African art and the aesthetics of hiding and revealing

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 251-264

  Wingo, Ajume H ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77952120672     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/38.3.251     Document Type: Review

References (10)

1. The aesthetic movement owes much of its inspiration to Kantian aesthetics and the Romantic movement in Europe. The idea of art for art's sake was in part a reaction to the utilitarian and materialistic values of the new industrial age. For more on this issue see, Suzanne Preston Blier, 'Enduring Myths of African Art', Africa: The Art of a Continent (Guggenheim Museum, 1996), pp. 30-31
2. Appiah, Foreword, Mary H. Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals (Museum of African Art New York, 1993), p. 15
3. Suzanne Preston Blier, 'Words about Words about Icons: Iconologology and the Study of African Art', Art Journal, vol. 47 (Summer 1988), pp. 80-85
4. Ladislas Segy, Masks of Black Africa (New York: Dover, 1976)
5. For a detailed example about imparting order by the aid of artworks, see Suzanne Preston Blier's remarkable piece: 'Words about Words about Icons', pp. 80-85
6. Mario Meneghini, 'The Bassa Mask', African Arts, vol. VI, no. 1 (Autumn, 1972), p. 47
7. 'Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture', Cachiers d'Etude Africaines, vol. 68 (1977)
8. For a detailed examination of coding, obscurity, accumulation, containment, and ambiguity in African art, see Nooter, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, esp. pp. 49-52
9. For similar views in other parts of Africa, see Blier's views on Fon royal staffs of office, which are created to be beautiful but function as agents of convocation. Here she demonstrates the importance that the personal perspective of the viewer/experiencer has for the meaning of a work of art. For more, see Blier 'Words about Words about Icons', pp. 80-82
10. Jeremy Waldron, 'Multiculturalism and Melange', in Robert K. Fullinwider (ed.), Public Education in a Multicultural Society (New York: Cambridge U.P., 1996), p. 91