Download or read book Loot written by Barnaby Phillips and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Prospect Best Book of 2021 ‘A fascinating and timely book.’ William Boyd ‘Gripping…a must read.’ FT ‘Compelling…humane, reasonable, and ultimately optimistic.’ Evening Standard ‘[A] valuable guide to a complex narrative.’ The Times In 1897, Britain sent a punitive expedition to the Kingdom of Benin, in what is today Nigeria, in retaliation for the killing of seven British officials and traders. British soldiers and sailors captured Benin, exiled its king and annexed the territory. They also made off with some of Africa’s greatest works of art. The ‘Benin Bronzes’ are now amongst the most admired and valuable artworks in the world. But seeing them in the British Museum today is, in the words of one Benin City artist, like ‘visiting relatives behind bars’. In a time of huge controversy about the legacy of empire, racial justice and the future of museums, what does the future hold for the Bronzes?
Download or read book The Brutish Museums written by Dan Hicks and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objectsare all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass plaques and carved ivory tusks depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of BeninCity, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.
Download or read book The Lower Niger Bronzes written by Philip M. Peek and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that copper-alloy casting was widespread in southern Nigeria and has been practiced for at least a millennium. Philip M. Peek’s research provides a critical context for the better-known casting traditions of Igbo-Ukwu, Ife, and Benin. Both the necessary ores and casting skills were widely available, contrary to previous scholarly assumptions. The majority of the Lower Niger Bronzes, which we know number in the thousands, are of subjects not found elsewhere, such as leopard skull replicas, grotesque bell heads, ritual objects, and humanoid figures. Important puzzle pieces are now in place to permit a more complete reconstruction of southern Nigerian history. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, African studies, African history, and anthropology.
Download or read book Bronzes of West Africa written by Leon Underwood and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Bronzes from If and Benin written by Sachs, H.F., Inc and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Blood and Bronze written by Paddy Docherty and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Benin Bronzes are among the British Museum’s most prized possessions. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, once West Africa’s most powerful, and today part of Nigeria. But despite the Bronzes’ renown, little has been written about the brutal imperial violence with which they were plundered. Paddy Docherty’s searing new history tells that story: the 1897 British invasion of Benin. Armed with shocking details discovered in the archives, Blood and Bronze sets this assault in its late Victorian context. As British power faced new commercial and strategic pressures elsewhere, it ruthlessly expanded in West Africa. Revealing both the extent of African resistance and previously concealed British outrages, this is a definitive account of the destruction of Benin. Laying bare the Empire’s true motives and violent means, including the official coverup of grotesque sexual crimes, Docherty demolishes any moral argument for Britain retaining the Bronzes, making a passionate case for their immediate repatriation to Nigeria.
Download or read book The Lower Niger Bronzes written by Philip M. Peek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that copper-alloy casting was widespread in southern Nigeria and has been practiced for at least a millennium. Philip M. Peek’s research provides a critical context for the better-known casting traditions of Igbo-Ukwu, Ife, and Benin. Both the necessary ores and casting skills were widely available, contrary to previous scholarly assumptions. The majority of the Lower Niger Bronzes, which we know number in the thousands, are of subjects not found elsewhere, such as leopard skull replicas, grotesque bell heads, ritual objects, and humanoid figures. Important puzzle pieces are now in place to permit a more complete reconstruction of southern Nigerian history. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, African studies, African history, and anthropology.
Download or read book Bronze Pillars written by Rhonda Sanders and published by Gadfly Productions. This book was released on 1995 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Summoning the Ancestors written by Nancy Christine Neaher and published by Fowler Museum. This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This Fowler in Focus exhibition celebrates the promised gift of two large marvelous collections of bronze bells and ǫfǫs amassed by Mark Clayton. Originating in southern Nigeria, the bells and ǫfǫs were used in a variety of ritual contexts"--
Download or read book African Sculpture Speaks written by Ladislas Segy and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-05 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PABLO PICASSO: “...when the form is realized, it is there to live its own life.” HENRY MOORE: “The sculpture which moves me most is full-blooded and self-supporting, fully in the round; giving out something of an energy and power of great mountains, it has a life of its own independent of the object it represents.” African Art Speaks, the first full appraisal of African art published in the United States, describes and illustrates the sculpted works of more than 150 West African tribes. Ladislas Segy approaches African art from several different but interrelated perspectives, considering the sculptures first as products of a distinct African culture, then as high-quality works of art. Seeking to bring the African carver’s work within the scope of the Western observer, Segy stresses the need for appraising African art within in its own context, suspending established procedures for art appreciation and viewing the object as it actually is, not as we think it is or should be. Bringing to bear the disciplines of aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, and phenomenology, Segy shows how the deep-seated magico-religious beliefs of the tribal carver creates such powerful emotional tension in his work that the viewer can recapture this emotion and identify it as part of his own experience. This present edition is the Third Printing, originally published in 1961, and provides a systematic Style Guide, analyzing the characteristic features of the different styles of tribal sculpture. A special chapter for the collector tells how to buy and care for African art. Segy also discusses the styles of the main sculpture-producing tribes in East and South Africa. Included are maps, a bibliography and a list of illustrations. “While much has been written about African sculpture within recent years, Mr. Segy’s book is undoubtedly among the finest published in this country.”—The San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book The Benin Plaques written by Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 16th century bronze plaques from the kingdom of Benin are among the most recognized masterpieces of African art, and yet many details of their commission and installation in the palace in Benin City, Nigeria, are little understood. The Benin Plaques, A 16th Century Imperial Monument is a detailed analysis of a corpus of nearly 850 bronze plaques that were installed in the court of the Benin kingdom at the moment of its greatest political power and geographic reach. By examining European accounts, Benin oral histories, and the physical evidence of the extant plaques, Gunsch is the first to propose an installation pattern for the series.
Download or read book Blood and Bronze written by Paddy Docherty and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous Benin Bronzes are among the most prized possessions of the British Museum. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, once the most powerful in West Africa and now part of Nigeria. But despite their renown, little has been written about the brutal act of imperial violence through which the Bronzes were plundered. This incisive new history tells that neglected story: the 1897 British invasion of Benin. Diving into the archives, Blood and Bronze sets the assault on Benin in its late Victorian context. As Britain faced new commercial and strategic pressures on its power elsewhere, it ruthlessly expanded its rule in West Africa. Revealing both the extent of African resistance and previously concealed British outrages, this is a definitive account of the conquest and destruction of Benin. By laying bare the Empire's true motives and its violent means, Paddy Docherty demolishes any moral claim for Britain retaining the Bronzes, and makes a passionate case for their immediate repatriation to Nigeria.
Download or read book Hoo Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos written by Michael K. Johnson and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of the African American West through close readings of texts from a variety of media. This approach allows for both an in-depth analysis of individual texts and a discussion of material often left out or underrepresented in studies focused only on traditional literary material. The book engages heretofore unexamined writing by Rose Gordon, who wrote for local Montana newspapers rather than for a national audience; memoirs and letters of musicians, performers, and singers (such as W. C. Handy and Taylor Gordon), who lived in or wrote about touring the American West; the novels and films of Oscar Micheaux; black-cast westerns starring Herb Jeffries; largely unappreciated and unexamined episodes from the "golden age of western television" that feature African American actors; film and television westerns that use science fiction settings to imagine a "postracial" or "postsoul" frontier; Percival Everett's fiction addressing contemporary black western experience; and movies as recent as Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Despite recent interest in the history of the African American West, we know very little about how the African American past in the West has been depicted in a full range of imaginative forms. Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos advances our discovery of how the African American West has been experienced, imagined, portrayed, and performed.
Download or read book Bronze Head from Ife written by Editha Platte and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the British Museum's Objects in Focus series, this compact book offers a well illustrated guide to the crowned bronze head unearthed at Ife in Nigeria in 1938. It places the head in its historical and artistic context, and introduces the reader to the religious beliefs of the Yoruba and the possible meaning of the head. It also looks at the western and modern Nigerian response to the head and the naturalistic African art tradition it represents.
Download or read book Power and Pathos written by Jens M. Deahner and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2015-05-24 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the general public and specialists alike, the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) and its diverse artistic legacy remain underexplored and not well understood. Yet it was a time when artists throughout the Mediterranean developed new forms, dynamic compositions, and graphic realism to meet new expressive goals, particularly in the realm of portraiture. Rare survivors from antiquity, large bronze statues are today often displayed in isolation, decontextualized as masterpieces of ancient art. Power and Pathos gathers together significant examples of bronze sculpture in order to highlight their varying styles, techniques, contexts, functions, and histories. As the first comprehensive volume on large-scale Hellenistic bronze statuary, this book includes groundbreaking archaeological, art-historical, and scientific essays offering new approaches to understanding ancient production and correctly identifying these remarkable pieces. Designed to become the standard reference for decades to come, the book emphasizes the unique role of bronze both as a medium of prestige and artistic innovation and as a material exceptionally suited for reproduction. Power and Pathos is published on the occasion of an exhibition on view at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence from March 14 to June 21, 2015; at the J. Paul Getty Museum from July 20 through November 1, 2015; and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, from December 6, 2015, through March 20, 2016.
Download or read book Important Examples of Primitive African Sculptures Including Benin Bronzes written by O'Reilly's Plaza Art Galleries and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Art of Benin written by Nigel Barley and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Portuguese made the first European contact with the west African kingdom of Benin in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the kingdom was experiencing a golden age. Its authority on the Guinea Coast was expanding through military conquests, and during the sixteenth century it became a leading power in the region and a major trade partner for European merchants. Benin remained an influential independent state and a major political and economic power on the coast, though with periods of both decline and prosperity, until its conquest by the British in 1897. The arrival in Europe of the treasures from Benin produced an enormous sensation, causing a re-evaluation of and new appreciation for African art. This sumptuous photographic book showcases a series of specially taken photographs of key pieces in the British Museum's collection. It opens with an introduction to the kingdom, court and culture of Benin, which is followed by thematic sections including kingship, ceremony, women, Europeans, and animals. Throughout, stunning photographs of the works are featured alongside close-up details.
