African

History of Art in Africa, A (2nd Edition)

A History of Art in Africa, Second Edition, is the only comprehensive art historical survey of the African continent to incorporate discussions of contemporary art and artists. It is both a reliable resource for art historians and an accessible introduction to the vibrant arts of Africa.

Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy

This book reveals how five distinct African civilizations have shaped the specific cultures of their New World descendants.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave

In her expressionistic drawings and paintings of the last three decades, acclaimed South African artist Marlene Dumas has focused on the human figure, probing themes of love, desire, despair and confusion in order to slyly critique social and political attitudes toward women, children, people of color and others who have historically been victimized. From her evocative portraits, based on photographs of friends and family as well as figures culled from printed pornography, to her large-scale images highlighting charged relationships within groups, Dumas' work explores the contradictions behind the physical reality of the body, merging acute social commentary with personal experience and art-historical antecedent to create unsettling and ambiguous psychological statements.
Accompanying Dumas' first major mid-career survey in the U.S., with stops in three major American cities, (one yet to be announced) this substantial, fully illustrated publication features a newly commissioned essay by renowned scholar Richard Shiff, placing the artist's work in relation to both American figurative painting since the 1980s and Abstract Expressionism. The book also includes curator Cornelia H. Butler's examination of Dumas's photographic sources and shorter texts by Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Matthew Monahan. Writings by the artist, as well as an extensive illustrated exhibition history and bibliography, complete this comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking artists working today.
Born in Capetown, South Africa, in 1953, Marlene Dumas has lived in Amsterdam since 1976. Over the last three decades she has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Tate Gallery, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1995 she represented The Netherlands at the 46th Venice Biennale.

Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas

This book traces the visual cultures and histories of Mami Wata and other African water divinities. Mami Wata, often portrayed with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish, is at once beautiful, jealous, generous, seductive, and potentially deadly. A water spirit widely known across Africa and the African diaspora, her origins are said to lie "overseas," although she has been thoroughly incorporated into local beliefs and practices. She can bring good fortune in the form of money, and her power increased between the 15th and 20th centuries, the era of growing international trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her name, which may be translated as "Mother Water" or "Mistress Water," is pidgin English, a language developed to lubricate trade. Africans forcibly carried across the Atlantic as part of that "trade" brought with them their beliefs and practices honoring Mami Wata and other ancestral deities.

The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Form (Perspectives) (Trade Version) (Perspectives)

African Art (World of Art)

The art of the Fang, the BaTeke, the BaKota, and other African peoples is extraordinarily vigorous and shows a brilliant sense of form. The substantial aesthetic impact that their works have had on the development of twentieth-century Western art—on Picasso, Derain, Braque, and Modigliani, among others—continues to this day. This classic study reveals the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of a continent that contains more distinct peoples and cultures than any other. The revised edition has been updated throughout, incorporating recent research and additional illustrations, plus a new chapter and extended bibliography. It remains an invaluable resource for students and for anyone interested in African art. 291 illustrations, 88 in color.

Contemporary African Art (World of Art)

The twentieth century has been a period of major disruption for traditional institutions in Africa. But even as old forms of art patronage were being suppressed, new avenues of artistic expression opened up. Postcolonial art in Africa has built seamlessly upon already existing structures in which precolonial and colonial genres of African art were made. It is in this sense, and in the habits and attitudes of artists towards making art, rather than in any adherence to a particular style, medium, technique, or thematic range, that the art is recognizably "African." Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University, has taught, curated, and carried out extensive field research in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya, and has made briefer research trips to nine other African countries. Her critical history examines the major themes and accomplishments in African art from the past fifty years, achieving an impressive balance between the critical reexamination of frequently discussed artists, groups, and workshops and the introduction of less publicized or more recent material.

African American Art and Artists

Samella Lewis has brought African American Art and Artists fully up to date in this revised and expanded edition. The book now looks at the works and lives of artists from the eighteenth century to the present, including new work in traditional media as well as in installation art, mixed media, and digital/computer art. Mary Jane Hewitt, an author, curator, and longtime friend of Samella Lewis's, has written an introduction to the new edition. Generously and handsomely illustrated, the book continues to reveal the rich legacy of work by African American artists, whose art is now included in the permanent collections of national and international museums as well as in major private collections.

Benin: Kings and Rituals

Published to accompany the major international touring exhibition which comes to Chicago in the summer of 2008, this monumental volume features more than 500 stunning reproductions alongside important new scholarship on the prized sculptures and carvings of the Benin Kingdom of sixteenth- through nineteenth-century West Africa (pre-colonial Nigeria). It brings together for the first time masterpieces that have been scattered all over the world since the end of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously documenting the fall of the independent Kingdom, its reconstitution in the twentieth century and its continued existence through today.
From elaborate bas-relief plaques to stately commemorative king's heads and towering elephant tusks embellished with detailed figurative scenes illustrating life at court and the heroic deeds of kings and warriors, the artworks gathered here glorified the king as the political and spiritual head of his people and honored his ancestors. The detailed workmanship and outstanding aesthetic quality of Benin's royal sculptures have been compared to the work of the celebrated Renaissance artist, Benvenuto Cellini. And their wealth of iconographic detail conveys the sumptuousness of the royal court and its historical importance as a regional powerhouse in the Benin (or Edo) era.

Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture