SENEGAL: ARTIST JACOB YACOUBA GETS HIS INSPIRATION FROM THE BEAUTY OF SENEGALESE WOMEN
Record ID:
494593
SENEGAL: ARTIST JACOB YACOUBA GETS HIS INSPIRATION FROM THE BEAUTY OF SENEGALESE WOMEN
- Title: SENEGAL: ARTIST JACOB YACOUBA GETS HIS INSPIRATION FROM THE BEAUTY OF SENEGALESE WOMEN
- Date: 1st July 2001
- Summary: DAKAR AND ST. LOUIS, SENEGAL (RECENT) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SLV SENEGALESE ARTIST JACOB YACOUBA WALKING DOWN STREET 0.04 2. SMV YACOUBA GOING INTO HIS FLAT 0.13 3. VARIOUS OF YACOUBA PAINTING (7 SHOTS) 0.37 4. VARIOUS CLOSEUPS OF HIS PAINTINGS (3 SHOTS) 0.44 5. SCU (SOUNDBITE) (French) JACOB YACOUBA "I adore this sensual
- Embargoed: 16th July 2001 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: DAKAR AND ST. LOUIS, SENEGAL
- Country: Senegal
- Reuters ID: LVAC09628DD6BFT92BGMOW7Z69SB
- Story Text: Women have been an inspiration for many artists. For
one of Senegal's leading painters, his country's female
population are amongst the world's most beautiful women -
and he captures their grace and beauty on canvass. Jacob
Yacouba loves to paint women, and his drawings attract
customers from all over the world.
An African romantic - Jacob Yacouba [YAH-kohb
YACK-oh-BAH] is one of Senegal's leading artists. But to
those who know him well he is more than that. He's a portrait
painter but also a dreamer, a romantic.
Above all Yacouba is a lover of women.
It's Saturday morning and in an apartment in Dakar, the
capital of Senegal, Yacouba is hard at work on a portrait.
This painting has been commissioned for a buyer in Saudi
Arabia and he's on deadline.
Yacouba only stays here when he's in the capital on
business. His wife, the love of his life, is far away at
home in the historic town of St. Louis. Beautiful women fill
the walls of his room, and dreams of women fill his mind.
He says "I adore this sensuality, this sensuality, which
goes beyond beauty because useless beauty without sensuality
has absolutely no interest. At the moment when you can no
longer feel the eroticism it means you've got a problem.
Woman, for me, is African beauty. And you can't talk about
African beauty without talking about sensuality, which goes
beyond eroticism, because eroticism is a lack of beauty, or
an artifice to create a kind of physical interest."
Yacouba guards the privacy of his models fiercely. But while
their secrets are closely guarded their beauty unfurls on
Yacouba's canvas.
For Maithe Diouf [MAI-the DEY-op], a gallery owner and one
of his greatest admirers. Yacouba's talent is to bring
sensual beauty to life on the canvas.
He says "With no false modesty I would place him number one,
because in 1966 he won the prize of the Arnaire festival.
And then there's the fact that he's a pan-Africanist and he
doesn't just take an interest in Senegalese art but also
encourages other artists."
Yacouba is no fan of city life, so every opportunity he gets
he goes home to St. Louis to see his wife.
He says "For me Dakar is a jungle town. It's a factory.
That's why I don't like to live in Dakar. But today I find
myself on a grand avenue the avenue Ponty. When I was young
it was really important for a young Senegalese to come and
drink a coffee in a cafe on the avenue Ponty.
Today the town's a factory. And that's why I often go back
to St Louis, because it's magnificent."
Across Africa women from Senegal are renowned for their
beauty. Some of the continent's most beautiful models have
come from Senegal, often from the tall, elegant Fulani
[fuh-LAN-ee] tribe from the Sahel [SAH-hel]. Perhaps it's no
surprise that a Senegalese woman has just won the Face of
Africa competition. In Dakar women reflect on the myth
and the reality.
Karine Gbageidi says "Senegalese beauty is first of all
elegance and then size - they're from the Sahel so they
already have a physical advantage. And then it 's their
elegance and their black skin - provided that they don't
think of lightening it. So I think that yes, Senegalese
women are very, very beautiful women."
And it's these qualities that Yacouba celebrates.
He says "It's a marvellous song with lots of image. A woman
for me is the one who has raised the great men. I can never
stop singing the praises of this woman."
Before going home Yacouba takes a walk along the beach in
his beloved St. Louis.
It's a historic fishing town with links to Portugal and
France that stretch back hundreds of years. An island, it's
linked to the mainland and the sea by bridges.
Reunited with his wife and in the town that he loves
inspiration comes to Yacouba. His wife is a star in her own
right, an actress who heads the St Louis jazz festival. A St
Louisian herself, she shares her husband's passion.
She says "We have inherited this beauty. We have a mixed
race, what my husband often calls a colour like the setting
sun - a little like cafe au lait. So for example when
someone is looking for a wife you say 'go to St Louis, the
women are beautiful they have many virtues they are
between two civilizations, Western and completely African.'
However many different women Yacouba paints in his heart
there is only one.
Yacouba is also an accomplished guitarist. His songs take
him back to the to the early days of his love for Madeleine.
Today they have two children. Then they had only each other.
He says "I met her and it was like a thunder clap. I said to
her 'listen, I love you but I have nothing to offer you
except my love.' She loved me back. She believed in me and
gave me a helping hand. She resigned from her job and stayed
in St. Louis and thanks to God and to her also, I looked for
a job to look after our needs and to look for our place in
the sun."
The painting is finished. It depicts the St Louisian goddess
of the sea - appropriately enough, a beautiful woman. In
Dakar there's a deadline to meet. But for Jacob Yacouba,
artist, romantic and dreamer, there are things more
important in life.
ENDS
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