The Tribal Arts of Africa

Rating:
Summary: Good book for beginners
Review: Dear Sirs,

This is good book for those who are interested in African art but not very deeply. It is kind of catalogue which gives you a list and discription of general topics in tribe by tribe art.
I would recomend it for beginners in African art and culture.

Rating:
Summary: Hooray!
Review: Probably the best book currently available on African art. Everything else of value is either out of print or in French. Brilliant photographs, excellent text, authoritative background on the sources and location without a plethora of anthropological subtext, as so often happens in books on African art. If the subject interests you, you'll find nothing better!

Rating:
Summary: An encyclopaedic work
Review: This beautiful book on the art of Africa south of the Sahara explores 49 cultural areas as regards their artistic production and their political and social structures. The 49 areas are broadly divided under sections for the coast of West Africa; inland West Africa; Nigeria and Cameroon; Gabon and Zaire; and Eastern and Southern Africa.

Each section has its own bibliography. The book includes 865 illustrations of which a least 195 are full color photographs. There are also many maps of the areas under study. The reference section at the end encompasses a further bibliography, lists of major museums and major dealers in African art, a glossary and an index.

The book is a masterpiece that makes accessible the entire panoply of black African tribal arts from the first millennium to the end of the nineteenth century. It is an indispensable reference source for the serious collector and a beautiful encyclopaedia for any art lover.