NOK STYLE

Not all the Nok pieces can be put in one category. There were certainly a few sub-styles. Three heads from Nok, Jemaa and Wamba may be regarded as representing the classical examples of this complex. They are the most naturalistic, their proportions being near human as opposed to the more romantic forms found further south. There appears to be a south-east sub-style represented by the Katsina Ala head (plate 15) and a south-west sub-style represented by the Koro-Shere heads from around Abuja.
Almost all the heads, whether of the classical or a sub-style complex, incorporate the common characteristic of the formation of the eyes (always triangular or semi-circular, with a hole for the pupil). Often too, the nostrils, mouth and ears in the bigger heads are pierced, possibly as a technical device for the escape of air when the objects were fired.
Nok provides the earliest evidence of the creation of naturalistic work in Africa. Absolute naturalism was not quite achieved in the sculptures. But this is not to say that the artists could not have achieved it had they wanted to; perhaps they did not even wish to. On the other hand, they have executed romantic works, like the cylindrical heads from Katsina Ala the spherical and the conical heads to which William Fagg has already drawn attention.
The French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), a great exponent of Romanticism, who derived his forms from nature, is quoted as having said "You must see in nature the cylinder, the sphere and the cone". The Nok artists saw these elements two thousand years before!

Nok Culture