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Jacques Kerchache

Art of Africa Hardcover – March 31, 1993

by Jacques Kerchache (Author), Jean-Louis Paudrat (Author), Lucien Stephan (Author),

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Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Print length

619 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harry N Abrams Inc
Publication date

March 31, 1993
Dimensions

10 x 2 x 12.5 inches
ISBN-10

0810906287
ISBN-13

978-0810906280
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hundreds of never-before reproduced objects from private collections and museums make this extraordinary survey of sub-Saharan African art revelatory for serious students and casual browsers alike. In his jargon-laden, academic essay, French philosopher Stephan discusses Western misreadings of African art as well as portraiture and representation of space in African sculpture. Kerchache, a French art collector, in a more helpful essay, restores these masks, ancestor figures, ceremonial objects, fetishes, statuettes and forged-iron sculptures to their sociocultural milieu. Fortunately, vivid, engrossing profiles of more than 100 ethnic groups provide a firm context, helping the reader to distinguish naturalist figurines of the Bamana people of West Africa from eerily powerful Fang reliquaries of Cameroon and Gabon. Nearly 250 of the 1069 plates are in color.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harry N Abrams Inc; First Edition (March 31, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 619 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0810906287
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0810906280
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10 x 2 x 12.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,411,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,173 in Pop Culture Art
- #335,028 in Arts & Photography (Books)

Customer Reviews:
6 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		84%
4 star		16%
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Antonio Lopez

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

Quality condition and content of the book I received.

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2018

Verified Purchase

A beautiful and impressive monograph!

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2016

Just wow! A classic.

Long Considered The Standard Work On African Art

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2014

Hardcover, Pictorial Cloth Boards, Photographic DJ, 619 Pages, 12.5" x 10", 248 photos in color, many full page. 579 smaller photos in B/W. 249 field and object photos (1,069 photos total).; Glossary, Bibliography, Index. 1x 2-Page Map, 9 smaller maps. Excellent Paper, Presentation & Binding. Authors : Jacques Kerchache, Jean-Louis Paudrat, Lucien Stephan. "The Principal Ethnic Groups Of African Art" by Francoise Stoullig-Marin. Translated from French by Marjolijn de Jager. Published in the U.S. by Harry N. Abrams Inc. Original French Edition ("L'Art Africain") published1988, This English Version published 1993..

Over 20 years since its publication, this large, beautifully presented and lavishly illustrated book is still regarded as a standard reference on African Art. However, there is one huge problem with the book which cannot be overlooked....much of the text is unreadable drivel, As a couple of typical examples : "The observation and comparison of certain African works of art, associated with ethnographic data, allow us to remove the naturalist justification of the finished and to give, as an alternative, at least two positive explanations of the unfinished."....and... "When an initial anticipation is not a descriptive but a normative concept, it is matched to a positive value and the corresponding negation enters into a judgment of negative value : the encountered object is disparaged.".

The good news is the sheer number and quality of the featured African art items.is worth at least $100 of the OOP price. There are a good number of excellent objects, which, as usual, for African art books, are mostly masks and figures from sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, both the quality and quantity of the objects secures 4-AStars, and if I could read through even half of the pretentious nonsense in the text, it would have been a shoe-ion for 5-stars. As it is, I might have been better off buying the 2013 French re-issue of the book, and I wouldn't have figured out how painful the text actually is.

6 people found this helpful

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Jim Gwin

the gold standard

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2009

This book is hard to come by, but it is worth it if you want the most comprehensive and detailed encyclopedia of tribal African art. There are over 1,000 photos in this oversize 620 page epic overview. You will never tire studying this book. Get one if you can. If you can get one for $200 or less you have really succeeded. Mine was hand carried by a friend who found one in NYC that was located for him by an African art dealer there. Lots of the photos are full color, and large. The book gives an overview of the art, a comparison of aesthetics, and breaks down the types and styles by analysis of every feature you can imagine, and does so in an inspired way. Part Two looks at the art by region where you see the similarities and contrasts of tribes within a geographically relevant part Africa. This is a hard book to put down...every time.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

comprehensive photo collection

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2000

get this book! it holds the most comprehensive collection of photographs for African sculptures and mask's the photos are very impressive many are in a fool page format annotation are well organized and portray origins and history of the "art" pieces.

6 people found this helpful

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Art of Africa Hardcover – March 31, 1993

Editorial Reviews

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Jacques Kerchache

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