纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 063伊费头像（5）（在线收听）

So it's perhaps not surprising that nearly all of the Ife metal sculptures that we know - and there are only about 30 - are heads. In 1938, an astonishing group of 13, including the one now at the British Museum, was dug up in the precincts of a royal palace at Ife. The quality of the brass casting was superb. And there could be no doubt now that this was a totally African tradition. The 'Illustrated London News' of 8 April 1939 published the find. And in an extraordinary article, the writer, still using the racist language of the 1930s, recognises that what he calls the negro tradition - a word then associated with slavery and primitivism - must, with the Ife sculptures, now take its place in the canon of world art. "Negro" could never again be used in quite the same way:

"One does not have to be a connoisseur or an expert to appreciate the beauty of their modelling, their virility, their reposeful realism, their dignity and their simplicity. No Greek or Roman sculpture of the best periods, not Cellini, not Houdon, ever produced anything that made a more immediate appeal to the senses, or is more immediately satisfying to European ideas of proportion."

迄今为止发现的伊费金属雕像共有三十具左右，在这种以头部为尊的传统下，也许不难理解为什么它们几乎都是头像。一九三八年在此地发现了十三座头像，毋庸置疑，它们完全是非洲传统文化的产物。一九三九年四月八日的《伦敦新闻画报》报道了这一发现。在一篇精彩的文章中，作者仍然使用了二十世纪三十年代那种相对保守（在我们看来不无种族主义倾向）的措辞，将其称为“黑鬼(Negro)传统”—这个词在当时与黑奴及原始主义紧密相连—认为伊费雕像使得这种传统艺术跻身世界经典艺术之列。而“Negro'”从此具有了不同的含义。

?不只是行家或专家，普通人也可以欣赏它们的造型之美、力量、沉静、庄严与简约。希腊和罗马鼎盛时期的雕像或者切利尼、乌东的作品中没有一件能像它一样，带给人如此强烈的感官冲击，契合欧洲人对完美比例的认知。