eration ofartists in the modernizing enthusiasm oflate pre-revolutionary Russia, who reworked the modernisms of France and Germany using a distinctive local art history embodied in icon painting, folk art, Central Asian textiles, and so forth. The difference was that these young Nigerian artists faced an art-education system imported from the Britain ofthe 195os,and though that system offered new and valuable technical means, it could do nothing for artists intent on forging a sense ofNigerian national identity. The Zaria Art Society was the necessary response to their problem and Natural Synthesis the means to its solution. In this context we can understand why some ofOnobrakpeya's earliest work,completed when he was a student,dealt with the Urhobo folktale subject ofthe tortoise Ahwaire.4 He also illustrated Yoruba stories, including those ofthe modern writers Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, and D.0. Fagunwa;5 the myths and rites associated with the Urhobo deities ofhis home area; and daily life in Urhobo.'He has also made work demonstrating his concern with environmental pressures, particularly in the sahel and savanna regions of northern Nigeria, in, for example, a series of prints making use of the form of the wrought-iron staffof the Yoruba deity Orisha Oko. This staff is regarded as a source ofhealing energy;in cult myth,it was found on farmland following consultation with a diviner.' Natural Synthesis was also the context for Onobrakpeya's own description of his 1992 print Emete Ayuvbi(Women Bathers at a Stream), in which he writes that the name ofthis work "refers to some beautiful women in Urhobo folktale ... our women exhibit beautiful body patterns like those found on adire cloth [Yoruba resist-dyed cotton], carved wooden figures or bronzes. Body marking is a corner-stone in African art.'" This is a particularly revealing statement, not just because of the artist's reference to his decorative sources but also because he suggests an equivalence among engraved surfaces(the body, wood,the wax used as the basis for brass casting,and the printing plate).This allows us to grasp the subtlety ofmeans whereby Natural Synthesis could provide for the successful reinvention ofan art for postcolonial Nigeria. Moreover,it reminds us how the sculptural traditions ofthe past showed us not the naked human body but the body as socialized through another and prior art.A significant element ofthe Natural Synthesis program was its basis in a distinctively African sculptural inheritance. Onobrakpeya's art is not only a dominant force in Nigeria's post-Independence modernity,it also reveals something we might otherwise not have noticed about the past, and about its continuity with the here-and-now. This is where the"masking"ofmy title comes in; for the performance ofa masquerade may or may not be about what is hidden but it is always about what is revealed,about the deities,or one's ancestors, or those in authority, or social and religious change, or mischief-makers, or the moral norms ofone's community, its understanding of performance, its aesthetic values, and so much more. The "marking" of my title thus works at two levels: the marked surface, ofcourse, but also the manner in which masked performances mark out all these things in the social world. We can find all this here and there throughout Onobrakpeya's work,together, ofcourse, with works that take masquerade as their overt subject matter.- In any case, what makes the work of particular artists distinctive is located not in the metaphysical ether ofPlatonic universals but in all the detail of how the work is done. Onobrakpeya has given us a corpus ofpaintings, prints, and sculptural installations over forty-five years; and his choice ofsubject matter, his formal clarity in the use of the human figure and in richly patterned surfaces,and his command ofthe printmaking medium are altogether unique and distinctive. Onobrakpeya emerged from his student days as primarily a painter. His first professional appointment, in 1963, was as the art teacher at St. Gregory's College, Lagos. Two major developments followed upon this appointment. The first, and more significant, was his attendance at printmaking workshops organized by Ulli Beier, the first in Ibadan 1963, the second in Oshogbo 1964, where his experience ofthe print medium was encouraged. Although he had learned about printmaking as a student,only now did it begin to take over from painting as his principal field of practice. It suited well the clear-cut forms of his chosen resources(body marking, textile design, 132
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