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African Art Studies Since 1957: Achievements and Directions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2016
Extract
Studies on African sculpture serve as point of reference in this paper. Since a full analysis of African sculpture cannot easily be separated from its sociological, technological, and ideational contexts, and since sculpture itself presents only one aspect of wide-ranging but ill-defined artistic activities and aesthetic concepts, however, these other features obviously also need mention.
There is no attempt to review the recent work of individual scholars or to characterize particular models of approach or schools of thought; this would require a badly needed but much longer and circumstantial study. Rather the paper is limited to some general observations about the kinds of works students of African art have produced and some of the needs that seem to emerge from this inventory.
In the last twenty-five years a large quantity of studies on African art, written in English and several other European languages, have been published by ever-increasing numbers of anthropologists, art historians, critics, artists, musicologists, connoisseurs, collectors, and dealers. There are many reasons to be satisfied with the achievements. Students of African art now have specialized associations and exclusive journals besides the many journals that have always been receptive to articles on African art. There is now a book series specifically on African art (Indiana University Press, Traditional Arts of Africa) in addition to many other serials and museum publications that regularly include relevant inventories, surveys, and stylistic and cultural analyses. Specialists on African art have achieved tenured positions not only in museums but also in anthropology, art, and history of art departments. There is an endless succession of exhibitions, and major art museums have deigned to organize some of them. In brief, there is an international boom of African art studies. After decades of relative obscurity and neglect, the new importance of the field has now led to a kind of euphoria and complacency among many specialists. This is evidenced, for example, in book reviews, which are either excessively eulogistic or severe and overcritical, and also in the proliferation of generalizations and in the widespread acceptance of assumptions and working hypotheses as proven facts.
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- Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Panel Papers
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1983
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