AAAS/FA-74B Introduction to African Art

This new history of over 5000 years of African art reveals its true diversity for the first time. Challenging centuries of misconceptions that have obscured the sophisticated nature of African art, Peter Garlake uses the latest research and archaeological findings to offer exciting newinsights. All the main regions are covered: southern Africa, Nubia, Aksum, the Niger River, West Africa, Great Zimbabwe, and the East African coast. Acknowledging the universal allure of the African art object, this book restores it to its original social and historical context, helping us to understand more about the ways in which this art was produced, used, and received.

This comprehensive work considers the arts of Africa as art history, rather than as expressions of anthropological and societal impulses and traditions. The result is to animate the study of African art, showing how it has changed over the years.

A look at the rich traditions of Benin, Cameroon and other great African kingdoms. Suzanne Blier puts the arts of these royal African cultures in the context of wider cultural and religious traditions.