A guide to nearly 4000 years of sword making from the Bronze Age to World War II. On the basis of technical excellence and cultural significance, emphasis is given to European, Islamic and Japanese weapons. It also covers those of Africa, Mesoamerica, China, Central Asia and Indonesia.
This book opens with the question, What is African art? The answer is a brilliantly colorful and detailed look at the myriad materials and genres, forms and meanings, cultural contexts and expressions that comprise artistic traditions across this vast and varied continent. Viewing artworks in their contexts—ancient and modern, urban and rural, western and eastern, decorative and functional—the book is nothing less than a virtual tour of African culture. Masks, textiles, royal art, sculpture, ceramics, tools and weapons—in each instance, the book features examples that reveal the most significant aspects of workmanship, materials, and design in objects of wood, stone, ivory, clay, metalwork, featherwork, leather, basketwork, and cloth. Photographs of each piece alongside close-ups of fine details afford new views of these works and allow for intriguing comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects and media. The featured details evoke the hand and eye of the most accomplished craftspeople across Africa, past and present. In sum, these photographs, along with Chris Spring ’s enlightening commentary, offer an experience of African art that is at once broad and deep, richly informed and intimately felt. They are, at the same time, a kaleidoscopic view of art from prehistory to gestures prefiguring the future.
The mission of this book is to illustrate Africa's immensely fertile artistic landscape. Africa has emerged from its colonial past and is asserting its own identity. African art is not only confined to the continent itself, but has spread world-wide through the work of those descended from the enforced migrations of the slave trade and those who have more recently left their homesin Africa to take their place on an international stage.This book brings together more than 60 of Africa's most creative contemporary artists, drawn from across the African continent as well as from Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Their art leaps off the page with over 350 color images (many especially commissioned). In addition to painters, sculptors, and photographers, there are a number of artists whose work embraces performance and installation. Many of the materials they use are as unorthodox astheir imagery, with ready made and found objects.