African Art
Idioma: Ingles
Autor: Ezio Bassani
Editorial: Skira
301 pƔginas
DescripciĆ³n
The boundless universe of African sculpture is the result of a complex and diversified evolutionary process, a variegated mosaic that emerged from a history rich in stylistic cross-fertilization due to contacts, migrations, wars and alliances.
The aims of this book are to present traditional African sculpture - more precisely works created explicitly not for the art market, but in response to the religious, political and also aesthetic needs of African societies of the past - at the highest posible level and provide a concise and straightforward exposition of the knowledge of the different historical, formal, symbolic and funcional characteristics that distinguish it.
Groups of artefacts - figures, masks and utensils - are shown and discussed to exemplify some of the key problems addressed and results obtained in the study of the arts ofSub-Saharan Africa today. The questions comprise dating and historicity, relations with the first European clients, and the atribution of works to their authors.
The selected and illustrated works are not only in wood and (less frequently) ivory. They include the increasingly numerous pieces of metal and terracotta sculpture brought to light by excavations that have intensified over the last few decades and are now altering our idea of the continent's artistic panorama, while revealing unsuspected cultures of the past alongside the classical and well-known ones of Ife and Benin.