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Books : Arts & Photography : History & Criticism : Regional : African
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In her expressionistic drawings and paintings of the last three decades, acclaimed South African artist Marlene Dumas has focused on the human figure, probing themes of love, desire, despair and confusion in order to slyly critique social and political attitudes toward women, children, people of color and others who have historically been victimized. From her evocative portraits, based on photographs of friends and family as well as figures culled from printed pornography, to her large-scale images highlighting charged relationships within groups, Dumas' work explores the contradictions behind the physical reality of the body, merging acute social commentary with personal experience and art-historical antecedent to create unsettling and ambiguous psychological statements.
Accompanying Dumas' first major mid-career survey in the U.S., with stops in three major American cities, (one yet to be announced) this substantial, fully-illustrated publication features a newly commissioned essay by renowned scholar Richard Shiff, placing the artist's work in relation to both American figurative painting since the 1980s and Abstract Expressionism. The book also includes curator Cornelia H. Butler's examination of Dumas' photographic sources and shorter texts by Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Matthew Monahan. Writings by the artist, as well as an extensive illustrated exhibition history and bibliography, complete this comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking artists working today.
Born in Capetown, South Africa, in 1953, Marlene Dumas has lived in Amsterdam since 1976. Over the last three decades she has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Tate Gallery, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1995 she represented The Netherlands at the 46th Venice Biennale.
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The art of the Fang, the BaTeke, the BaKota, and other African peoples is extraordinarily vigorous and shows a brilliant sense of form. The substantial aesthetic impact that their works have had on the development of twentieth-century Western art—on Picasso, Derain, Braque, and Modigliani, among others—continues to this day. This classic study reveals the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of a continent that contains more distinct peoples and cultures than any other. The revised edition has been updated throughout, incorporating recent research and additional illustrations, plus a new chapter and extended bibliography. It remains an invaluable resource for students and for anyone interested in African art. 291 illustrations, 88 in color.
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A History of Art in Africa, Second Edition, is the only comprehensive art historical survey of the African continent to incorporate discussions of contemporary art and artists. It is both a reliable resource for art historians and an accessible introduction to the vibrant arts of Africa.
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Now available in a flexi edition, this beautiful volume presents nearly 250 of the finest African masks from the incomparable Barbier-Mueller collection, which is unique in its vast number of masterpieces and wide geographic scope.
The book includes one hundred color plates accompanied by in-depth descriptions, as well as numerous black-and-white photographs of the masks as they are used in religious and secular ceremonies. An introductory text by renowned scholars describes how the masks are constructed, examines their significance in African culture, and offers insight into the universal practice of masquerading. A unique contribution to the literature on African art, this book is also a wonderful introduction to countless fascinating, age-old spiritual traditions still practiced today.
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The marvelous achievements of black African artists are revealed and superbly portrayed in this book. The earliest pieces date from the beginning of the first millennium, the most recent from the early twentieth century before the commercial production of art for the tourist trade. All were made by Africans for their own use. It was European imperial expansionism in the nineteenth century that provided the background for public display of tribal objects in Berlin's Museum fr Vlkerkunde or Paris's Muse d'Ethnographie. The impetus provided by Braque and Picasso, Derain and Vlaminck focused new attention on the artistic value of the African achievement. In 1911 Paul Guillaume opened the first gallery in Paris concentrating on black African art; between the wars exhibitions in New York, Paris, and Antwerp helped to make African art fashionable. The end of colonialism, the search for roots, and ever-increasing research has continued to fuel the interest in an art whose full riches are now revealed. The brilliant young French expert, Jean-Baptiste Bacquart, has divided Africa south of the Sahara into forty-nine cultural areas. Each section studies the most important tribe within the area, surveying its social and political structures as well as its artistic production. The art is analyzed according to type--in most instances masks, statues, and everyday objects such as utensils, furniture, and jewelry. Where appropriate, further information on artistically related tribes is provided. Each section contains its own bibliography and--above all--both lavishly presented color photographs of all the major object types and documentary black-and-white illustrations. A detailed reference section, containing information on key collectors, collections open to the public, and a glossary, completes an invaluable publication that is unique in any language in presenting the entire range of black African art in accessible form.
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The art of ancient Egypt has excited imaginations for centuries. But without knowledge of hieroglyphic images, Egypt's rich artistic legacy, from colossal statues to finely wrought jewelry and miniscule charms, remains obscure. Here, for the first time, is an introduction to the symbolic language of hieroglyphics. 358 illustrations.
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This book reveals how five distinct African civilizations have shaped the specific cultures of their New World descendants.
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Blier draws on a vast range of individual objects--crowns, masks, thrones and regalia, palace architecture, painting, textiles, body decoration, and jewelry--as well as archival photographs of art works in use in ceremonies and performances, to reveal the court-art traditions of Africa in all their living splendor. 206 illustrations, 140 in color. 8 plans. 6 maps. Bibliography, Glossary, and timeline.
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This magnificent celebration of the world’s oldest and most diverse artistic traditions is considered the definitive book on African art.Ranging from the oldest known human artifact, circa 1.6 million BC, to pieces made within living memory, the objects collected in this extraordinary volume reflect a continent of enormous cultural and historical scope. Arranged chronologically within seven geographical sections, it offers an astonishing array of sculptures in wood, bronze, stone, and gold, as well as mural paintings, ceremonial pieces, ceramics, jewelry, and textiles culled from private and public collections around the world. Commentary by renowned scholars illuminates the cultural and historical significance of these pieces, and in-depth authoritative texts highlight critical aspects of each region. Together these words and images take readers on an artistic grand tour through a continent of unparalleled diversity, and towards the thrilling discovery of not one Africa, but many.
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This book traces the visual cultures and histories of Mami Wata and other African water divinities. Mami Wata, often portrayed with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish, is at once beautiful, jealous, generous, seductive, and potentially deadly. A water spirit widely known across Africa and the African diaspora, her origins are said to lie "overseas," although she has been thoroughly incorporated into local beliefs and practices. She can bring good fortune in the form of money, and her power increased between the 15th and 20th centuries, the era of growing international trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her name, which may be translated as "Mother Water" or "Mistress Water," is pidgin English, a language developed to lubricate trade. Africans forcibly carried across the Atlantic as part of that "trade" brought with them their beliefs and practices honoring Mami Wata and other ancestral deities.
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The Baule descend from the Akan peoples who inhabit Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Three hundred years ago the Baule people migrated westward from Ghana when the Asante rose to power. The Baule now reside at the center of the Ivory Coast and possess one of the most diversified of arts cultures. They employ different media, including wooden sculpture, gold and brass casting similar to their Asante ancestors, and mask and figure carvings. Their art is so varied that one might imagine some works originate from different cultures: what is there in common between a flat mask-disc and an idealized face mask which nevertheless come from a single ceremony? Or between a glazed statuette of a man or woman, and a monkey figure with the head of a dog, coated in coagulated blood? Their art encompasses every form of creation: not only masks and statuettes, but also sculpted doors, decorated divination boxes, gold jewels. The book presents a selection of Baule masterpieces from public and private collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of African art (Smithsonian), Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, Fowler Museum of UCLA, University of Pennsylvania Museum.
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"Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body," states Kenyan-born, New York-based artist Wangechi Mutu, the subject of this highly anticipated first monograph. In recent years Mutu's work has become increasingly sought-after in the international art world, making high-profile appearances at the important art fairs and auctions. What makes her interesting, however, is her fierce and contemporary use of the well-worn medium of collage. Mutu deals with female and cultural identity in large-scale figurative pieces constructed from found and drawn imagery. Her figures are freakish and erotic hybrids of the primitive, contemporary and post-human. These sometimes garish, diseased, ravaged and distorted figures are made from seductive or silly materials like glossy fashion magazine pictures, glitter or fun fur. They refer to colonial history, contemporary African politics, the history of art and fashion--in often quite irreverent ways. Mutu's own diverse history--she has studied both anthropology and sculpture, and has lived in Nairobi, Wales, New York and New Haven, where she received her MFA from Yale University in 2001--seems a likely source for her manifold concerns. This volume surveys Mutu's work to date.
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The Traditional Art volume presents a panorama of 6,000 years in the history of African art by highlighting archetypal and iconic works from various regions and important historic periods-400 objects beautifully reproduced in full color. This immense artistic and historic fresco highlights the beauty and force of these works from regions now comprising Nigeria, Benin, the Congo, Gabon, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Mali, and Sudan. The book also examines the influence of African art on 20th-century Western masters such as Picasso, Modigliani, and Brancusi.
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Migration, whether freely chosen or forcibly imposed, has been a defining feature of twentieth-century modernity—and much of twentieth-century art. Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers examines life-changing journeys that transplanted artists and intellectuals from one cultural context to another, making clear the critical and creative role that migration, exile, and displacement have played in shaping the story of modern art. Whether manifested in the striking architectural innovations of Nigerian modernism in the 1920s or postmodern works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and black British filmmakers in the 1980s, the multidirectional appropriation and borrowing described in these essays give us new perspectives on twentieth-century art and modernity.
Distinguishing between exile and diaspora, emigration and immigration, and "the stranger" and "the other," the book examines the different conditions that structure the artist’s experience and aesthetic strategies. From indigenous artists and the question of authorship to the influence of émigré art historians on art history, from the aesthetics of the African diaspora to Adrian Piper's metaphorical exile between philosophy and art, these connections and disconnections in a network of traveling cultures continue art history’s efforts to come to terms with the postcolonial turn.
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Africa's artistic landscape is immensely fertile. It has emerged from its colonial past, and is once again asserting its own identity. It is not only confined to the continent itself, but has spread throughout the world through the work of both those descended from the enforced migrations of the slave trade and also those who have more recently left their homes in Africa to take their place on an international stage.This book brings together 70 of Africa's most creative contemporary artists. Drawn from across the African continent as well as from Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and South America, the book illustrates the diversity and vitality of these artists, bringing it leaping off the page with over 350 colour images (many especially commissioned). In addition to painters, sculptors and photographers, there are a number of artists whose work embraces performance and installation. Many of the materials they use are as unorthodox as their imagery, with ready made and found objects.
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From the awesome grandeur of the Great Pyramids to the delicacy of a face etched on an amulet, the spellbinding power of ancient Egyptian art persists to this day. Spanning three thousand years, this beautifully illustrated history offers a thorough and delightfully readable introduction to the artwork even as it provides insight into questions that have long engaged experts and amateurs alike. In its scope, its detail, and its eloquent reproduction of over 250 objects, Gay Robins’s classic book is without parallel as a guide to the art of ancient Egypt. And her eagerly awaited new edition includes many new color photographs and a fully revised and updated bibliography.
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In 1990 Jacques Chirac, the future president of France and a passionate fan of non-European art, met Jacques Kerchache, a maverick art collector with the lifelong ambition of displaying African sculpture in the holy temple of French culture, the Louvre. Together they began laying plans, and ten years later African fetishes were on view under the same roof as the Mona Lisa. Then, in 2006, amidst a maelstrom of controversy and hype, Chirac presided over the opening of a new museum dedicated to primitive art in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower: the Musée du Quai Branly.(20070702)
Paris Primitive recounts the massive reconfiguration of Paris’s museum world that resulted from Chirac’s dream, set against a backdrop of personal and national politics, intellectual life, and the role of culture in French society. Along with exposing the machinations that led to the MQB’s creation, Sally Price addresses the thorny questions it raises about the legacy of colonialism, the balance between aesthetic judgments and ethnographic context, and the role of institutions of art and culture in an increasingly diverse France. Anyone with a stake in the myriad political, cultural, and anthropological issues raised by the MQB will find Price’s account fascinating.
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Did you know that the process of mummification took seventy days or that the ancient Egyptians practiced the earliest known form of dentistry? Ancient Egypt is an illustrated gift pop-up book featuring facts like this and more about the history of Egypt and showcases art and artifacts from the British Museum's massive Egyptian Antiquities collection. A wonderfully interactive, engaging, and informative text complements the creative pop-ups, showcasing various ancient Egyptian cultural innovations and making it fun for children and adults alike. Readers can learn about the elaborate embalming and mummification process that has fascinated archaeologists and the curious alike, explore the inside of an Egyptian pyramid replicated in pop-up, discover the mysterious ancient rites of an Egyptian god's temple, and translate code-like hieroglyphic symbols. Colorful, informative, and fun, Ancient Egypt is a wonderfully fascinating book for people of all ages who are interested in ancient Egypt.
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Images of outstanding African masks from the world’s leading museums and private collections reveal the splendor and majesty of these fascinating masterpieces.The masks seen in these pages represent diversity and an aesthetic power that rivals the most renowned works of art from around the world. Originating from more than thirty countries throughout Africa, the masks featured here are shown in stunning full-page reproductions and accompanied by field photographs. Each mask reflects a strong personal and artistic vision, and embodies ancestors and beings from the spirit world. The selected masks can be identified by magic expression, noble proportions, and delicate surface detail. Enlightening commentary offers background information about the function and origins of the masks’ use within the ethnic groups from which they originate. A beautifully produced full-color foldout map places each mask in its original site, which together with the stunning reproductions, field photographs, and text, creates a magnificent celebration of African artistry and culture.
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Samella Lewis has brought African American Art and Artists fully up to date in this revised and expanded edition. The book now looks at the works and lives of artists from the eighteenth century to the present, including new work in traditional media as well as in installation art, mixed media, and digital/computer art. Mary Jane Hewitt, an author, curator, and longtime friend of Samella Lewis's, has written an introduction to the new edition. Generously and handsomely illustrated, the book continues to reveal the rich legacy of work by African American artists, whose art is now included in the permanent collections of national and international museums as well as in major private collections.