Pygmy Ghosts in a Musical Mood

Artist

Prince Twins Seven Seven (Nigerian, 1944 – 2011)

Date

1971

Medium

Ink, paint on cloth

Dimensions

Work : 36 x 33 in. (91.44 x 83.82 cm)

Credit Line

Hope College Collection

Object Number

2019.50

Label

Twins Seven-Seven was heavily influenced by Amos Tutuola’s 1954 novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which is full of stories about ghosts, spirits and other fantastical creatures drawn from Yoruba oral traditions. This painting does not correspond to a specific episode in the novel, but the psychedelic imagery effectively captures the book’s spirit. Twins Seven-Seven’s rapid rise to fame in the mid to late 1960s brought him great wealth, but also placed him under great pressure to maintain a high volume of artistic production. By the early 1970s he was churning out paintings at a rapid rate, sometimes quite sloppily, as this painting illustrates.