Art: City of Blood

Ever since the early Cubists first caught the fever in 1910, African Negro sculpture has had an important influence on modern artists. In recent months first-rate exhibitions of this art have been held in Manhattan, Paris, London (TIME, April 119th). Plain gallery-goers sometimes find it difficult to understand much of an art which has nothing whatever to do with the civilized European concept of Beauty, but which stems directly from the basic emotion of fear. But one fact is plain to all eyes: in any showing of African art the bronzes and carvings of the vanished Kingdom of Benin are definitely superior in spirit and technique to other Negro art. Proudly last week in Manhattan the distinguished Knoedler Galleries put on display 31 objects which constituted the most important collection of Benin art ever exhibited in the U. S. Follow the Equator westward across Africa to its crotch where the Guinea coast joins the coast of the Cameroons. Just in that corner stood until the end of the 19th Century the ancient Kingdom of Benin. In 1486, six years before Columbus sailed to the west, Portuguese traders searching for pepper first entered the sacred city of Benin. There they found palaces of red clay polished until they shone like marble, great treasures of ivory, brass and bronze, a broad main street stretching to the horizon. In the 400 years that followed, only a handful of white travelers followed them. In the early 16th Century one King of Benin ordered his whole nation converted to Christianity in exchange for a white wife, provided by Portuguese missionaries. The conversion was short-lived, though later generations of the Bini adopted wholeheartedly the custom of crucifying their human sacrifices. By 1896 Britain had already established control of the coast of Nigeria, was eager to trade with forbidden Benin in the interior. Acting Consul General Phillips, eager to hurry matters, sent a message to grinning black King Overami of Benin, asking permission to visit his capital, arrange a treaty. With the messenger the Briton sent the traditional present: a bottle of gin, a piece of cloth, a walking stick. King Overami appreciated the gin, but sent word that it would be unwise for a white man to come at that time as he was celebrating the anniversary of his father's death. Mr. Phillips, who had not read the works of early travelers sufficiently to realize what this meant, decided to go in anyway. With a party of eight white men, completely unarmed, he left the Benin River on Jan. 4, 1897 and started overland for Benin City. A volley of shots rang out when a Mr. Locke bent over to tie his shoelaces. All but two men in the party were brutally slaughtered. By Feb. 17, a punitive expedition, complete with an admiral. 500 troops, five Maxim guns and a 7-year-old native boy who kept saying "God bless the Queen and I hope you will knock hell out of the King of Benin," were fighting up that same trail, blasting away at the gates of Benin.