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Western attitudes to Africa have been influenced to an extraordinary degree by the arts and artefacts that were brought back by the early collectors, exhibited in museums, and celebrated by scholars and artists in the metropolitan centres. The contributors to this volume trace the life history of artefacts that were brought to Europe and America from Congo towards the end of the nineteenth century, and became the subjects of museum displays. They also present fascinating case studies of the pioneering collectors, including such major figures as Frobenius and Torday. They discuss the complex and sensitive issues involved in the business of 'collecting', and show how the collections and exhibitions influenced academic debates about the categories of art and artefact, and the notion of authenticity, and challenged conventional aesthetic values, as modern Western artists began to draw on African models.
A catalog of the recent exhibition (ended November 1990) presenting 61 examples of sculpture from Zaire and adjacent parts of Angola and the People's Republic of Congo. The introduction surveys the history of the area and gives a history of the Berlin Museum's ethnographic collections as well. Includes photos (color and bandw) and descriptions of the objects in the exhibition, shown in the US for the first time. Distributed by Abrams. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Revealing the powers immanent in works that the West long regarded only as exotic or abstract, Constantine Petridis looks beneath the surface of the arts of the Luba, Songye, Chokwe and Luluwa peoples to find, literally embedded in sculpture, the forces that enable the spirit world to intervene in daily life. Ritual use of these objects is expected to ensure a healthy birth, successful hunt, or triumph over an enemy. Analysis of the scholarly record illuminates the changing visions of leadership and prestige that fostered the development of the majestic, elaborate figure styles long prized in the West. These sculptures nevertheless retain the mysterious potency of more humble objects trusted for centuries to protect, heal and harm. Art and Power in the Central African Savanna examines an artistic culture in which the sacred and the secular are indivisible, and aesthetic and moral value inseparable.
"Many masterpieces of central African sculpture were created to amplify the power of sacred relics that affirm a family's vital connection to its ancestral heritage. This important volume, focusing on some 130 works representing a diverse variety of regional genres, illuminates the purpose and significance of these icons of African art, which first came to prominence because of their appeal to the Western avant-garde. While providing an overview of sources ranging from colonial explorers, missionaries, critics, artists, and art historians, the book breaks new ground in its examination of the complex aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of the reliquaries. Its interdisciplinary approach brings together the perspectives of scholars in African and medieval art history along with those in African history, religion, and ethnography." -- Publisher.
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
Catalogus van een tentoonstelling over de beeldende kunst van de traditionele Midden-Afrikaanse koninkrijken.
Living in the region between the Lubudi and Kasai rivers in south central Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Luluwa people are known for their elaborately carved male and female figure sculptures, masks, and decorative arts. Constantine Petridis draws on first-hand accounts of numerous explorers, missionaries, colonial servants, anthropologists, and art historians who visited the region between the 1880s and the 1970s, to comprehensively situate the Luluwa's ornate art in its original environment of production and use. Through a close study of published and unpublished sources as well as museum objects and archival photographs, this book sheds new light on the historical context of one of central Africa's most spectacular artistic legacies, whose creation presumably dates back to the second half of the 19th century. Distributed for Mercatorfonds