African art has been part of the landscape of Western aesthetics for at least a century. Characterized by stylized figurative sculpture and masks, these works, which tend to be grouped together under the blanket appellation of "tribal art," were created in any of several hundred cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and most often served as objects of religious expression within the contexts of shamanism, animism, ancestor veneration and sympathetic magic. In their original cultures, they bridged the gap between the perceptible material world and that of the spirits and ancestors. They influenced the course of events and the well-being of living things, and they supported the divine right of kings. In a sense, they are not entirely unlike European statues and relics of Christian saints.
 
As these artworks began to be brought into Europe in increasing numbers in the 19th century by missionaries, explorers and colonialists, they took on very different roles. In their new contexts they became ethnographic artifacts that lent support to the concept of empire, and heathen idols that substantiated the spread of the Gospels. In the early 20th century, they entered yet another sphere that would certainly have mystified their makers. The pieces began to be seen as art.

This should not be taken to imply that there is no concept of art among traditional African sculptors. The truth is quite the opposite. Although the names of the vast majority of these artists have been lost in the transition of the works from Africa to the West, in their original contexts they were no more anonymous than any European artist. If it is incorrect to say that these sculptors created art, it is only because the actuality of their process is much deeper. A Yoruba master carver once observed to me of a sculpture that was made for ritual use, "It works because it looks like it is supposed to look." By this he meant that the object in question conformed to the canons, both religious and aesthetic, that allow the object to work in an appropriate manner. The function of the object is defined by the forces and deities it is meant to house; the division between the village, which is the realm of man and order, and the bush, which is the realm of spirits and chaos; the separation of the mundane and the spiritual; and the contrast between the safety of what is seen by day and the peril of what is not seen by night. The tension between these oppositions are just some of the forces that define the aesthetics of the best African sculpture, taking it far beyond the representational into the realm of the supernatural, where the confines of naturalism have little relevance. In creating such a figure or mask, the artist was creating a place for a powerful, otherworldly force that defines life or death for his people. His work is effectively an object of utility, but one made to the most exacting standards of belief, vision and aesthetics. If it doesn’t look like it is supposed to look, there will be a problem far more serious than lack of approbation in a Parisian salon.

While art historians and critics are reluctant to state that Modernist, Expressionist and Surrealist artists directly copied the African and Oceanic objects that they encountered in museums and private collections, few will deny that they were heavily influenced by them. Picasso, to name just one, had a substantial collection of African art. He famously quipped, "L’art nègre? Connais pas!" ("African art? Never heard of it!") but the impact of these works is clear in specific paintings, if not in the major portion of his approach. André Breton was also interested in African art, though more in Oceanic and American Indian material. His collection, which had been kept intact at his apartment at 42 rue Fontaine since his death in 1966, was finally sold at auction in Paris in 2003, with record-breaking results.

The period of the 1930s to the 1970s saw the formation of many major collections of African art in Europe (particularly France) and the United States. More often than not, these collections also contained early 20th-century painting and sculpture, and the African works were seen as adjuncts, much in the same way that artists in Europe perceived them. Amidst the wealth of modernist masterpieces in Peggy Guggenheim’s Venetian palazzo were some substantial works of African sculpture, although the examples that remain on display there are not exactly the cream of the crop. Other people formed fully dedicated collections, sometimes to the point of obsession. New York real estate developer William Brill was one such collector. Upon his death in 2003, the walls of his home were stacked several rows deep with African sculptures, the sale of a small but select portion of which also set new records.