African Art Club

natural fashion book cover

Hans Silvester’s NATURAL FASHION: TRIBAL DECORATION FROM AFRICA is a powerful presentation of East African tribal decoration routines and body painting.

The Omo tribes use nature as accessories, whether it be leaves, flowers or butterfly wings: their fashion choices and way of life is documented with full-page color photos and accompanying historical insights.

In this stunning collection of photographs, Silvester (Ethiopia: Peoples of the Omo Valley) celebrates the unique art of the Surma and Mursi tribes of the Omo Valley, on the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. These nomadic people have no architecture or crafts with which to express their innate artistic sense. Instead, they use their bodies as canvases, painting their skin with pigments made from powdered volcanic rock and adorning themselves with materials obtained from the world around them—such as flowers, leaves, grasses, shells and animal horns. The adolescents of the tribes are especially adept at this art, and Silvester’s superb photographs show many youths who, imbued with an exquisite sense of color and form, have painted their beautiful bodies with colorful dots, stripes and circles, and encased themselves in elaborate arrangements of vegetation and found objects. This art is endlessly inventive, magical and, above all, fun. In his brief text, Sylvester worries that as civilization encroaches on this largely unexplored region, these people will lose their delightful tradition. 160 color photographs. (Apr.)

natural fashion

The poignant beauty of this primitive (but VERY detailed and artistic)body painting is a way of life, and the variety of plants and flowers these people incorporate into their elaborate body art is exquisite.

read more about this book :

http://africanartclub.com/NaturalFashion

More images and informations of this book in the members section:

Lucien van de Velde collection in Antwerp-Belgium. He is giving a private exhibition for his friends.

A pair of Moba's from Lucien van de Velde catalogue-Abstraction

Ask for his new catalogue: “Abstraction in African Art, less is more” or download the pdf in the members section below. If in Antwerp come also visit David Norden

Lucien Van de Velde & Joanna Teunen
Antwerpen, 27 & 28 February 2010

See the following objects in the pdf catalogue:

AKAN marionette, Ivory Coast, h. 73 cm
ASHANTI dolls, Ghana, h. 34 & 35.5 cm
BAMANA tjiwara antilope, Mali, h. 76 cm
BAMANA kono mask, Mali, h. 77 cm (ex coll. Nieuwland)
BEMBE helmet janus mask, D. R. Congo, h. 53 cm (ex coll. Lawson Mooney)
DOGON hermaphrodite figure, Mali, h. 57 cm (ex coll. Goldet)
FANG head with reliquary, Gabon, h. 47 cm (publ. Barbier-Müller)
GURO pulley, Ivory Coast, h. 25 cm (publ. Schädler 2001)
KIKUYU shield, Kenya, h. 67 cm (ex coll. Nieuwland)
LEGA janus head, D. R. Congo, h. 19 cm (ex coll. Hallet)
LEGA ivory mask, D.R. Congo, h. 17 cm
LOBI stool with 4 heads, Burkina Faso, l. 64 cm
MARKA mask, Mali, h. 46 cm
MOBA figure, Apt. A, res, Togo, h. 107  & 97 cm
NGBAKA mask, D. R. Congo, h. 28 cm
PINDI ceremonial axe, D. R. Congo, h. 31 cm
SALAMPASU mask, D. R. Congo, h. 29.5 cm (ex coll. Kegel-Konietzko)
SENUFO mask, Ivory Coast, h. 46 cm (publ. Vanuxem 2007)
SENUFO kafigueledio figure, Ivory Coast, h. 75 cm
SHI ritual object, D. R. Congo, l. 48 cm
SHI mask, D. R. Congo, h. 30.5 cm
SONGYE kifwebe mask, D. R. Congo, h. 43 cm
TOMA mask, Guinea, h. 60 cm
ZARAMO doll, Tanzania, h. 14 cm (ex coll. Felix)

Contact information and pdf catalogue link below:

The Tribal Eye Part 1 of 7-Behind The Mask

See below this page the complete 7 parts series streaming, or buy them on DVD.

The Tribal Eye: The Complete BBC Series [1975] [DVD]

The movie below was done in 1976 and David Attenborough will give you more explanation about the Dogon beliefs and story in The tribal eye (~ book link) by David Attenborough, and the influence on modern art.

Interesting is the fact that most shooting of this movie was done in Africa and you can see some of the rituals, but also many of the pieces from the British Museum illustrate this. Some of the facts are a bit dated, but it still is a nice and instructive watch if you want to understand the meaning of the use of masks and statues.

Streaming video of the entire Tribal Eye series are available online. Everyof this 7 part  series is around 50 minutes long .
Though the Tribal Eye series is again available on PAL DVD and playable on multi-format players,
it’s not available as easily for those of us who want to use our computers with DVD players set
to the region including only the US. So you can see them streaming if you are a member of this site, or buy the one time fee to access the complete content of this posting.

If you want to buy the DVD’s to see it conveniently from your home the only place where it can be bought is on Amazon UK where you can read more, the price will be surprisingly low :

The Tribal Eye: The Complete BBC Series [1975] [DVD]

~ David Attenborough

But members of my club  can see the 7 parts of 50 minutes eacht online  movie below

The Tribal Eye Part 1of 7-Behind The Mask

This series features David Attenborough s original 1975 Tribal Art: The Complete Series and includes all seven programmes commissioned for the BBC ...