Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal, Philosophers of Yoruba Art

Professor Olabiyi Babalola Yai in his role as Benin's Permanent Delegate to UNESCO Abstract A brief survey of the achievement of Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai in exploring multidisciplinary networks of African systems of thought and expression in the humanities. The overview is followed by selections from his work mapping central ideas he has developed and evoking the flavour of his style of expression. The essay is interspersed with images displaying various activities of Yai’s and the intersection of his professional and social worlds.  This is part of my project exploring the intrinsic and universal significance of Yoruba aesthetics, the study of beauty and of art as developed in Yoruba thought,  as represented by the work of Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal , an investigation that has led me to Olabiyi Yai, whose work is exemplary for studies in the interrelations of African and verbal arts and philosophies, and directly influential to such investigations in Yoruba

Image Above Ancestral Transmissions from Living Masters Collage of myself centre, framed by Hindu cosmographic symbols, central to my intercultural and multidisciplinary aesthetic explorations, flanked by Abiodun, left and Lawal right, against the background of contemporary African artist Obiora Udechukuwu's ''Our Journey,'' a work that, in adapting Igbo Uli symbolism of the spiral of life, dramatizes the transmutation of ancient systems in contemporary terms represented by Lawal and Abiodun's work on Yoruba aesthetics in the context of endogenous African thought, an orientation I am cultivating in studying the work of these masters. Abstract On studying the aesthetic explorations of Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal in the Yoruba context as points of entry into the intersection of the local and the uni

                                                             Image Above Collage by myself of pictures of Babatunde Lawal, left, and Rowland Abiodun, right, used in evoking the fierce activity, the absolute concentration and reflective distillation through which these masters of research and writing have shaped an empire of knowledge in excavating into written scholarship aesthetic insights emerging from Yoruba civilization. Lawal image by Onuora Chijioke on his Art Historical Association of Nigeria Biennial Conference 2018, University of Nigeria, Nsukka Facebook album.  Abiodun image from   Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth  on Facebook . Project Rationale One of the greatest achievements in African thought is represented by the explorations of Yoruba aesthetics individually undertaken by Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal. Abiodun's work is vital for understanding the social context and epistemic and institutional imperatives of Lawal's w