Download or read book What Is African Art written by Peter Probst and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Art History in Africa written by J. Vansina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book African Art in Detail written by Christopher Spring and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book A History of Art in Africa written by Monica Blackmun Visonà and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 2008 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Informed by the latest scholarship yet written for the general reader, this has been the first comprehensive study to present the arts of Africa in art historical terms. A History of Art in Africa covers all parts of the continent, including Egypt, from prehistory to the present day and includes the art of the African Diaspora. Many aspects of visual culture are given detailed consideration, including sculpture, architecture, and such quintessentially African forms as masquerades, festivals, and personal adornment. The arts of daily life, of royal ceremony, and of state cosmology receive compelling discussions. Throughout, the authors emphasize the cultural contexts in which art is produced and imbued with meanings." "Among the ancient works illustrated are masterpieces in brass, gold, ivory, stone and terracotta. Religious arts serving Islamic and Christian communities are presented, as are fascinating hybrid arts that periodically arose from African interactions with Europe, Asia and the Americas. Twentieth-century arts are explored as part of the vibrancy of modern Africa and as ingenious responses to historical change. 'Twenty-first-century African artists, and artists of the African Diaspora, are presented in the context of changing global economies and new theoretical positions." "This expanded and revised second edition provides a new chapter on African artists working abroad, and five new short essays on cross-cultural topics such as tourist arts, dating methods, and the illicit trade in archaeological artifacts. The illustrations - featuring a vast and rich array of images of artworks, archival and contemporary field photographs, explanatory drawings and plans, and individual objects displayed in museums and in use - have likewise been greatly extended, with many more pictures now shown in color."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book African Art Culture written by Jane Bingham and published by Capstone Classroom. This book was released on 2005-08-04 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the art of Africa including pottery, baskets, and wood carving and explains what we can learn about the culture of Africa while examining these art forms.

Download or read book African Art and the Colonial Encounter written by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-24 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the theme of warriorhood, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir weaves a complex history of how colonial influence forever changed artistic practice, objects, and their meaning. Looking at two widely diverse cultures, the Idoma in Nigeria and the Samburu in Kenya, Kasfir makes a bold statement about the links between colonialism, the Europeans' image of Africans, Africans' changing self representation, and the impact of global trade on cultural artifacts and the making of art. This intriguing history of the interaction between peoples, aesthetics, morals, artistic objects and practices, and the global trade in African art challenges current ideas about artistic production and representation.

Download or read book Reading the Contemporary written by Olu Oguibe and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book The Art of Africa written by Christa Clarke and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2006 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A CD-ROM and DVD set extracted from the 'The Art of Africa: A Resource for Educators.' The CD-ROM "contains a PDF of 'The Art of Africa: A Resource for Educators, ' which features forty traditional works of African art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes a brief overview of the Metropolitan's collection of African art; a short introduction and history of Africa; an explanation of the role of visual expression in the continent; descriptions of the featured works of art and background about the materials and techniques that were used to created them ... The DVD, 'Ci Wara Invocation, ' "presents the highlights of a dozen ci wara performances in Bamana communities in present-day Mali that were recorded by five different observers between 1970-2002. Among the Bamana, oral traditions credit a mythical being named Ci Wara, a divine being half mortal and half antelope, with the introduction of agriculture to the Bamana. The ci wara performances are part of biannual celebrations that either launch or conclude the farming season."--Container

Download or read book African Art written by Brooklyn Museum and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book African Art at the Harn Museum written by Robin Poynor and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Insightful and profound."--Arthur P. Bourgeois, Governors State University, University Park, Illinois "More than just another exhibition catalogue. . . . The conceptual framework and orientation of the essay are original. [Poynor suggests] the complexity of African religious beliefs and the diversity of roles art plays in their manifestation."--Barbara Frank, SUNY-Stony Brook With dramatic color and black-and-white photographs of ninety-three pieces of art, African Art at the Harn Museum introduces the notable collection of West African art from the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. In the traditional view of many Africans, the spiritual and temporal worlds depend upon each other for companionship and material well-being. As the inhabitants of either realm cross and recross their world boundaries, art objects function as intimate links between the two domains, allowing both spirit and human to see and to manipulate each other. This work specifically addresses the role of the art object--a bowl from Cameroon, a mask from Burkina Faso or Sierra Leone, an ancestral altar from Nigeria, a fertility figure from Ghana--as a medium through which each world gains entrance into the other. Poynor's essay presents each work in its geographic and cultural context. Line drawings and abundant field photographs enhance the text and support the idea that the objects assist communication between two worlds. Robin Poynor, associate professor of art at the University of Florida, is guest curator of the "Spirit Eyes, Human Hands" exhibition of the university's Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. He is the former curator of the Tweed Museum at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has written principally on the art of the Yoruba Kingdom of Owo, Nigeria, where he did field research, and he has curated a number of exhibitions of African art, writing essays, catalogues, and display texts for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and Indiana University Art Museum. He has published extensively in African Arts.

Download or read book Africa written by Ethnologisches Museum Berlin and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the leading collections of African art in the world, the African collection at Berlin's Ethnological Museum contains important masterpieces from many different regions of the continent. This stunning book includes more than two hundred color and black-and-white reproductions of masks, ceremonial figures, musical instruments, and objects of everyday life from throughout Africa. Among the jewels in the museum are the Ife Collection from Nigeria; rare Benin bronzes; Afro-Portuguese ivories; magical figures from the Lower Congo and a host of East African sculpture and masks that have gained increasing attention in recent years. Essays by leading ethnologists supply important cultural and historical information on each region, as well as fascinating insights into the ways European and African art have traded influences over the centuries.

Download or read book The Visual Arts of Africa written by Judith Perani and published by Pearson. This book was released on 1998 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Special features of this book: follows a geographical organization across the continent; each chapter is reader friendly with clear, accessible sub-headings; represents important religious and utilitarian art traditions from the Sahara desert, West Africa, Central Africa, Northeast Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa; gives special attention to the themes of gender, power, and life cycle rituals, which frequently intersect with one another to form an understanding of the arts of Africa; includes figurative sculpture, masquerades, architecture, textiles, dress, ceramics, wall painting, and leatherwork traditions; includes selected examples of the earliest known documented art works as well as contemporary art of each geographical region; includes an up-to-date bibliography, incorporating recent published field research for each chapter; and features 369 black and white illustrations, 16 colored plates, maps, and a time line.

Download or read book African Art written by Frank Willett and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Outliers and American Vanguard Art written by Lynne Cooke and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some 250 works explore three distinct periods in American history when mainstream and outlier artists intersected, ushering in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. The exhibition aligns work by such diverse artists as Charles Sheeler, Christina Ramberg, and Matt Mullican with both historic folk art and works by self-taught artists ranging from Horace Pippin to Janet Sobel and Joseph Yoakum. It also examines a recent influx of radically expressive work made on the margins that redefined the boundaries of the mainstream art world, while challenging the very categories of "outsider" and "self-taught." Historicizing the shifting identity and role of this distinctly American version of modernism's "other," the exhibition probes assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture. The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art.--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book African American Art written by Sharon F. Patton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses African American folk art, decorative art, photography, and fine arts.

Download or read book Yoruba written by Henry John Drewal and published by Abrams. This book was released on 1989 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin, over 15 million strong, are heirs to one of the oldest and greatest artistic traditions in West Africa. This text offers a look at Yoruba civilization. Over 200 photographs illustrate rarely seen objects from museums and private collections.

Download or read book Art and Oracle written by Alisa LaGamma and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2000 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-eight African cultures are represented here by artifacts created to communicate with ancestors, spirits, and gods, about such issues as health, conception, and determination of guilt or innocence. Issued in conjunction with an April-July 2000 exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, this catalog contains extensive ethnographic, descriptive, and interpretive text in connection with each of 50 pictured pieces, as well as a 13-page essay about divination in Sub-Saharan Africa (by John Pemberton III) and an introductory essay by LaGamma. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR