TRIBAL ARTS OF AFRICA, THE - SURVEYING AFRICAN'S ARTISTIC GEOGRAPHY

In the light of recent debates about the status of the term "Tribal Art" in relation to the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, Jean-Baptiste Bacquart's 'The Tribal Arts of Africa' is a remarkably bold and ambitious book, which sets out to offer a geographical and artistic synthesis of more than a hundred years of Western studies of the art of Africa.
The book is broken down into 49 sections, each dealing with a particular region and its tribal art, beginning with the west coast of Africa and ending with east and South Africa. A particular tribe's masks, statues, utensils, furniture and jewellery are then surveyed for their ritual and aesthetic significance. The results are striking and varied, from the remarkable Sapi and Benin sculptures which emerged from Portuguese contact with west Africa in the 15th century, to the mysterious and forbidding figures of the Nyamezi of Tanzania, all of which are beautifully reproduced in full colour.