Art Curator Urges Africans To Document Indigenous African Arts

The founder, Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection (FAAAC), Olufemi Akinsanya in Lagos, called for more participation of Africans in collection, documentation and sale of indigenous African arts.

Akinsanya, said there was need for Africans to tell their own stories.

He was involved in the following 278-page book , a critical analysis of African art collection practices in Lagos, Nigeria and featuring museum quality traditional art pieces with stunning photography by a Nigerian photographer, Kelechi Amadi-Obi.

Making History Ogbechie Sylvester..

“It is my conviction that ...

White gold, black hands: ivory sculpture in Congo

Ivory sculpture in Congo, part 1.

This is THE BOOK if you collect or like African Art Ivory’s. Limited editionof 999. Hard cover, A4 format, 280 pages, +/- 1000 color illustrations. Many articles from ivory experts in English, French, and Dutch. I will be on sale in Brussels during the Bruneaf at Galerie Congo, 2 Impasse Saint-Jacques, during the Lega exhibition. Price around 250€.

Never has a book dealt specifically with the ritual use of antique ivory sculptures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – until now.

Click the image to enlarge the cover of  White gold, black hands: ivory sculpture in Congo

Ivory is a touchy subject. People seem reluctant to publicize this appealing medium, fearing that its glorification might lead to the  killing of elephants.

The authors are aware of today’s poaching and illegal trade in African elephant tusks and address the problem directly.

The book opens with an essay by “Renaissance man” Charles Meur, who explains what ivory is and identifies the different animals that produce it. His superb drawings and incisive texts show where elephants were previously living and who their ancestors were.

Congo basin «Ritual Art» specialist Marc Leo Felix details the production and use of traditional ivory sculpture in the Kongo Kingdom between the 16th and 20th centuries.

Musicologist Dr. Ignace De Keyser of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Tervuren, Belgium, writes about an astonishing northern Kongo ivory trumpet inspired by an ancient European model.

Dr. Nichole N. Bridges of the Baltimore Museum of Art (USA) describes the 19th century production, along the Loango Coast, of exquisitely sculpted ivory tusks for a newly arrived European clientele.

Some thousand stunning color photographs, drawings, graphs and maps illustrate the four authors’ essays.

I can send you the book for 290€ all costs included:

Enter shipping address & phone

Some information about one of the ivory’s illustrated in the book that will be sold at auction in Paris in June : ...

This summer 2010, the musée du quai Branly will showcase 170 major works and eighty documents as part of an important exhibition devoted to the artistic traditions of Central Africa, namely Gabon, the People’s Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a catalogue of François Neyt

Fleuve Congo

François Neyt, Sté…

(author of Songye )

A real trip of initiation that will take the visitor from the forests in the north to the savannahs in the south, the exhibition brings out the links existing between the works produced in the areas lying on the banks of the majestic Congo River by various communities which speak the Bantu language…

African Arts Magazine - English version [Magazine Subscription]

African Arts Magazine  4 issues a year. is devoted to the study and discussion of traditional, contemporary, and popular African arts and expressive cultures

Tribal Art – 4 issues / 12 months

All lovers of African Tribal Arts read this magazine, March 17, 2010

By David Norden (Antwerp, Belgium) +32 3 227.35.40 - See all my reviews

Published 4 times a year, this magazine provides in depth coverage on the African Tribal Art market.
It is not only about African Art but also contains articles from unknown or lesser known tribes from India, American Indian, and other lesser know cultures. I read every article and often find very interesting readings.

There are always full page ads from Tribal Art dealers with plenty of beautiful images. In the March 2010 edition I found the article on old Dan and related tribes collectors and anthropologists a very good read since this is one of my favorites tribes, and also enjoyed the interview Alex Arthur did with Marnix Neerman about his new book “African faces: A homage to the african mask“, it also contained a good article about lesser known Tribal Arts from Central India and much more …
Since it is a magazine the information on actual events like auction and fairs is not always up to date , or when you buy the magazine the announced events in the ads are just passed, but I couldn’t live without this magazine, and I advise strongly every serious collector to subscribe for the in depth knowledge it provides and the beautiful images.

Please be aware that  Tribal Art Magazine is not available anymore through Amazon which is a pity, control freaks I guess at work but African Arts is also a good magazine you should subscribe to:

http://www.tribalartmagazine.us

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:

...

Man Ray African Art and the Modernist Lens

Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens ~ Wendy A. Grossman

Washington October 10, 2009-January 10, 2010

Man Ray, Simone Kahn (with Vanuatu male figure, eastern Malekula), c.1927. © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

Man Ray translated the 20th-century modernist taste for African art into photographs that reached a popular audience. About 60 of his photographs, many never before exhibited, along with more than 40 photographs by his contemporaries, including Cecil Beaton, Walker Evans, and Alfred Stieglitz, will appear side-by-side with 20 of the African objects featured in the images. The exhibition explores the pivotal role of these photographs in shaping the perception of non-Western objects as fine art. Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens is organized by International Arts and Artists.

This is  quite good book about an exhibition that just finished, if you like small ethnoraphic objects like african combs, I recommend reading this book. You can read it online at  books.google.com, or if you like me, enjoy hardcover books, you can buy the book on Amazon:  african art world bank

Read also:

World Bank African Art Collection

This first catalogue featuring pieces from the World Bank’s permanent art collection focuses on African traditional artwork–textiles, sculptures, pottery, and paintings as well as functional objects–from the Maghreb to Mali and from the former Zaire to Zambia. Three essays accompanying the photographs provide threads on how to interpret historical, social, and religious meaning in these works of art.