纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 063伊费头像（4）（在线收听）

It's easy to mock Frobenius, but at the beginning of the twentieth century Europeans had very limited knowledge of the traditions of African art. For painters like Picasso, Nolde or Matisse, African art was dionysiac, exuberant and frenetic, visceral and emotional. But the restrained, rational Apollonian sculptures of Ife clearly came from an orderly world of technological sophistication, sacred power and courtly hierarchy - a world in every way comparable with the historic societies of Europe and Asia. And, as with all great artistic traditions, the sculptures of Ife present a particular view of what it means to be human. Here's Babatunde Lawal, Professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University:

"Frobenius around 1910 assumed that maybe the survivors of the Greek lost Atlantis might have made these heads. And he predicted that if a full figure were to be found, the figure would reflect the typical Greek proportions - say the head constituting about one seventh of the whole body. But when a full figure was eventually discovered at Ife, the head was just about a quarter of the body, complying with the typical proportion characterising much of African art - the emphasis on the head because it is the crown of the body, the seat of the soul, the site of identity, perception and communication."

这个观点现在看来当然令人失笑，但在二十世纪初期，欧洲人对非洲艺术传统的了解十分有限。对毕加索、诺尔德和马蒂斯这样的艺术家而言，非洲的艺术表达是肆无忌惮的，它们生机勃勃而狂热奔放，出乎本能而激情澎湃。而伊费雕像所表现出的庄重、理性与克制明显表示它来自一个秩序井然、技术高度发达、神权与王权都十分稳固的世界，这样的世界在任何方面都足以与欧亚历史上若干盛名远扬的社会媲美。除了承袭所有伟大的艺术传统之外，伊费的雕像还表现了一种看待人类生存意义的特殊视角。弗吉尼亚联邦大学艺术史教授巴巴汤迪拉沃尔认为：

一九一年前后，弗洛贝纽斯认定这些头像是由失落的亚特兰蒂斯文明中的希腊幸存者所雕刻的，他预测道，如果有全身像，头部和身体的比例一定符合希腊雕像的经典比例，即头部的大小占整个身体的七分之一。但全身像最终在伊费出土时显示，头部占据了全身的四分之一。这是典型的非洲艺术一他们强调头部，认为头部是身体的王冠，灵魂的宝座，是自我认知、感受与交流的所在。