Overview

The aim of this book is to focus on the aesthetic qualities of the masterpieces of Bamana (or Bambara) religious art in Mali and to resituate them in their social, aesthetic and cultural context. The emphasis will be on pieces used in rites of passage (Ntomo, funerals), or by agricultural cooperatives (ton, deme), and initiation societies (Kore, Jo, Komo, Kono, Tyiwara, Namakoro). The pieces that are sublime to Western eyes are just as marvellous in the field, precisely because they stand at the crossroads of religion, aesthetics and politics. Visions of Africa is a series devoted to the arts of Africa grouped according to the different populations. Each volume follows two main guidelines: one, visual and aesthetic, offers a selection of photographs of masterpieces while the other, theoretic and contextual, explores, for a broad public, the significance of these items within the population that created them. The series presents a set of introductory books for readers wishing to discover the arts of the different populations and of reference books for those who intend to learn more about them.

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9788874393480

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Jean-Paul Colleyn, anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, is Head of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and has taught at New York University. He is the author and director of thirty documentary films, several books and many articles on anthropological subjects in Mali, where he has been doing fieldwork since 1972.

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