Suzanne Preston Blier

Robin Poynor

Monica Blackmun Visona

Rowland Abiodun

Herbert M. Cole

Michael D. Harris

History of Art in Africa (Trade Version)

Anne Eisner Putnam

This book contributes an important aesthetic perspective to the understanding of an area that has long fascinated anthropologists and others. It is part of a broadly emerging review of the colonial era in the Congo. The writers in this volume come together to discuss Anne Eisner s life, collecting of African objects, her art and writing about Epulu and the people who lived there."--BOOK JACKET.

Images of Congo

Throughout, Blier pushes African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally.

Art, Psychology, and Power

African Vodun

Blier illuminates the extraordinary architecture of the Batammaliba people of Western Africa, revealing these buildings as texts through which we can read the beliefs, psychology, traditions, and social concerns of their inhabitants. In doing so, she explores the role of vernacular architecture as an expression of culture. "A splendid analysis of the centrality of architecture in the daily lives of the Batammaliba and its integral role in articulating social values....The story is beautifully told in the best of anthropological traditions."—Judith R. Blau, Contemporary Society "A remarkable study....Blier's volume carries the study of African architecture to a qualitatively new level of scholarship. It introduces a new dimension whereby the architectural medium can be used to illuminate much of the entire belief system of any culture."—Labelle Prussin, African Arts "In this excellent book Blier provides a richly detailed and searching account of what architecture means to the Batammaliba of northern Togo and Benin....The finest account I have yet read of the relations between systems of beliefs, ritual practices, and African aesthetics and plastic arts....The ethnography and basic insight should be the envy of any social anthropologist."—T.O. Beidelman, Man

Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression

The Anatomy of Architecture

This book examines the intersection of art, risk, and creativity in early African arts from the Yoruba center of Ife. It offers a unique lens into one of Africa's most important and least understood early civilizations, one whose historic arts have long been of interest to local residents and Westerners alike because of their tour-de-force visual power and technical complexity.

Ife History, Power, and Identity, ca. 1300

Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba

"This book will be of critical importance not only to those concerned with African, African American, and Caribbean art, but also to anthropologists, scholars of the African diaspora, students of comparative religion and comparative psychology, and anyone fascinated by the traditions of vodou and vodun."--Jacket.

In Picasso's Demoiselles, eminent art historian Suzanne Preston Blier uncovers the previously unknown history of Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, one of the twentieth century's most important, celebrated, and studied paintings. Drawing on her expertise in African art and newly discovered sources, Blier reads the painting not as a simple bordello scene but as Picasso's interpretation of the diversity of representations of women from around the world that he encountered in photographs and sculptures. These representations are central to understanding the painting's creation and help identify the demoiselles as global figures, mothers, grandmothers, lovers, and sisters, as well as part of the colonial world Picasso inhabited. Simply put, Blier fundamentally transforms what we know about this revolutionary and iconic work.

The Untold Origins of a Modern Masterpiece

Picasso's Demoiselles

James Morris

A photographic survey of adobe buildings throughout West Africa, including the great mosque at Djenne (the largest mud building in the world) ordinary houses and huts, arches, domes, colonnades, grillwork and other architectural feats. The text by Blier covers the history, technology and cultural significance of adobe in West Africa.

Adobe Architecture of West Africa

Butabu

In this book, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the intersection of art, risk and creativity in early African arts from the Yoruba center of Ife and the striking ways that ancient Ife artworks inform society, politics, history and religion. Yoruba art offers a unique lens into one of Africa's most important and least understood early civilizations, one whose historic arts have long been of interest to local residents and Westerners alike because of their tour-de-force visual power and technical complexity. Among the complementary subjects explored are questions of art making, art viewing and aesthetics in the famed ancient Nigerian city-state, as well as the attendant risks and danger assumed by artists, patrons and viewers alike in certain forms of subject matter and modes of portrayal, including unique genres of body marking, portraiture, animal symbolism and regalia. This volume celebrates art, history and the shared passion and skill with which the remarkable artists of early Ife sought to define their past for generations of viewers.

Suzanne Preston Blier

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