African canvas
Subtitle: the art of West African women
By: photographs and text by Margaret Courtney-Clarke ; foreword by Maya Angelou.
Publisher: Rizzoli; Rizzoli International Publications, Incorporated
Published: 1990
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
Subjects: Art, West African -- Pictorial works; Art, Black -- Africa, West -- Pictorial works; Women artists -- Africa, West -- Pictorial works; Vernacular architecture -- Africa, West -- Pictorial works
Description: "Photojournalist Courtney-Clarke, whose book Ndebele captured the painted wall art of South Africa, brings the same inquiring spirit to this depiction of her three-year trek from Nigeria to Senegal. Surviving sandstorms, locusts and malaria, she documents the bold geometric and symbolic wall paintings made by women in remote West African villages. These women transform objects from their daily world--a fish net, a cooking pot, a weaving, a calabash--into rippling patterns laden with cosmic significance. Made with natural pigments from plants or clay, these pictures often perish in the rainy season. Creeping urbanization is also taking its toll on the villages, whose mud compounds, houses, clothing, body painting and pottery Courtney-Clarke documents as well. This strong, moving photoessay is equally valuable as an investigation of a dwindling way of life and as a permanent record of a seldom-seen vernacular art form."--Amazon.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 204).