Tribal Art

This book, which is published on the occasion of the museum's opening, reveals a collection of 77 important works from the Royal Museum for Central Africa. A series of scholars, curators, and experts in African art offer an examination and analysis of each of these pieces. Many of the works collected here are in the gallery assigned to the temporary exhibition "Unrivalled Art". Others can be found in the rooms devoted to the permanent exhibition. Finally, some of the works allow us to take a look behind the scenes of the RMCA, in the muffled atmosphere of the repositories, of which the general public knows nothing. Researcher and curator Julien Volper has selected pieces that come not only from the Congo, but also from other countries, such as Angola or Gabon. They are sometimes physical testimonies of lost cultures dating from the eighth to the tenth century, or even tens of thousands of years! However, most of the works belong to the more recent period of the 19th and 20th centuries. All of these masks, statuettes, ivories, weapons, vessels and other objects express true creativity - a creativity so well described in 1919 by the theorist Vladimir Markov: "[...] this [African] art is unequalled in the world."

Text: Julien Volper
Photographs in color
Condition: very good
Language : French
Number of pages : 176
Dimensions : 270 x 220 mm
Bound
ISBN : 978-9085867777