African Art

Fülszöveg

Non-Africans have, for centuries, looked down on the Africans as a 'backward' people, with an unsophisticated social organisation, a primitive way of life and a crude art. But though the well-known masks of carved and painted wood often look unfinished and unattractive to Western eyes, they also seem to have a strangely powerful secret life of their own which is disturbing because we are excluded from it. African art is, in fact, not 'art' at all, in the Western sense of something made by an artist to be hung on the wall of a connoisseur's house and admired. The masks in particular are a living part of the everyday life of ordinary people which help them during village ceremonies to express their feelings about the society in which they live, their place in the complicated social structure, their fears, ambitions, frustrations and joys. Their life consists of an extremely complex interplay of religious, social and political forces carefully balanced to produce a stable but... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Non-Africans have, for centuries, looked down on the Africans as a 'backward' people, with an unsophisticated social organisation, a primitive way of life and a crude art. But though the well-known masks of carved and painted wood often look unfinished and unattractive to Western eyes, they also seem to have a strangely powerful secret life of their own which is disturbing because we are excluded from it. African art is, in fact, not 'art' at all, in the Western sense of something made by an artist to be hung on the wall of a connoisseur's house and admired. The masks in particular are a living part of the everyday life of ordinary people which help them during village ceremonies to express their feelings about the society in which they live, their place in the complicated social structure, their fears, ambitions, frustrations and joys. Their life consists of an extremely complex interplay of religious, social and political forces carefully balanced to produce a stable but adaptable framework for each individual to lead a fulfilled existence in harmony with nature and with his fellow men. They also have the benefit of a continuous tradition dating back some 9000 years.
It is against this background that Dennis Duerden, an artist and teacher who has lived and worked in Africa, sets the masks, bronzes, prehistoric rock paintings, textiles, pottery and architecture. His extraordinary sympathy and insight give even the newcomer to the subject the feeling of viewing the art of Africa, as it were, from the inside, instead of being, as so often in the past, merely an uncomprehending outsider. Vissza