Content area
Full Text
THE VISUAL ARTS OF AFRICA
Gender, Power, and Life Cycle Rituals
Judith Perani and Fred T. Smith
Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998. 368 pp., 358 b/w & 16 color photos, 12 maps. $47.33 softcover.
Reviewed by Barbara E. Frank
Finally, a new textbook on the arts of Africa. What a relief. For years, those of us who teach courses on the arts of Africa have relied on a patchwork of well-written but dated survey texts, object-oriented exhibition catalogues, and photocopied readings from African Arts. We have all found ways to make these resources work, even as we may look enviously at textbooks available on campus bookstore shelves for other areas in the history of art.
The Visual Arts of Africa represents a major effort to come to terms with the way our field has expanded exponentially over the last thirty years. I commend Judith Perani and Fred T. Smith for their efforts to be inclusive, and not just because my own research interests in leatherwork, textiles, ceramics, and architecture are here given a place among the more traditional domains of sculpture and masquerade. More than previous sources, this text introduces students to a diversity of African creative expression. It allows instructors to play off different themes, to expand and elaborate or to select and focus as they build their own syllabuses. Furthermore, by presenting contradictory interpretations and alternative approaches to particular issues, the authors have signaled both the reflexive nature of fieldwork and the subjective nature of the representation of Africa and African art in the West.
However, while the volume has many strengths, there are problems in both structure and details, in writing style and in presentation. A quick perusal of the table of contents reveals not only the range of topics but also an unevenness in organization and content. The text is laid out in a familiar geographical format, beginning with the Sudanic regions of the interior of Western Africa, moving around the coast to Nigeria, across Central Africa to the Nile valley, and down the east coast to Southern Africa. An unfortunate but accurate reflection of the biases that continue to define the field is immediately apparent: Western and Central Africa occupy nine of the eleven chapters, with Eastern...