Contemporary African Arts and Crafts

Abstract

Interest in art on the part of scholars and among the general public is still new enough that every event which takes place in the field exhibitions and publications, for example bids insistently for attention. Some of these events turn out to be essentially devoid of content, representing missed opportunities and wasted resources, while others fulfil their promise of new information and substantive insight. Within the category of less rewarding books, the much (and justifiably) maligned cocktail-table extravaganza has recently been joined by a motley of books aimed at a wider readership. Reasonable in price, these books are written by enthusiastic but poorly informed amateurs; they are typically based almost entirely upon the author's personal experiences of and its arts, as if this were any longer unusual enough to provide a sufficient justification for publishing. relative preponderance of these two types of books within the recent art bibliography may help to explain the continuing reservations regarding the value of artistic data held by scholars in other disciplines. These reservations persist despite the modest but steadily increasing body of substantial works in the field. (This characterization is not intended to include the unenlightened ethnographical descriptions, the empty exercises in formalistic analysis, or the irresponsible adventures in interpretation so frequently encountered in earlier serious studies of art.) These comments on the present state of the art bibliography may provide a useful background for the reviews which follow. Contemporary Arts and Crafts begins with an introductory chapter entitled African Arts as Non-Verbal Communication, which is divided into twelve sections; their titles run the gamut from People of Africa and Ubiquitous Spirits to Kinds of Materials and Tools for for the most part dealt with in a page or less. body of the book comprises the following seven chapters: The Potter's Art, African Textile Arts, Containers: Baskets and Calabashes, Hides, Skins and Feathers, Beads, Shells and Bones, Working with Metals, and Carving Wood and Ivory. Each concludes with a paragraph or two entitled Try It which seeks to aid the reader in adapting techniques to non-African circumstances. Sequences of field-photographs illustrate techniques of potterymaking, calabash decoration, textile construction and decoration, leatherworking, basketry, and lost-wax casting, supplemented by a large number of photographs of objects out of context. To say that the photographs which are the core of this book might be useful under certain is to overstate the value of the book. author presumes to encompass the entirety of geography, history, culture, and art between the covers of her opus. She has written nine earlier books under titles such as Creative Candlemaking, Plastics as an Art Form, Paper as Art and Craft, and Contemporary Decoupage. Otherwise, her qualifications seem limited to several trips to Africa...sometimes under difficult circumstances which appear to have followed well-trodden touristic itineraries in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania. In addition, she appears to have read widely but not well. book which has resulted