the history of Zimbabwean stone
sculpture is a fascinating one in that it invol-
ved both a critical reaction to modern art and
a political act of priveledging African creativi-
ty in the most unlikely context
Not without some grounds, McEwen
attacked the white Rhodesian settlers as
bourgeois "philistines" who despised art and
imagined themselves"despised by the artist"
(McEwen 1960:30). Arguing that he was no
mere "polemicist" or "pamphleteer", he pro-
341
..
,,
posed in the National Gallery publications
that these "enemies of art" needed to be
educated and cured of their "vulgar" and
"undeveloped tastes" (ibid.). In order to edu-
cate the white Rhodesian public, while seek-
ing financial support from the government
for his project to sponsor contemporary
African art and culture, he presented the
Board with a "battle plan" for a cultural
struggle for the creative spirit so as to arrive
at the "idea~ of the pure aesthetic"-"an inner
urge to truth" in a "dark age" of philistine
opposition (1960:30).It can be little wonder
then, regardless ofthe immense creative
power and value of his exhortations, particu-
larly in 1962 on the occassion of the First
1nternational Congress of African Art (see
Zilberg 1996: 113-120), that this type of rhe-
toric was met with caustic reactions by those
at whom it was aimed.
McEwen's radical proposal was that first
one had to tear art "from behind the piano."
As he wrote: "The first step is to perceive
that water-coloring old ladies of both sexes
are relics of a well to do, artless Victorian
age, when everymiddle class brat was forced
to strum on that piano, watercolor and
'learn' to draw from the odious plaster cast"
The second step in this battle for "true" art
was to learn that art always involved cultural
struggle and that the racist Rhodesian
Philistines were unable to see the art emer-
ging in their midst He proposed that if they
could overcome their barriers to art they
would "discover a vast and free thinking
world," and "share in an edi1)ting conscious-
ness of the present, of which exciting geniu-
ses determine the spiritual trend" in which
virile creations were close at hand.
1n setting the stage for his project, the
 Bernard Matemera
Figure of a Man 1966
51 em x 22 em x 21 em

I 35
 Boira Mteki
After War 1963
39 em x 17 em x 27 em

36 I
 director declared that when he had arrived in
Rhodesia in 1957 there was no art to be
found except for some "amateur water-colo-
ring" and "one or two mission-spoiled car-
vers" who had sculpted "weak religious ima-
ges" (1961 :38). This was a crass negation of
the success of the mission and government
sponsored projects led by Canon Edward
Paterson beginning in 1937 and of the pro-
found skill of naturalist sculptors such as Job
Kekana working with his colleague Sister
Pauline at St. Faiths. Moreover, the fact of
the matter is that the maJoritY' of the first
African sculptors McEwen exhibited w~re
trained by Canon Paterson and' the subject of
their works were frequently Christian themes
(see Till 1980, Zilberg 1999b). Later, the
arguably dubious examples of "creative
genius" which he displayed prior to 1966,
and the incendiary polemics published in the
accompanying catalogs did little to endear
him, as he noted, "to, the powers that be."
Summing up the overall situation succintly,
Marion Arnold, a South African art historian
(who had lived in Zimbabwe until indepen-
dence and who has written to date the most
substantial extant text on Zimbabwean stone
sculpture), has best described this when she
wrote that his eccentric and aggressive nature
"did not endear [him] McEwen to the white
community who began to perceive art shown
at the Gallery as a challenge to bourgeois
values" (1989:178). It is not surprising there-
fore that he was considered a heroic figure by
intellectuals in the world of African art.
Despite this situation Frank McEwen did
manage to cultivate a devoted group of
artists and supporters. At the same time, over
the intervening years, he widened and put
em into use his high level contacts with leading
figures in the museum world so as to legiti-
mate his project. After approximately a deca-
de his efforts were to bear fruit such that by
the mid-late 1960's some truly astonishing
work was exploding upon the scene. The
most powerful and monumental of this work
emerged, in my own opinion, first from an
indirect offshoot of his influence, namely the
Workshop School in the Bush-the
Tengenenge community (for examples, see
The Workshop Catalog 1967 and Joy Kuhn's
Myth and Magic: The Art of the Shona of
Zimbabwe 1978). Artists from that colony
such as Sylvester Mubayi had a significant
influence on the artists McEwen subsequently
gathered together at Vukutu most notably,
for example, John Takawira. The subsequent
production, for example, of the most extreme
mythological figures such as the skeleton
ancestor baboon gods and the like caused a
minor sensation in Paris according to Cecile
Goldscheir, then the director of the Rodin
museum, in the film Talking Stones and as
recounted in Claire Polakoffs rave review of
the Paris exhibitions in African Arts. (see
Polakoff 1972). Little wonder that Ulli Beier
wrote of these happenings at the National
Gallery and the reception of this new art in
European circles as "The Great Excitement."
It was only relatively late in the day, specifi-
cally in 1971, that the concept of a Shona
sculpture emerged (see McEwen 1971 and
1972). It appears to be the case that Frank
McEwen only became intensely committed to
fostering the restricted notion of a Shona
sculpture and a specified group of sanctioned
sculptors, first so as to distance the work
from its partial mission origins, thus ensuring
its authentic Africaness, and second so as to
exclude the multi-ethnic Tengenenge artists
I 37
 "

John Takawira
God is blind 1972
32 em x 17 em x 17 em

38 I
 after he lost control over the international
sale of works from that community in 1968
[see Zilberg 1988, 1996: 127-149, Kasfir
2000:73-76).
Hence though it is true that when Frank
McEwen arrived in 1957 there was not a
great deal of either substantial or internatio-
nally recognized African art being made, he
did rely upon, exhibit and draw into the orbit
of the National Gallery artists which he him-
self once termed "Paterson's finds", Boira
Mteki for example. 1n the earlies,t years these
were the first sculptors. La'ter one of the most
important sculptors to date, Ni~holas i was able to achieve what he did in the cir-
Mukomberanwa, emerged from Serima mis-
sion, as did Tapfuma Gutsa decades later (see
Zilberg In press b). Thus Frank McEwen's dis-
missal of Christian mission art education was
problematic as was his radical disavowal of
Tengenenge. ln struggling to contain the
situation, he passionately argued that the
mission driven tourist'trade and Tengenenge
would compromise the international integrity
of his efforts and ultimately even destroy his
project. As a consequence then, McEwen
faced conflicts on several fronts at once. ln
addition to these problems he had to con-
tend with the ever-worsening political envi-
ronment and the tightening of sanctions
which constrained and complicated the inter-
national sale and exhibition of the sculpture.
Besides these emergent conflicts and cons-
traints, year by year, McEwen had continued
to struggle to get funding for the Workshop
School and his larger promotion of contem-
porary African art and culture. Finally a deca-
de after his arrival, he printed a public con-
demnation of the powers that were. As he
wrote: "While you allow your National Gallery
n to sink into inoperable financial poverty you
L
should perhaps think and act ... before it is
too late Without public support the
National Gallery will die [McEwen 1967:n.p.).
lndeed, in the documentary Talking Stones
[1992), produced by Granada Television, in
reflecting upon this, he explained: "You see
when 1 was there I had many enemies. So
many white people didn't like what I was
doing that finally 1 had to resign."
Consequently, McEwen was described in The
Herald, after his final resignation as a man
both "loved" and "hated" (Larman 1973). All
legitimate criticism aside, the fact that he
cumstances is a remarkable testament to his
tenacity, to the extent of his networks and
networking capacity within the European and
American art world, and of-course, to the
artists' creativity (see Aldridge 1999).
The artists worshipped him then, and
still do, and a small sector of the liberal
white community eagerly supported the art
emerging through the auspices of the
Workshop School at the National Gallery-as
they did from the other ventures (see Zi1berg
1999a). Outside of this limited but crucial
patronage, it is not surprising that the white
Rhodesians as a whole turned a blind eye, a
cold shoulder and a severely critical even
overtly racist attitude towards the work being
promoted at the National Gallery. They did
not having a remote interest in contemporary
African "art" and culture and less still in
being harangued as Philistine barbarians (see
Zilberg 1996: 151-52). Their sometimes indig-
nant reactions were best captured in the stin-
ging reaction in which the above-mentioned
writer in The Herald charged that he
[McEwen) was annually stuffing the National
Gallery with "a repetitive collection of African
I 39

junk suited only to the souvenir stall"
(Larman 1973). lndeed, this total rejection of
the importance and quality of the work
displayed there was not always a simple racist
refusal to acknowledge the artists' creativity
as numerous informants and critics have spe-
cifically called McEwen's high handed elitist
aesthetic judgments into question while
others idolized him and his implacable judge-
ments as impeccable (see Arnold 1986,
Bernardi 1988, Tracey 1962, Zilberg 1995).
40 I
.'
SHONA SCULPTURE AND
THE SHONA HIGH GOD CULT ACCOR-
DING TO FRANK MCEWEN
Beyond issues of aesthetics and selec-
tion, Frank McEwen held an extreme idealist
position on art drawn in part from Rousseau
and Jung, Focillon and Matisse, and an
Africanist view consonant with Cesaire, Fanon
and Senghor. Art for him was a spiritual act
and Africa was the source of the great creative
strides in music, dance and art in the modern
period. From his symbolist perspective and
political philosophy, which must have been
quite out of place in colonial Rhodesia, he
wrote that Shona sculpture was the expres-
sion of a "vital force" in which an ancient
African trad,ition had spontaneously re-emer-
ged under his benevolent and fated guidance.
Moreover, he' believed that these artists were
comparable with the greatest modern Euro-
pean artists and he felt it important to state
this spiritual and historical explanation expli-
citly so that he would not be subsequently
misconstrued (McEwen 1988). Looking back
on the relationship between the religious and
assumed cultic aspects of Shona sculpture
long after having left Zimbabwe, he wrote:
Has there in world history been great art
without some foundation in spiritual belief?
Even the Impressionists were deeply 'religious'
Pantheists or inspired Anarchists-van Gogh a
spiritual martyr to his cause, Turner appeared
possessed by the elements. Certainly mysti-
cism of the Chaminuka [a supra-territorial
senior tribal spirit] cult lives deep within
Shona minds ond sculptures, and to dismiss it
today as folklore in favor of 'art for art's sake'
is damaging to values and to facts (1988:n.p.).
 Here we have it that the High God cult
of the Shona is deeply linked into the Shona
sculpture phenomenon and that the spiritual
function of Shona sculpture as a religious
artistic expression is of the essence. The clear
criteria for the tradition's authenticity is
based then in a functional cultic affiliation
and the antiquity of the territorial spirit cults.
If the revival of Shona sculpture was an
important event within the Chaminuka High
God cult this would be of the outmost
anthropological and historical significance.
Perhaps this may turn ouf to be' the case in
the future, but for now there is no knqwn
specific linkage as far as I understand it be-
sides the so called mystic secrets promulgated
by McEwen based on Joseph Ndandarika's
invented apprenticeship to a wizard and his
extravagant mischevious stories about conti-
nuing practices of blood sacrifices made over
stone ancestor figures hidden in caves near
Rusape (see Zilberg 1~93). As it stands then,
assuming this link to the high God cult is
mere conjecture, this framing presents an
archetypal example of the manipulation of
ethnographic context to attribute extraordi-
nary spiritual and historical significance to
the tradition. Regardless of this, today the
notion of Zimbabwean stone sculpture as a
Shona sculpture tradition has a tenacious
hold in the popular imagination and even in
academia (see Kennedy 1992, Wahlman 1974,
Kasfir 2000). With independence and the
hegemony of Shona cultural nationalism,
Frank McEwen's vision of a uniquely Shona
tradition has become so widely advanced as
to be unquestionably accepted, not only by
the majority of the sculptors themselves, but
by the Zimbabwean government, and increa-
singly by the public partly because of the
constant media exposure. Thus despite the
criticism of the hegemonic nature of the
idea of a purely Shona sculpture, the pheno-
menon is by now firmly entrenched as a mar-
ket reality which spans the globe and several
decades. ln fact, advertisements, and artists
and salesmen now stretch this history even
further into the past-claiming tllat its origi-
nal roots are to be found long before tile rise
of Great Zimbabwe, actually in tile stone age.
As sucll Sllona sculpture, presents an acute
case of the psychological investment in etll-
nicity, and in tile marketing and politics of
allocentrism-at least to those influenced by
deconstruction and issues concerning tile
politics of representation (see Fabian 1983,
Price 1989, Torgovnick 1990).
ln terms of African political history,
Sllona sculpture emerged during tile rise of
cultural nationalism and the armed struggle
and yet was essentially apolitical in content.
Despite the apolitical nature of tllis work, it is
of permanent consequence that tile Rllodes
National Gallery, inaugurated in 1957,
tllougll it Ilad not been originally intended as
a site for fostering African art did indeed
became an important historic site for tile
expression of Shona culturalllistory.
Nevertlleless, to repeat tile fundamental tlle-
mes of tllis article, this has occured at tile
price of downplaying three vital connections:
Cllristian mission Ilistory, national etllnic
diversitY and European modernism.
Wllile tile artists Ilave come to be seen
as autonomous agencies naturally expressing
tlleir culture through the medium of stone, a
balance is needed between giving the artists
sufficient agency and establishing how they
were inspired by and influenced by European
art and relied upon such European figures
141

especially during the early phases of their
careers. For example, the workshop school
artists were all intimately familiar with
modernist works and their importance, parti-
cularly Picasso and Moore (see Kasfir
2000:69-71, Zilberg 1996:201-214). In addi-
tion they were specifically asked to explore
Shona religion by McEwen, guided by him
and judged by him, all this determining the
type of choices and decisions they would
make. While 1 believe this results in a dialogic
cycle of expectations influencing production
in terms of both style and content with a
strong hegemonic component on McEwen's
side and a fundamental connection in terms
of style to Picasso and Moore, the geneticist
position either downplays or effaces this.
Accordingly, in creating the concept of a
Shona sculpture, in collaboration with the
sculptors, McEwen strategically employed
essentialized and romantic Jungian notions
of culture as inherently immutable. Any
detailed academic analysis which examines
the history of the strategic politics of repre-
sentation in Shona sculpture will unavoidably
demonstrate that this simplistic commodifica-
tion of difference for the sake of creating a
definable tradition can only occur at the
price of far more complex historical truths.
Once again, the three fundamental truths are:
the denigration of the importance of mission
art education, the denial of ethnic diversity
and the influence of European modernism.
ln the final analysis, race politics and natio-
nalism aside, Frank McEwen can be seen as
an archetypal 'animateur' on the order of Ulli
and Georgina Beier and Suzanne Wenger,
Priestess of Oshogbo. McEwen was akin to
the likes of Romain-Desfosses and Father
Kevin Caroll at Oyo-Ekiti in Nigeria, or better
421
" ,
yet and closer to home-to his own predeces-
sors of sorts-Canon Edward Paterson, inspi-
red by John Ruskin and Eric Gill, and Father
Groeber, apparently inspired by Father Kevin
Caroll and Lamidi Fakeye at Oyo-Ekiti (see
Devligier 1998, Ehrenzweig 1954, Plangger
1974, Randles 1997, Rankin 1992, Walker
1985, Zilberg 1996, 1999b). lndeed, as this
article has emphasized, these similarities,
despite the important differences, are impor-
tant to note because of the fact McEwen
strategically effectively silenced Paterson and
Groeber's work and later marginalized the
Tengenenge community in the antipodal
construction of the mythology of Shona
sculpture as a 'high' art form and a tribal art
revival. His lionization in African art history
tends to rei~force these marginalizations and
thus stabilize the purity of the notion of a
Shona sculp't'ure ~ather than promoting
Zimbabwean stone sculpture as a uniquely
interesting form of Zimbabwean modernism.
Despite this masking and re-routing of histo-
ry, and despite the swing in the post-inde-
pendence period to giving the artists the
defining agency in this history, in themselves
being alternative animators (that is in being
cultural statesmen expressing their innate tri-
bal identity), it is a historical fact that
Europeans such as Frank McEwen, Canon
Paterson, Father Groeber, Pat Pearce, and
Tom Blomefield, played fundamentally germi-
native roles in stimulating and supporting the
emergence of modern art in Zimbabwe. The
importance of their roles simply cannot be
underestimated and this is something that
the artists themselves comment upon. For
Nil
example, in the recent video Tengenenge by
Mango Productions (1998), the artists specifi-
cally pay hommage to Blomefield as a 'father'
Nicholas Mukomberanwa
Children Hiding from ~
Matabe/e war 1963
19 em x 19 em x 11 em

143
 Henry Munyaradzi
Leaf Head 1976
50 em x 25 em x 5 em

441
r
(see Zilberg ln press a) and in the companion
video Nicholas Mukomberanwa (2000) in
which he says of Serima mission-"l owe eve-
rything 1 am today to this place" (see Zilberg
ln press b).
Nevertheless both a local resistance and
an art historical resistance to the idea of
Eurocentric stimulus has grown over time.
Ironically the initial post-independence
advances for a purely indigenous impetus was
spearheaded by yet another European anima-
tor Professor Cyril Rogers-director of the
National Gallery from 198ti-19'94 who offici-
ally promoted the sculptor Joram Mariga as
the original source of inspiration for Shona
sculpture. Moreover, even as the field of con-
testation and the criticism of the construc-
tion and consequences of the Shona label
has expanded (though at times it is brushed
off as the misguided attacks of a confused
Don Quixote, see McCartney 1995), the purist
cultural legitimation has been consistently
intensified. Hence Dawson Munjeri writes
that to deny a continuity between the culture
of Great Zimbabwe and today's Shona cultu-
re amounts to nothing other than Afro-pho-
bic racism and that the continuity is self-evi-
dent:
The creative genius of the anonymous sculp-
tor of the Great Zimbabwe bird cannot be
separoted from his artistic affspring ... What
applied to the thirteenth through fifteenth
century sculptor equallv applies to the sculp-
tor in 1997. The beauty of the object derives
in large part from the meaning which, in turn,
is anchored in the pillars of tradition
(1997:15).
While Frank McEwen's belief that he had
stimulated such a revival has thus become a
matter of fact, and though a fundamental
cultural continuity can be assumed, no
serious academic study of renaissances in
European art history would assume a direct
continuity between art forms separated by
over four hundred years with the original
'tradition' consisting of less than ten speci-
mens. Yet in African art history, the passage
of time and change is rendered mute by the
innate mysticism of ancestral worship and the
imagined immutability of unchanging tribal
beliefs. Thus because of fundamental cultural
differences, and arguably for the sake of
nationalist history and cultural politics,
Western standards for the study of artistic
revivals and criticial analysis of strategic
discourses of self-definition are set aside.
Though Europeans were germinal agents in
the history of Zimbabwean stone sculpture,
this is typically seen as a matter of colonial
and neo-colonial denial of African creativity
and empowerment. This is especially the case
because of the paternalistic use of the term
'father' which has stirred up such acrimony.
As Sidney Kasfir writes emphatically:
Despite its crucial role, patronage alone can-
not bring art into being and Zimbabwean
stone sculpture was not the creation of its
patron-brokers. Significantlv the range of spe-
cific thematic content hod little or nothing to
do with either McEwen or Blomefie/d.
Furthermore, Mariga had alreadv begun a
workshop befOre either of them, and so if
anyone is the 'father' of the movement, he is
(2000:76-77).
145
 No doubt, mere patronage is not suffi-
cient, however the original idea that sculptors
should carve their culture in stone was
McEwen's, as was the invention and dissemi-
nation of the specific term-Shona sculpture
(see Pearce 1993, Zi]berg 1993a).
As regards the pivotal case of Mariga, the
historical facts are that Joram Mariga was by
no means one of the first sculptors to join
the Workshop Schoo] though before doing so
he was carving tourist souvenirs in stone as
was being done by countless other sculptors
inspired by Canon Paterson by that time.
Mariga only switched over to creating spirit
sculptures after he was introduced by his
patron Pat Pearce to McEwen, who on being
presented with a stone tea cup for an
Englishman and a "terrib]e tourist head" by
Mariga, advised him to draw on his own cul-
ture for inspiration and to create what he
would make for his ancestors (see McEwen in
the Granada documentaryTa]king Stones). It
was only then that Mariga turned to such
work and subsequently spread this "gospel"
through the Nyanga area and u]timately to
Tengenenge through his nephew Crispen
Chakanyoka. lf anyone then remains the 'fat-
her' of Shona sculpture it can then be none
other than McEwen, regardless of how patro-
nizing and politically incorrect this may seem
today.
The argument is not that the emergence
of Zimbabwean stone sculpture was one
sided and a pure creation of McEwen's ima-
gination but that it was, in its conceptual
origin, his invention and vision, and that
such a stimulation of a new art form had
been his explicit goal before he even arrived
in Southern Rhodesia. The eventual conse-
quence of this desire, born in a dissatisfaction
461
with the demise of the Schoo] of Paris, was
then a dialogic process with the original
expectations, specifications, stimulation and
guidance coming directly from McEwen.
CONCLUSION:
THE HEGEMONIC ALLOCENTRISM OF
SHONA SCULPTURE
The notion of a Shona sculpture serves
well for the purposes of strategic essentia-
]isms in which the colonial ideology of the
permanence of 'tribal' structures has been
used to advance the hegemony of the state
and less cynically, a general Shona identity.
Despite the complete rejection of the notion
of a Shona sculpture by notable Zimbabwean
historians and critical intellectuals (see Hodza
1982, Roberts 1982, Pearce 1993, Sibanda
1984), ,despite the entrenchment of the
notion of the tribe as a colonial creation for
the purposes of governmentality (Ranger
1983, 1985), and despite a manifest lack of
local interest and patronage, the notion itself
grows from strength to strength (see Zi]berg
1993b, Cousins 1992).
Therein, the Shona sculpture phenome-
non can be seen to represent a virtually
unparalleled case of mystification and allo-
centrism in the literature on modern African
art or conversely as a triumphant form of
cultural nationalism and a highly succesful
example of a search for a "usable past" (see
Kasfir 2000:210). ln the articulation of this
tribal authenticity, ethnicity is framed as a
primordia] condition and defining characteri-
stic of the art and the artists. ln contrast,
though not necessarily in contradiction,
modern Zimbabwean stone sculpture is very
much an extension of European artistic
r

practices and ideas about art into Africa

which have been dialogically transmogrified
by the artists and art world into an ethnic art
distinct from tourist art (see Bernardi 1988,
Zilberg 1995). As such this particular inven-
tion of a tradition speaks volumes to the
political uses of the arts in history, to the
modernity and antiquity of Shona sculpture,
to the power of mythology, to the desire for
authenticity, and above all, to the complex,
changing, productive and problematic rela-
tions between Europe and Africa which the
artists themselves have to :negotiate.

Sylvester Mubayi
Flying Bird 1972
16 cm x 35 cm x 21 cm

147