Synopses & Reviews
Richly illustrated, this monograph is the first devoted to the work of the Babembe people, who live on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their anthropomorphic statues, carved from wood, are characterized by incisions representing tattoos, scarifications, or skin decorations that the Babembe use during initiation ceremonies. These striking works, many of which have never been published before, are adorned with fabric, tools made of horn or stone jewels, and eyes made from faience or shell. The works represent ancestral spirits who link the sculptures commissioner with supernatural forces of the Babembes animist religion. Here, scholars analyze the aesthetic quality, style, and meaning of each fascinating sculpture.
Synopsis
Richly illustrated, this monograph is the first devoted to the work of the Babembe people, who live on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their anthropomorphic statues, carved from wood, are characterized by incisions representing tattoos, scarifications, or skin decorations that the Babembe use during initiation ceremonies. These striking works, many of which have never been published before, are adorned with fabric, tools made of horn or stone jewels, and eyes made from faience or shell. The works represent ancestral spirits who link the sculpture's commissioner with super-natural forces of the Babembe's animist religion. Here, scholars analyze the aesthetic quality, style, and meaning of each fascinating sculpture.
Synopsis
-The first full investigation into the symbolic artworks of the Babembe The first full investigation into the symbolic artworks of the Babembe, this richly illustrated monograph presents a particular type of sculpture that the Babembe devoted to their family ancestors. Many of these anthropomorphic wooden statues are published here for the first time, and they bear the same tattoos and scarifications, or skin decorations, that these people have always used to embellish their bodies during initiation ceremonies. Text in English and French.
Synopsis
The first full investigation into the symbolic artworks of the Babembe. Text in English and French.
Synopsis
New Yorkandrsquo;s now-defunct Museum of Primitive Art opened its landmark exhibition Senufo: Sculpture from West Africa in February 1963. Under the directorship of art historian Robert Goldwater, the museum displayed together for the first time a stunning array of arts attributed to Senufo artists: face masks, helmet masks, and figurative sculptures, all from a region spanning the borders of present-day Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Mali. Now, more than 50 years later, this new book draws on archival, museum, and field-based data, including previously unpublished letters, photographs, and objects, to look back at that tour-de-force exhibition, and offers a fresh, expanded view of a dynamic regionandrsquo;s arts and identities.and#160;
About the Author
Raoul Lehuard studied at the Sorbonne, founded the magazine Arts dAfrique Noire, and is an expert in the art of the Congo.
Daniel Klein, a collector of African and pre-Columbian art, is one of the creators of the new museum of pre-Columbian archaeology (the Casa del Alabado) in Quito, Ecuador.
Alain Lecomte is a gallery owner and African art critic.