Tribal Art

The Royal Museum for Central Africa offers an exhibition of a new kind. Indeed, it stages and confronts African sculptors, in this case Songye, with a Western and Belgian photographer.
Known as a collaborating photographer in the publication of catalogs, Hugues Dubois presents today his artistic work, begun many years ago. Impressed by the strength and sensitivity of certain African masterpieces, he has undertaken to translate this emotion into photographic portraits.
It is this work that he exhibits today and that the museum has proposed to put in relation with the sculptures that inspired him.To do this, the Ethnography section has selected, with Hugues Dubois, some major pieces in the reserves and participated in the choice of other masterpieces in public and private ...

The sixth exhibition organized by the Society of Amateurs of African Art has as its subject "Horse and rider in the art of Black Africa".
The works are about the horse and the rider, even other mounts and other riders. These objects in wood, brass, silver, iron come from various peoples; they have been selected with exigency for their aesthetic qualities, for their originality, for their antiquity and for the cultural charge they represent.

Author: Gabriel Massa
Condition: NEW
Language: French
Number of pages: 167
Dimensions: 290 x 220
ISBN : 978-2842801236

As a preamble to any presentation of African masks, it should be remembered that the mask is a complex ensemble covering the dancer's body.
All too often, everything that has been transmitted to us from an African mask brings it back to the condition of an art object now regarded as such. Therefore, in order to go beyond the aesthetic vision, it seemed necessary to incorporate in this work ethnic indications and a few selected photographs of dancers to situate the masks in their social and religious context.

Authors: Gabriel Massa and Chantal Dewé
Photographs: Chantal Dwé
Condition: very good
Language : French
Number of pages : 143
Dimensions : 290 x 220 mm
ISBN : 978-2842801755

Earth mosaic, rich in the diversity of ethnic groups that compose it, Côte d'Ivoire has been and remains a crossroads of immigration, the melting pot in which different populations have been able to develop a plastic art with multiple expressions.
Masks, statuary, everyday objects translating in their humblest details a constant aesthetic research, all these works, of style, materials, of very varied subjects, are however the particular expression of one and the same aspiration to beauty.

Authors: Alain-Michel Boyer, Patrick Girard and Marceau Rivière
Condition: NEW
Language: French
Number of pages: 138
Dimensions: 290 x 220 mm
ISBN : 978-2842800086

The art of the Fangs, the Batekes, the Bakotas and other African peoples is probably best known to today's public through the impact they have had on modern culture and the translations given by Picasso, Braque or Modigliani.
These so-called "primitive" arts are however based on a set of presuppositions, cultural contexts, histories, worldviews absolutely other, which, often, we ignore everything. Frank Willett's book has been called by the Times Literary Supplement "the best general introduction to the study of African art, full of first-rate information, stimulating and fascinating."

Text: Frank Willet
Condition: very good
Language: French
Number of pages: 282
Dimensions: 210 x 150 mm
Paperback
ISBN: 978-2878110142

Copy: Fondation Georges Arthur Forrest.
After independence, the first popular paintings appeared on the walls of Congolese interiors. These paintings have been described as "conversation pieces" - they are "in conversation" - because more than as objects, they are important, first of all, by the image they convey.
The meaning attributed to the images is not always fixed: each person can then go about his or her own interpretation, reflecting on the concerns of everyday life. Often considered as a colonial genre, Congolese popular painting is in fact part of a long history of drawing in the Democratic Republic of Congo that precedes colonization. (...)

Authors: Bambi Ceuppens and Sammy Baloji
Royal Museum of Central Africa
Status: NEW
Language: ...

The present work is divided into different parts: "African arts recounted: Roots of Eurocentrism, When the object becomes a subject of study and History and civilizations", "The primer" as well as the appendices. Throughout the notes, and thanks to the cross-references indicated by the asterisks, the reader travels as he pleases in the primer.

Text: Laurick Zerbini
Condition: very good
Language: French
Number of pages: 120
Dimensions: 220 x 120
Paperback
ISBN: 978-2080106964

The purpose of this book is to present in a descriptive and analytical way the African puppet theater - without neglecting the mask theater - hoping to open some avenues for further study.
For a long time ignored in the West, the African puppet theater reveals itself, according to the most recent research, at least as important as the theater of masks, however more known.
The fruit of 35 years of research, matured during several years of stay in Africa, this study is aimed at both readers wishing to deepen their general knowledge and professionals in the performing arts. Theater historians, psychologists, therapists, and teachers will find information and, without a doubt, food for thought. Finally, the variety of forms, the richness of the materials used as well as the ...

This book accompanies the fifth thematic exhibition produced by the Société des Amateurs de l'Art Africain, entitled "L'oiseau dans l'art de l'Afrique de l'Ouest". Particular attention has been paid to the selection of pieces and the quality of the photos. The selection of pieces, especially for a thematic exhibition, is always a difficult undertaking. It was carried out in two stages. First of all, from the pieces proposed, a first selection was entrusted to the members of the exhibition committee set up (...), three essential criteria, aesthetic quality, age and finally originality, having been retained.

Text: Francine Ndiaye and Gabriel Massa
Condition: very good
Language: French
Number of pages: 165
Dimensions: 290 x 220 mm
Paperback
ISBN ...

Publications of the Barbier-Mueller museums: "Japanese armors and helmets" (collection J. Gabriel Barbier-Mueller), "The childhood of art" (by Raphaël Enthoven), "The mummy of the peat bogs", "A tarasque bird vase" and "Ernst Beyeler and the distant arts".
A magnificent work proposed by the Association of Friends of the Barber-Mueller Museum.

Condition: excellent
Language : French
Number of pages : 300
Dimensions : 330 x 230 mm
Paperback

Nok terracotta, Igbo-Ukwu, Ife, Benin bronzes and Yoruba cult sticks from Nigeria: Bamana crest masks from Mali or Baga from Guinea: Senoufo or Baoulé statues and wé war or dan race masks from Côte d'Ivoire; Gurunsi zoomorphic masks from Burkina Faso; Mahongwe reliquaries from Gabon...
This approach to sculpture in Black Africa brings together and comments on twenty or so emblematic representations of an art that is almost always religious in nature, a link between the tangible world and the beyond, dedicated to providing man with the help of invisible forces in a hostile environment. Each ethnic group representing this link in its own way, according to its myths and beliefs, African art owes its extreme richness to this very diversity.

Text: Laure Meyer
...

This book, the first of its kind, opens new perspectives in the study and knowledge of the arts and the functioning of African thought.
Starting from the principle that each human community has its own conception of the symbol and makes use of it according to its particular existential experience, the first part of the book shows, through concrete examples, the importance of the elements that make up the content of a culture, namely language, symbols, ritual practices, values and cultural references. (...)
The second part questions the concept of "art" from the conceptual fields constituted by the words that designate luba art objects. (...)
The third part proposes some analyses of symbolic objects in their natural contexts, from which emerge original suggestions of a ...

As construction and infrastructure works (highways, railways, mines, urban and industrial areas, etc.) accelerate and expand, it is no longer possible to ignore the dangers that bulldozers pose to the remains of the past.
Moving from a hasty rescue archaeology to a true preventive archaeology, which studies sites, cultures and landscapes before development takes place, the time has come - in Africa as elsewhere - to reconcile the respective requirements of scientific research, archaeological heritage management and economic and social development. In this volume, some twenty African and European researchers identify the issues at stake and address new perspectives for preventive archaeology in Mauritania, West Africa and the continent as a whole.

Condition:NEW

The presentation that you are invited to appreciate is one of the results of a long-term work that Mrs. Durieu has been undertaking on Burkina Faso for many years. It reflects her passion for ethnography and African art, as well as her friendship for the cultures of Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso, otherwise known as the country of men of integrity, is also a country of culture, rich and diverse, which should be appreciated at its true value, within the framework of this new ethic of cultural diversity promoted by UNESCO and the international community.

This book accompanies the fourth exhibition organized by the Society of Amateurs of African Art, entitled "Sculptures of the Three Volta". (...) The book was written by Gabriel Massa and, for the presentation of the lobi pieces, by Jean-Claude Lauret.
The authors, without claiming to make a scientific work, after having presented in their history, their religion, their political and social organization, the different ethnic groups of the Three Volta region, have tried to give as much information as possible on the objects presented, especially in terms of their function.

Text: Gabriel Massa and Jean-Claude Lauret
Design, computer graphics and layout: Sarah Larazevic and Max Yves Brandily
Condition: excellent
Language: French
Number of pages: ...

The bas-reliefs of the palaces compensated in part for the absence of writing in Fon culture and constituted visual narratives that recalled the history, customs and rituals of this people.
For almost three centuries, the history of the Dahomean dynasty has been passed on by different characters, from the guardians of the cult and warlords to the heralds who declaimed the swords of kings.
Bas-reliefs can be interpreted on the one hand as symbols and allegories and on the other hand as an illustrated story. Their dominant theme is the glory of royalty, or more prosaically, the strength and centralization of royal power.

Text: Fransceca Piqué and Leslie H. Rainer with the collaboration of Jérôme C. Alladaye, Rachida de Souza-Ayari and Suzanne Preston Blier

Rock rifts, pebbles, stones raised, sacred or made sacred by the Dogon.A story always repeated. Objects stick to the support, tree, iron, stone, a tree branch becomes a fetish.
The miniaturization of everyday objects gives them a complex mission combining the sacred, the therapeutic and the religious. Unrecognized by the classical canons of art, these forgotten objects are ousted.
The authors of this book propose a poetic evocation between anthropology and art.

Text Michèle Odeyé - Finzi
Photographs Thierry Bérot-Inard
State: NEUF
Langue: French
Number: 70
Dimensions: 220 x 220 mm
Paperback
ISBN : 978-9993347392