Art and Religion in Africa

Art and Religion in Africa PDF

Author: Rosalind Hackett

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1998-10-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0826436552

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Africa's religious and artistic traditions constitute a primary example of its intellectual and cultural vitality. Artistic works play a vital role - especially where oral traditions dominate - in communicating ideas about the relationship between the human, spiritual and natural worlds. This work is a comparative study of Africa's visual and performing arts, concentrating on their geographical, material and gendered diversity, and focusing on the relation of these arts to African religion. The author combines ethnographic and art-historical methodology but does not assume any prior knowledge of African art or African religion. The text seeks a greater understanding of the philosophical and religious aspects of African art, thus challenging western perceptions of what is "important" in terms of artistic representation. This approach reveals the transformative capacities and multi-dimensionality of African art. The work also highlights the changes brought about by Christianity, Islam and the newer religious movements in post-colonial Africa.

The Art of Conversion

The Art of Conversion PDF

Author: Cécile Fromont

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-12-19

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1469618729

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Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries. The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.

African Theology in Images

African Theology in Images PDF

Author: Martin Ott

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 630

ISBN-13:

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This is a revised and updated edition of the comprehensive study of the role of art in the process of inculturation in Africa, first issued in 2000. The study is a substantial contribution toward a theology of inculcation in Africa, and enriches the debate on indigenous African and Christian artistic traditions. It represents the first systematic theology constructed in and from Malawi that establishes a theology of symbolic expression in Africa.

African Religions

African Religions PDF

Author: Jacob K. Olupona

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0199790582

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This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.

Islam and Tribal Art in West Africa

Islam and Tribal Art in West Africa PDF

Author: René A. Bravmann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1974-05-31

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780521201926

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Most writers have assumed that the spread of the Islamic faith has tended to weaken and undermine the foundations of traditional African society and culture. In this interesting and original study Professor Bravmann re-examines and refutes the assumption that the aniconic attitudes of Islam, especially the prohibition of representational imagery, have had a detrimental effect on the visual arts in the areas of West Africa influenced by this universalistic faith. The strength and flexibility of West African societies and their art forms is clearly revealed in the major part of this study, which is devoted to a detailed examination of the impact of Islam upon traditional art in the Cercle de Bondoukou and west central areas of Ghana. The text is illustrated with numerous photographs showing a variety of art forms and masquerades in the region.

African Artists

African Artists PDF

Author: Joseph L. Underwood

Publisher: Phaidon Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9781838662431

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In recent years Africa's booming art scene has gained substantial global attention, with a growing number of international exhibitions and a stronger-than-ever presence on the art market worldwide. Here, for the first time, is the most substantial survey to date of modern and contemporary African-born or Africa-based artists. Working with a panel of experts, this volume builds on the success of Phaidon's bestselling Great Women Artists in re-writing a more inclusive and diverse version of art history.

Of Life and Health

Of Life and Health PDF

Author: Alexis Bekyane Tengan

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1789201020

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An anthropological study of the health system of the Dagara people of northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, Of Life and Health develops a cultural and epistemological lexicon of Dagara life by examining its religious, ritual, and artistic expressions. Consisting of ethnographic descriptions and analyses of six Dagara cultic institutions, each of which deals with different aspects of sustaining and transmitting life, the volume gives a holistic account of the Dagara knowledge system.

Face of the Gods

Face of the Gods PDF

Author: Robert Farris Thompson

Publisher: Museum for African Art/Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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Thompson examines the altar traditions in cultures from the Atlantic coast region of Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Flash of the Spirit

Flash of the Spirit PDF

Author: Robert Farris Thompson

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-05-26

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0307874338

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This landmark book shows how five African civilizations—Yoruba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Cross River—have informed and are reflected in the aesthetic, social and metaphysical traditions (music, sculpture, textiles, architecture, religion, idiogrammatic writing) of black people in the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, Mexico, Brazil and other places in the New World.

The Art of Conversion

The Art of Conversion PDF

Author: Cecile Fromont

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781469618739

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Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practised Christianity, actively participating in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm on a par with European monarchies. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, this book examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture, traces its development across four centuries marked by war and the Atlantic slave trade, and finally narrates its unravelling as 19th-century European colonialism penetrated Africa.