Tinga Tinga

During a recent visit to Dar es Salaam, I stayed in a hotel in Msasani within easy range of the Tinga Tinga Co-operative's base close to the Morogoro shops. I took advantage of my proximity to pay a visit to the artists' studios, and happily browsed for about half an hour.

I love Tinga Tinga painting. I love its use of enamel paint, its bright colours and cartoon style. A vibrant riot of colour, celebrating the heat, humidity and exuberance of the tropical coast. Sadly, most of the art on offer was mediocre tourist fare: lurid depictions of the "big five" animals alongside the more traditional birds and marine life, but every now and again, one stumbles on something interesting, or beautiful, or, very occasionally, both.

Over the past twenty years, Tinga Tinga painting has evolved to include humorous, sometimes satirical, representations of daily life in Tanzania. Until recently, the painting pictured above adorned the wall of my office. I don't know how much artistic merit it has, but I think the joie de vivre of its cross section of the Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam firmly places it in the "interesting" category.

The absence of perspective in most Tinga Tinga paintings gives the style a naive and childlike quality. As I looked through the artwork on display. I was reminded of the 1960s film "The Rebel", probably the English comedian Tony Hancock's most memorable film, which satirises art snobbery everywhere. Hancock plays a middle-aged middle-class Englishman who abandons his surburban life to become an artist in Paris. Initially, his flatmate's (beautiful) paintings are mistaken for his own, and he becomes the toast of Paris. As the story develops, Hancock's own paintings (immortally described as "infantile" by George Sanders' superbly urbane art critic) are revealed first to acclaim but then, quickly, to ridicule.

I wonder how the cognoscenti react to Tinga Tinga.