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African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

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Description for African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity Paperback. Explores African art and artistic production in a volatile global marketplace Series: African Expressive Cultures. Num Pages: 408 pages, 79 b&w illus., 1 map. BIC Classification: 1H; ACBK; JFC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 171 x 236 x 25. Weight in Grams: 704.

Focusing on the theme of warriorhood, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir weaves a complex history of how colonial influence forever changed artistic practice, objects, and their meaning. Looking at two widely diverse cultures, the Idoma in Nigeria and the Samburu in Kenya, Kasfir makes a bold statement about the links between colonialism, the Europeans' image of Africans, Africans' changing self representation, and the impact of global trade on cultural artifacts and the making of art. This intriguing history of the interaction between peoples, aesthetics, morals, artistic objects and practices, and the global trade in African art challenges current ideas about artistic production ... Read moreand representation.

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Product Details

Format

Paperback

Publication date

2007

Publisher

Indiana University Press United States

Number of pages

408

Condition

New

Series

African Expressive Cultures

Number of Pages

408

Place of Publication

Bloomington, IN, United States

ISBN

9780253219220

SKU

V9780253219220

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days

Ref

99-1

About Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir is Professor in the Department of Art History at Emory University where she is also Faculty Curator of African Art. She is author of Contemporary African Art and editor of West African Masks and Cultural Systems.

Reviews for African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity

To help alter and broaden the meaning that some of her western professional colleagues associate with African objects, art historian and curator Kasfir (Emory Univ.) applies and draws lessons from certain anthropological practice from the 1980s and literary theory from the 1990s to two examples of African artifacts. "Sustained fieldwork" undergirds her study of the spears of the pastoralist Samburu ... Read moreof the Rift Valley, in Kenya, East Africa, and of the masks of the agricultural Idoma in Nigeria, West Africa. The comparison of these two quite different tribes and their artifacts unfolds in four parts: warriors and warriorhood, "artists" and their products, "the objects themselves," and commodification and globalization. Practicing anthropologically, Kasfir digs into the cultural fabric of the tribes and applies it to their artifacts. She recognizes the different impacts of varied British colonial policy upon the tribes and records some of the misreadings of tribal culture by European explorers, colonial officials, and settlers. As historian, she underlines cultural change and the consequent meaning of embedded artifacts over time—something that western artists and curators (let alone tourists) do not always apply to their reading of African objects. A provocative and useful addition to postcolonial analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Faculty and specialists. —Choice
J. L. Cooper
Choice
Over the course of the past thirty years, Sidney Kasfir has become known as one of the most critical and conceptual minds in African art history. . . Sidney Kasfir, one of the freshest minds of African art history . . . .March 2010
The Journal of African History
. . . persuasively demonstrates the degree to which colonialism reshaped artistic production and meaning, and also how artists were agents of resistance through creative transformation.Vol. 52.2 Sept. 2009
Mary Nooter Roberts
University of California, Los Angeles
Kasfir provides a robust historical account bridging the study of "classic" African art markets—precolonial objects—with contemporary art markets, which still exoticize African artworks.Vol. 43.1, 2010
International Journal of African Historical Studies
. . . there is little doubt that [this book] . . . will be compulsory reading for critical African art history syllabi for years to come. . . This book takes history very seriously, and in doing so, it brings a properly researched post-colonial critical discourse to bear on histories - those of the Samburu, the Idoma and African art history itself. In doing so it shows how art (artefact, material culture, objects . . . whatever) can both make those histories and be a vital part in our understanding of how the world is represented.#70 Dec. 2008
Will Rea
University of Leeds
. . . it is highly recommended with its emphasis on the three Cs—colonialism, commodity, and complexity of representation.September 2009
Joseph Nevadomsky
H-AfrArts
A provocative and useful addition to postcolonial analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Faculty and specialists.January 2009
Choice
. . . well organized, analytically rich, elegantly written and a compelling read.Vol. 40.3 August 2009
Mary Jo Arnoldi
Smithsonian Institution
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African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

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