ICONOGRAPHY OF PAINTING IN MODERN NIGERIA ART

Iconography in Nigerian painting represents symbolic representations of images through the use of colour and form. Paintings in Nigeria depict iconic descriptions as those of the Western societies. Symbolic descriptions and identifications were adopted to convey various themes and subject matter in artistic expression. There is yet a study on the descriptive classification of iconography in modern Nigerian Art. To achieve this, Painting samples were drawn from those with thematic convergence and rendered in varied techniques, style, and media from different geographical and institutional background in Nigeria. The selection covers those produced between 2000 and 2010, a period of ten years. This period witnessed dynamic activities in the production of artworks in Nigeria. Each of the iconographic expression in Nigeria paintings was discussed to know the prevailing modern tendencies. Through field survey, a total of 350 paintings were randomly collected from various artists, while the sample size of 25% percent of the total was analyzed. Eighty-eight (88) of these paintings were used for qualitative and quantitative analysis and interpretation for this study. Iconographic expression of painting portrayed human activities which are reflected in Social (52.2%), Cultural (23.9%), Nature (11.4%), Religious (9.1%), and Political themes (3.4%). The paper concludes that human representations of different subject matter and the theme have become more prevalent in the practice in Nigeria.