African art in detail
By: Christopher Spring.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 144
ISBN-13: 9780674036222
Subjects: Art, African -- Themes, motives
Description: From the Publisher: 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 Christopher 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.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: 1. What is African art?; title: 2. Contemporary art of Africa; title: 3. Reveal and conceal : the art of masquerade; title: 4. Cloth and culture : African textiles, African people; title: 5. Royal art and kingship in western Africa; title: 6. Iron and wood, men and women : African sculpture and the art of living; title: 7. Power of the hand : tools and weapons from Olduvai to the Tree of Life; title: 8. Smashing pots and an ostrich egg : ceramic classics of Africa; title: 9. The global phenomenon of Africa; title: 10. Further information.