Kategoria BISAC: Art >> African

First published in 1976, People of the Eland was the first major step away from the outsiders view upon San rock art that had dominated studies of rock art for nearly a century. The book provides an account of the rock art of the Drakensberg Range and historical information on the mountain San themselves.

The book aims to gain an insiders view of the rock art using San understandings of the world. While following this approach, it quickly became clear to Patricia Vinnicombe that the art was very far from simple depictions of daily life as had once seemed likely, but instead...

After Patricia Vinnicombe's death in 2003, Peter Mitchell and Ben Smith were called to the challenge of adding additional sections to the People of Eland. Both editors have brought together leading scholars in the field to write new sections to explain how early knowledge of San art has changed and how current research is still influenced by this landmark volume.

The Eland's People is thus intended as a companion volume to People of the Eland and it is hoped that this new volume will provide a richer appreciation of the importance of Patricia Vinnicombe's original...

One of the most fascinating artistic phenomena in tropical Africa, mbari houses are little known outside Igboland. Art historian Herbert M. Cole has drawn from his extensive research in eastern Nigeria to produce the first book-length study of this unusual art form. Cole describes the building of a mbari mud house to honor the gods, a process rich in tradition and ritual, marked by body painting, drumming, dancing, singing, and chanting. The ecology, socio-cultural systems, and religion of the Owerri area are examined as a backdrop to the elaborate stage of the building process, which may...

A Dance of Assassins presents the competing histories of how Congolese Chief Lusinga and Belgian Lieutenant Storms engaged in a deadly clash while striving to establish hegemony along the southwestern shores of Lake Tanganyika in the 1880s. While Lusinga participated in the east African slave trade, Storms' secret mandate was to meet Henry Stanley's eastward march and trace "a white line across the Dark Continent" to legitimize King Leopold's audacious claim to the Congo. Confrontation was inevitable, and Lusinga lost his head. His skull became the subject of a sinister evolutionary...

The role of the workshop in the creation of African art is the subject of this revelatory book. In the group setting of the workshop, innovation and imitation collide, artists share ideas and techniques, and creative expression flourishes. African Art and Agency in the Workshop examines the variety of workshops, from those which are politically driven or tourist oriented, to those based on historical patronage or allied to current artistic trends. Fifteen lively essays explore the impact of the workshop on the production of artists such as Zimbabwean stone sculptors, master potters from...