Bamum

Bamum
Author: Christraud Geary
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874395736

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, artists working for the royal court of Bamum, in Cameroon, created elaborate bead-covered thrones and stools, wooden sculptures, masks in human and animal form, architectural carvings, and fine objects in bronze, ivory, and clay. This book focuses on the history, iconography, and meaning of these royal arts and looks at Western collectors who were fascinated by King Ibrahim Njoya (ruled 1886/7 to 1931) and the splendor of the royal court. Visual and written sources--including testimony by King Njoya and his courtiers, and extensive archival records--cast light on the strategies of a monarch who allowed visitors to acquire these arts to enhance the kingdom's reputation in distant Europe. The history of Bamum arts thus offers unique perspectives on African creativity and ingenuity, and European ways of collecting.

Art of the Cameroon Grasslands

Art of the Cameroon Grasslands
Author: Bettina von Lintig
Publisher: 5 Continents Editions
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Art of the Cameroon Grasslands unveils the artistic creativity of a region of West Africa through the Weis Collection. With texts by Peter Weis and Bettina von Lintig, and a contribution by Michael Oehrl, the book is a comprehensive overview of Grasslands Art. In contrast to many other African regions, the works of the artists of the ethnic groups that live in the Grasslands are characterized by enormous diversity, dynamism, movement, asymmetry, power, and even unbridled wildness. Other works radiate tranquillity, offering the viewer uncommon visual pleasure and delight. For centuries, kingdoms and rulers in this region competed with each other to create new works of art or perfect inherited styles. These works served cultural, profane, and representational purposes, and they reflected the social and ruling structures of the Grasslands--aspects that the book's essays and descriptions go into in detail. A broad spectrum of objects and their uses are reflected in the Weis Collection. It includes everyday objects, works of folk art, ritual, and cult objects such as magic or commemorative figures, masks, posts, palace doors, representational objects, musical instruments, tobacco pipes, and drinking horns. The introduction presents important aspects of the cultural and artistic development of each object's region of origin, also in the context of European colonization. All are illustrated with numerous field photographs. This is followed by an essay on beaded artworks from the Grasslands, a subject that has been little researched to date. As the Grasslands are embedded in a larger cultural area, objects in the collection from neighboring ethnic groups are also presented, in many cases shedding light on centuries-old connections and artistic exchanges.

Senufo Unbound

Senufo Unbound
Author: Susan E. Gagliardi
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874396665

New York's now-defunct Museum of Primitive Art opened its landmark exhibition Senufo: Sculpture from West Africa in February 1963. Under the directorship of art historian Robert Goldwater, the museum displayed together for the first time a stunning array of arts attributed to Senufo artists: face masks, helmet masks, and figurative sculptures, all from a region spanning the borders of present-day Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Mali. Now, more than 50 years later, this new book draws on archival, museum, and field-based data, including previously unpublished letters, photographs, and objects, to look back at that tour-de-force exhibition, and offers a fresh, expanded view of a dynamic region's arts and identities.

Luba

Luba
Author: Mary Nooter Roberts
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Surveys the history, culture, and contemporary life of the Luba people of Zaire.

Artists of Nigeria

Artists of Nigeria
Author: Onyema Offoedu-Okeke
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 720
Release: 2012-07-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874395477

Charts the development of modern Nigerian art, analyzing the achievements of leading artists while exploring arts movements within and surrounding the country throughout the past century, in a volume that includes coverage of the works of Olowere and Uche Okeke.

Making History

Making History
Author: Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874395712

Catalog of an African-owned collection of African artworks, including sculpture of Yoruba, Igbo, Urhobo, Cross River, Benin, and Benue River Valley origins.

Igbo

Igbo
Author: Herbert Cole
Publisher: 5Continents
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874396320

Igbo art is famous for its diversity, inventiveness, and aesthetic quality. This wide-ranging survey of art made by the 15 to 20 million Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria focuses on the 20th century but also takes a look at the extraordinary 9th- and 10th-century bce cast copper alloy and ceramic finds that influenced Igbo artworks created 20 centuries later. Ceremonial contexts and meanings are explained, covering art associated with individuals as well as communal works and ranging from personal decoration to architectural forms, from household objects to cult sculpture, title regalia, and public shrines. Many little-known objects are included alongside a generous sampling of the thousands of masks that are perhaps the quintessential forms of Igbo art.

African Sculptures and Forms

African Sculptures and Forms
Author: Francois Neyt
Publisher: 5 Continents Editions
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788874398317

"At the turn of the twentieth century, in particular Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, and later the Surrealists, then others right up till the present day, Western artists have drawn on the arts of Africa for inspiration. How can this constant impact ever be measured? The same is true for the arts in Africa. Every sculpture carries within it the heritage of a people, culture, and artistic tradition in the originality of its forms. West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa each has its own set of characteristics, within which the variety of the sculptures--always similar yet also always different--demonstrates the creativity of the ethnic group that created it. This book presents a remarkable collection amassed by a knowledgeable and impassioned art lover that combines sensitivity with quality--a quality of forms meticulously selected among different African cultures. It includes masks and reliquaries carved in Gabon, effigies and statuettes from Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, and astonishing objects from West Africa, from Mali to Cameroon, the Koro and Mossi peoples, the Ejagham and Ekoi in Nigeria, and the Gouro in the Ivory Coast. An extraordinary collection of artistic forms that well merits its place in the universal patrimony of art."--Publisher's website.

African Art in Motion

African Art in Motion
Author: Robert Farris Thompson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1979-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780520038448