Lot 78: DEMAS NWOKO (b.1935) PRAISE SINGER 1961 Oil on

DEMAS NWOKO (b.1935) PRAISE SINGER 1961 Oil on board 91.4 x 122 cm. (36 x 48 in.) Signed and dated (lower right) Collection of the artist The Praise Singer, painted in Demas Nwoko's final year at the Nigerian College of Art, Science and Technology, Zaria shows a drummer in striped agbada performing for a podgy seated man dressed only in white trousers and cap. Four or five clustered women, one with her bare back to the viewer suggest the seated man's importance-as a husband of many wives, while the crown-like form dangling over him imply his royal aspirations or stature. Nwoko's tendency to insert off-key humour into his compositions accounts for our sense that the musician only manages to drum up boredom in his esteemed audience. The drastic disfiguration of the drummer's face, another characteristic of Nwoko's figural style, owes to his desire to impose his artistic fantasies on the human form. Thus, in The Praise Singer, the drummer's strange face reflects the absurdity and folly of the work's subject matter.-CO