Body Marking as a Cornerstone of African Art Gabe F. Scelta School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Abstract: It is only in the western recontextualisation of African culture, where everything different from a Eurocentric model is considered art that body marking becomes a cornerstone. Onobrakpeya’s statement that “Body marking is a corner-stone in African art” was born out of a time and place that called for a unification of the arts of Africa and panafrican political and social consciousness. Instead of truly building on traditions unique to all areas of Africa, modern African art movements created a framework that would promote an art world in which contemporary African artists were in the respected and influential positions that they rightly deserved. Only in seeing African cultures as “others” can generalisations about body marking and symbolism be valid. Onobrakpeya’s statement that “Body marking is a corner-stone in African art” (1992:132) was born out of a time and place that called for a unification of the arts of Africa and panafrican political and social movements. While similar views were useful in simplifying an “African aesthetic” for a world stage, the statement is at best a broad statement that was ultimately conceived for motives other than artistic analysis. It is only in the western recontextualisation of African culture, where everything different from a Eurocentric model is considered art—possibly for lack of other categorical understandings—that body marking becomes a “cornerstone of African art.” In fact, body marking or modification is present in nearly all societies in various forms. There are anthropological examples of body marking from the Amazon to the Arctic, and spanning all epochs of human existence from at least the Palaeolithic period. (Schildkrout 2004; Turner 1995:148). So ubiquitous is body marking throughout time and across the globe that it may be more accurate to say not that body marking is a cornerstone of African culture, but that an aversion to body marking is a cornerstone of European culture (and only then in the passed several hundred years). In Marks of Civilization (1988), Arnold Rubin compares body marking processes throughout the world. He begins with Lévi-Strauss's idea that a marked