Customer Reviews

The Tribal Arts of Africa

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This beautiful book on the art of Africa south of the Sahara explores 49 cultural areas as regards their artistic production and their political and social structures. The 49 areas are broadly divided under sections for the coast of West Africa; inland West Africa; Nigeria and Cameroon; Gabon and Zaire; and Eastern and Southern Africa.

Each section has its own bibliography. The book includes 865 illustrations of which a least 195 are full color photographs. There are also many maps of the areas under study. The reference section at the end encompasses a further bibliography, lists of major museums and major dealers in African art, a glossary and an index.

The book is a masterpiece that makes accessible the entire panoply of black African tribal arts from the first millennium to the end of the nineteenth century. It is an indispensable reference source for the serious collector and a beautiful encyclopaedia for any art lover.

My husband and I recently purchased a mask at an African and Caribbean festival. We loved the mask, and it definitely found its home over our fireplace. However, the vendor only could tell us that the mask was from Mali. With a desire to learn about our mask (which sports some unusual features) I decided to purchase a book, with no idea whether or not information about my mask would be included. I browsed on Amazon and located this book.

I was very pleasantly surprised, not only was our mask in the book, but the book contained beautiful photos and histories of masks from every region in Africa. Although it is a paperback, it is sturdy, and the glossy photos are stunning. We will definitely use it, to guide us in future purchases.

AFRICAN MASKS by Iris Hahner-Herzog is a superior book because the color plates are more numerous, larger and printed with greater resolution. Some of the photos in Tribal Arts, especially the smaller black & white ones, were difficult to read about because the plates were scattered across the pages in no apparent relation to their descriptions in the text. What's worse is, some had no descriptions at all and some art was referred to where there were no photos. While trying to indentify a particular mask that I owned, I found I had to skim the text backwards, to try to find the description of a photo...since photos that were on the righthand page were described earlier in the text (on the lefthand page). Whomever edited this book seemed to have no regard for a visually organized presentation.

The CONTENTS were divided regionally and then sub-dived by tribes in those regions, this was informative and helpful, especially if one is trying to identify a masks (and you know the region by not the tribe). This IS a very good book for someone who is a collector or very interested in the subject, but if you are just buying ONE book on this subject, IMO, AFRICAN MAKSKS is the better book.

Dear Sirs,

This is good book for those who are interested in African art but not very deeply. It is kind of catalogue which gives you a list and discription of general topics in tribe by tribe art.
I would recomend it for beginners in African art and culture.

Excellent Book!!! Layed out perfectly to help people understand each & every aspect of tribal art. Describes museum pieces in detail, where they were from, why they were made. Excellent book for beginners or advanced. Well written book. I highly recomend if your studing African art or if it is just a hobbie. Knowledge is power.

Probably the best book currently available on African art. Everything else of value is either out of print or in French. Brilliant photographs, excellent text, authoritative background on the sources and location without a plethora of anthropological subtext, as so often happens in books on African art. If the subject interests you, you'll find nothing better!

Great photographs, concise narrative, and wide range. I thought it was a good value at the $50 I paid at a local bookstore, it's even better at the Amazon.com price.

The Tribal Arts of Africa by Jean-Baptiste Bacquart
The subtitle "Surveying Africa's Artistic Geography" tells the story.

The book has 249 pages, plus the cover, in which there are 865 pictures, 195 are in color. The pages are museum quality. It is a gorgeous book,though the cover is glued on but the pages are well sewn together.

It covers tribes from the coast and inland of West Africa, plus the countries of Nigeria, Cameroom, Gabon, Zaire and East and South Africa.
The collection of photos are beautifully displayed both in color as well as those in black and white. Each section of sculpture begins with the history of the tribes covered. This book in content though not on jewelry but on sculpture stands beside "Africa Adorned".

This book can hold an honored place in any art library or sit on any coffee table. It is a keeper.

This is a very good book to start to explore the world of african arts. This book contains 895 images - which is a really high number of examples. By this point of view, I'm rating this book 5/5. But about the informations given by the author, I can say that at least - if not even more - 10% of them is wrong. Often the informations are generic. Even sometimes the samples belong to different tribes than the ones in which they're included (and, this is a symptom of the author's ignorance on the matter)! An example: half of the Kete masks showed on this book belong to Kuba tribe: they are Nyett masks (they are presented without name, but these kind of masks are very well known and common). Then, sometimes the maps are wrong too (look as example the map of Uganda, with the Karamojong on the center of the country and the Baganda on the north; that's ridicolous).
So, my advice is the following: an excellent book to see plenty of samples of african crafts, a bad book about the informations and the textes.
Even my copy - as another reviewer wrote - falled in pieces just after half an hour after the purchase, so the binding appears poor too; but, of course, that's not the main problem here.

Excellent overview for collectors and amateurs alike. A great book with which to begin a library of African art.