Dak'Art


Book Description

What can an art biennale in Dakar, Senegal, tell us about current discourses surrounding the place of art in the world, and in the academic study of anthropology? This volume investigates the Dak'Art biennale, ranked among the world's top 20 biennials, drawing upon fieldwork, archival research, and the experiences of those involved. In so doing, the chapters make a statement about the impact of globally-acting art biennials, contributing to current scholarship both on biennales and the anthropology of art scene more widely. Part I opens with the history of its foundation and considers it in conjunction with the rise of contemporary art in Senegal. Part II deals with the biennale's various objectives, selection strategies, exhibition spaces, platforms for debate, and discourses between the State, the secretariat and local artists and art world professionals. Part III examines the cyclical creation of contemporary African art, and questions if the Biennial creates local canonical practices. The Epilogue uses the Dak'art biennale to question assumptions around practice in general biennale scholarship and work. Featuring a dialogic structure between practitioners of art and anthropologists, this unique volume will be of interest to students of anthropology, art history and practice, African studies and curatorial practice.




Art World City


Book Description

“Insightful . . . should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in contemporary art on the continent of Africa, its politics, its display, its economics.” —African Arts Art World City focuses on contemporary art and artists in the city of Dakar, a famously thriving art metropolis in the West African nation of Senegal. Joanna Grabski illuminates how artists earn their livelihoods from the city’s resources, possibilities, and connections. She examines how and why they produce and exhibit their work and how they make an art scene and transact with art world mediators such as curators, journalists, critics, art lovers, and collectors from near and far. Grabski shows that Dakar-based artists participate in a platform that has a global reach. They extend Dakar’s creative economy and the city’s urban vibe into an “art world city.” “In her fine-grained analysis, Joanna Grabski demonstrates the ways that the urban environment and the sites of art production, exhibition, and sale imbricate one another to constitute Dakar as an Art World City.” —Mary Jo Arnoldi, Curator, Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian “A valuable addition to the anthropology of cities and of art worlds. It stretches and revises the notion of art world to include multiple scales, and illustrates how the city enables simultaneous engagement for artists with local, national, Pan-African, and global discourses and platforms.” —City & Society “A beautiful book. The photographs, most of which are by the author, are stunning.” —College Art Association Reviews




African Cultures, Visual Arts, and the Museum


Book Description

From the contents: Christine MATZKE: Comrades in arts and arms: stories of wars and watercolours from Eritrea. - Sabine MARSCHALL: Positioning the other': reception and interpretation of contemporary black South African artists. - Kristine ROOME: The art of liberating voices: contemporary South African art exhibited in New York. - Jonathan ZILBERG: Shona sculpture and documenta 2002: reflections on exclusions.




An Anthropology of Contemporary Art


Book Description

Drawing on the exciting developments that have occurred in the anthropology of art over the last twenty years, this study uses ethnographic methods to explore shifts in the art market and global contemporary art. Recognizing that the huge diversity of global phenomena requires research on the ground, An Anthropology of Contemporary Art examines the local art markets, biennials, networks of collectors, curators, artists, patrons, auction houses, and museums that constitute the global art world.Divided into four parts – Picture and Medium; World Art Studies and Global Art; Art Markets, Maecenas and Collectors; Participatory Art and Collaboration – chapters go beyond the standard emphasis on Europe and North America to present first-hand fieldwork from a wide range of areas, including Brazil, Turkey, and Asia and the Pacific.With contributions from distinguished anthropologists such as Philippe Descola and Roger Sansi Roca, this book provides a fresh approach to key topics in the discipline. A model for demonstrating how contemporary art can be studied ethnographically, this is a vital read for students in anthropology of art, visual anthropology, visual culture, and related fields.




The Art Market and the Global South


Book Description

This book examines the art markets of the Global South while questioning, based on the heterogeneity of the selected contributions, the very idea of its existence in the context of the global art market. Gathering new research by recognized scholars, you will discover different markets from the so-called Global South, their structure, the external determinants affecting their behavior, their role in the art system’s development, and how they articulate with other agents at the local, regional, and international level. In this publication, an important wealth of research on various African countries stands out, providing an unprecedented overview of the markets in that region. This volume originates from the TIAMSA conference The Art Market and the Global South: New Perspectives and Plural Approaches, held in Lisbon in 2019.




A Companion to Modern African Art


Book Description

Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization. A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa Includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material Features new and complex theoretical arguments about the nature of modernity and Modernism Addresses a widely acknowledged gap in the literature on African Art




The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.


Book Description

The first quarter of this book collects the work-storyboards, scripts, character designs, etc.-that Shaw has created for "The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D." animated series that aired on IFC. The latter three-quarters will collect his acclaimed short stories from MOME, as well as several little-seen stories from elsewhere, and a new 20-page story.




Mome Vol. 11


Book Description

Vol. 11 of the popular series welcomes Killoffer, the exciting French cartoonist whose work has previously only been seen in the acclaimed collection, 176 Apparitions of Killoffer, as well as newcomer Jon Vermilyea. Plus, several other surprises from some of the best new talent in comics.




Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World (2 vols.)


Book Description

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.




Embodying Relation


Book Description

In Embodying Relation Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement in Bamako, Mali, which blossomed in the 1990s after Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé became internationally famous and the Bamako Photography Biennale was founded. Moore traces the trajectory of Malian photography from the 1880s—when photography first arrived as an apparatus of French colonialism—to the first African studio practitioners of the 1930s and the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, Africa's most important continent-wide photographic exhibition. In her detailed discussion of Bamakois artistic aesthetics and institutions, Moore examines the post-fame careers of Keïta and Sidibé, the biennale's structure, the rise of women photographers, cultural preservation through photography, and how Mali's shift to democracy in the early 1990s enabled Bamako's art scene to flourish. Moore shows how Malian photographers' focus on cultural exchange, affective connections with different publics, and merging of traditional cultural precepts with modern notions of art embody Caribbean philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant's notion of “relation” in ways that spark new artistic forms, practices, and communities.