"Fierce anatomy"! Deep down, doesn't writing this refer to the myth of the savage, and not a very good myth it is; doesn't gossiping about the unerotic nudity of the Nouba wrestlers summon what is so-called original purity? In these scenes of African tribes' daily life, one could also see Ousmane Sow's intention to testify or even, like the African griot, a travelling poet and musician, to pass on the pieces of a tradition, of a culture, or, as the French would say, of a fragile heritage. But the artist said himself that his interest in the Nouba was fostered by the photographs of the highly controversial Leni Riefensthal, and that he has never met any Zulus or Masai. In fact, one would probably be quite wrong to consider Ousmane Sow's work as an ethnological survey; to do so would prompt one to wonder naively about the point of Little Big Horn, which does not stem from his culture and yet which he treats just as happily.

Sow's œuvre goes far beyond testimony and description; to my mind, he achieves a universal dimension. The issue is not whether he is part of the European or African artistic tradition; it is about delving into the means that produce such an extraordinary effect, and particularly the dreadful aesthetics of the violence constantly staged: the gentle violence of the scarring scenes, the ritualised violence of the wrestling scenes, the murderous violence of the battlefield. There is in the anatomies and postures of the fighters and horses of Little Big Horn, shaped quite literally like exposed flesh, something of Géricault, an epic sweep that captures the movement and the sentiment but transcends the violence without considering it sacred. By avoiding the representation of wounds and blood, Ousmane Sow produces an image of universal symbolism.