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What Is African Art?

What Is African Art? PDF Author: Peter Probst
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679315X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
A history of the evolving field of African art. Peter Probst offers the first book to explore the invention and development of African art as an art historical category. He starts his exploration with a simple question: What do we actually talk about when we talk about African art? By confronting the historically shifting answers to this question, Probst identifies the notion of African art as a conceptual vessel whose changing content manifests wider societal transformations. The perspective is a pragmatic and relational one. Rather than providing an affirmative answer to what African art is and what local meanings it has, Probst shows how the works labeled as "African art" figure in the historical processes and social interactions that constitute the Africanist art world. What Is African Art? covers three key stages in the field's history. Starting with the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, Probst focuses on the role of museums, collectors, and photography in disseminating visual culture and considers how early anthropologists, artists, and art historians imbued objects with values that reflected ideas of the time. He then explores the remaking of the field at the dawn of African independence with the shift towards contemporary art and the rise of Black Atlantic studies in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, he examines the postcolonial reconfiguration of the field driven by questions of heritage, reparation, and representation. Probst looks to the future, arguing that, if the study of African art is to move in productive new directions, we must look to how the field is evolving within Africa.

What Is African Art?

What Is African Art? PDF Author: Peter Probst
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679315X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
A history of the evolving field of African art. Peter Probst offers the first book to explore the invention and development of African art as an art historical category. He starts his exploration with a simple question: What do we actually talk about when we talk about African art? By confronting the historically shifting answers to this question, Probst identifies the notion of African art as a conceptual vessel whose changing content manifests wider societal transformations. The perspective is a pragmatic and relational one. Rather than providing an affirmative answer to what African art is and what local meanings it has, Probst shows how the works labeled as "African art" figure in the historical processes and social interactions that constitute the Africanist art world. What Is African Art? covers three key stages in the field's history. Starting with the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, Probst focuses on the role of museums, collectors, and photography in disseminating visual culture and considers how early anthropologists, artists, and art historians imbued objects with values that reflected ideas of the time. He then explores the remaking of the field at the dawn of African independence with the shift towards contemporary art and the rise of Black Atlantic studies in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, he examines the postcolonial reconfiguration of the field driven by questions of heritage, reparation, and representation. Probst looks to the future, arguing that, if the study of African art is to move in productive new directions, we must look to how the field is evolving within Africa.

African Art in Detail

African Art in Detail PDF Author: Christopher Spring
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674036222
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
This book opens with the question, What is African art? The answer is a brilliantly colorful and detailed look at the myriad materials and genres, forms and meanings, cultural contexts and expressions that comprise artistic traditions across this vast and varied continent. Viewing artworks in their contexts--ancient and modern, urban and rural, western and eastern, decorative and functional--the book is nothing less than a virtual tour of African culture. Masks, textiles, royal art, sculpture, ceramics, tools and weapons--in each instance, the book features examples that reveal the most significant aspects of workmanship, materials, and design in objects of wood, stone, ivory, clay, metalwork, featherwork, leather, basketwork, and cloth. Photographs of each piece alongside close-ups of fine details afford new views of these works and allow for intriguing comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects and media. The featured details evoke the hand and eye of the most accomplished craftspeople across Africa, past and present. In sum, these photographs, along with Chris Spring's enlightening commentary, offer an experience of African art that is at once broad and deep, richly informed and intimately felt. They are, at the same time, a kaleidoscopic view of art from prehistory to gestures prefiguring the future.

Arts of Africa

Arts of Africa PDF Author: Grimaldi Forum (Monaco, Monaco)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : it
Pages : 414

Book Description
"This beautifully illustrated volume highlights all the rich diversity of African cultures through a meaningful selection of masterpieces of traditional African art."--Global Books in Print.

Art History in Africa

Art History in Africa PDF Author: J. Vansina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317869028
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
This is a pioneering introduction to a subject that is still at an early srage of academic development. It aims to provide the reader with a systematic method for the historical understanding of African art. Professor Vansina considers the medium, technique, style and meaning of art objects and examines the creative process through which they come into being. Numerous photographs and drawings illustrate his arguments, and help to explain the changes that have taken place.

Reading the Contemporary

Reading the Contemporary PDF Author: Olu Oguibe
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
In the past decade, contemporary African art has been featured in major exhibtions in museums, galleries, international biennials, and other forums. African cinema has established itself on the stage of world cinema, culminating in the Ouagadougou Film Festival. While African art and visual culture have become an integral part of the art history and cultural studies curricula in universities worldwide, critical readings and interpretations have remained difficult to obtain. This pioneering anthology collects twenty key essays in which major critical thinkers, scholars, and artists explore contemporary African visual culture, locating it within current cultural debates and within the context of the continent's history. The sections of the book are Theory and Cultural Transaction, History, Location and Practice, and Negotiated Identities. Copublished with the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London

African Art in American Collections

African Art in American Collections PDF Author: Warren M. Robbins
Publisher: Schiffer Pub Limited
ISBN: 9780764320057
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 607

Book Description
African art -- with its powerful forms, complex symbolism, and formal inventiveness -- has only recently come to be recognized as one of the great artistic traditions of mankind. This rich tradition is showcased here in a remarkable selection of outstanding works. Nearly 1,600 objects are illustrated, each accompanied by scholarly information on style, usage, meaning, and cultural origin. Featured individually by section are the styles of Western Sudan, the West African Coastal Region, West Central Africa, Central Africa, and Eastern and Southern Africa. A thought-provoking introduction helps readers understand the significance of African art as a form of human creative expression, its relationships to contemporary Western art, and the controversies surrounding it in the world's museums. Newcomers to the field as well as professionals will find many questions answered in the text and captions. FThis comprehensive survey of some 230 styles of African art is an essential reference for scholars, teachers, students, curators, collectors, and dealers.

African Art

African Art PDF Author: Brooklyn Museum
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN: 9783791343211
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Brooklyn Museum was one of the first North American institutions to collect and exhibit African material culture as art rather than artifact. Today the museum's collection numbers more than six thousand pieces and is noted for its artistic quality and educational value, as well as a breadth and depth that would be impossible to achieve today. Ancient as well as contemporary art is included in the collection's vast holdings, while the figurative sculpture and masks of Central Africa comprise its most significant focus. Nearly two hundred of those pieces are featured in this large-format compendium, which includes essays by the museum's curator of African art and a leading scholar on the subject. Taking readers through a cultural exploration of the continent, the collection encompasses regions from Western Sudan and the Southwestern Congo to the Equatorial Forest and Ethiopia. Carefully photographed and presented in luminous colour, these pieces create a stunning introduction to the rich traditions of African art and culture. AUTHORS: William Siegman served as the Brooklyn Museum's curator of African and Oceanic art from 1987 until his retirement in 2007. He is currently a consulting curator with the Saint Louis Art Museum. Joseph Adande lectures at the National University of Benin, Abomey-Calavi. He was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Kevin D. Dumouchelle is Interim Assistant Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands at the Brooklyn Museum. ILLUSTRATIONS 235 images

Environment and Object

Environment and Object PDF Author: Lisa Aronson
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN: 9783791352091
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This stunning catalog to an important exhibition presents the work of some of the most acclaimed contemporary African artists, examining their relationship with various aspects of the African environment. The definition of a new African artist is as broad and diverse as the continent itself; and the stories these artists tell are at once uplifting and devastating, as are their nations' histories. This book focuses on the impact of the environment on contemporary African life and the use of found objects and appropriated materials in current African art. Artists from the oil-rich Niger Delta create images of the region's ecological destruction, impoverishment, and despair. Works from the Congo and South Africa depict abandoned mines and convict labour. Also included are El Anatsui's constructs made from bottle caps and wire and Romuald Hazoumé's clever masks, pieced together from discarded cans and obsolete telephone parts. Together these artists have created a multidimensional portrait of a continent with rich cultures, multiple challenges, and a creative and resourceful population of inspiring artists. AUTHOR Lisa Aronson is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Skidmore College. John S. Weber is Dayton Director of the Tang Museum and Professor of Liberal Studies at Skidmore College. ILLUSTRATIONS: 85 colour

A Short History of African Art

A Short History of African Art PDF Author: Werner Gillon
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780140225082
Category : Art, African
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
"A comprehensive history of the visual arts of Africa - sculpture, painting and architecture; textiles, pottery and other household objects; jewellery, ceremonial and religious dress and body art."--BOOK COVER.

African Art in the Barnes Foundation

African Art in the Barnes Foundation PDF Author: Christa Clarke
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 0847845214
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
The first publication of the Barnes Foundation’s important and extensive African art collection. The Barnes Foundation is renowned for its astonishing collection of Postimpressionist and early Modern art assembled by Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia pharmaceutical entrepreneur. Less known is the pioneering collection of African sculpture that Barnes acquired between 1922 and 1924, mainly from Paul Guillaume, the Paris-based dealer. The Barnes Foundation was one of the first permanent installations in the United States to present objects from Africa as fine art. Indeed, the African collection is central to understanding Barnes’s socially progressive vision for his foundation.This comprehensive volume showcases all 123 objects, including reliquary figures, masks, and utensils, most of which originated in France’s African colonies—Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, and the Congo—as well as in Sierra Leone, Republic of Benin, and Nigeria. Christa Clarke considers the significance of the collection and Barnes’s role in the Harlem Renaissance and in fostering broader appreciation of African art in the twentieth century. In-depth catalog entries by noted scholars in the field complete the volume.