Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1035849 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-23
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 108 pages

From School Library Journal
YA-Three excellent series titles. Contemporary African Art emphasizes the changes in the art of this continent in the last half of the 20th century. Maya Art examines the reasons behind the artwork and ways the buildings were constructed, incorporating new archaeological findings. They include recent deciphers of Mayan writing that provide understanding to the ceramics, sculpture, architecture, murals, and books. Amazingly, op art and pop art have become almost traditional. With chapters on performance art (Rauschenberg), video, digital, and virtual reality, New Media truly introduces the new wave. The paper in these compact books is of high quality, resulting in outstanding, almost platelike reproduction of the numerous color and black-and-white photos. The illustrations are fully captioned and they alone could justify purchase of these titles.
Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
While respect for modern African art has been slow to develop in the Western world, Kasfir's book is solid evidence that attitudes are changing. Formerly, contemporary African art was seen as a deterioration and degradation of the traditional arts, which had only won grudging admiration in the West under the influence of the modernists. Over the last 15 years, a growing list of books re-evaluating modern African art have appeared, and Kasfir's is among the best and most thorough. Focusing primarily on the period from the 1950s into the 1980s, Kasfir (art history, Emory Univ.) analyzes the political and social dynamics that have shaped the many directions that modern African art have taken. The introduction usefully explores how the subject has been previously handled and explains the author's innovative approach. Accompanying the text are numerous illustrations, satisfactory in quality if sometimes too small or dark to be fully useful. This important milestone in our changing view of world art is highly recommended for any library with art holdings.
-Eugene C. Burt, Data Arts, Seattle
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Phillip Gwynne has won numerous prizes for his children’s fiction.

Customer Reviews

African Art
This book has great African Art. My great uncle Cecil Skotnes, whose artwork is in this book, has done great paintings. I find his art very interesting.

contemporary african art
Price wise the book is a bargain.But the author is a little conservative in choice of artists.Why great artists like Jane ALEXANDER and Osmane SOW are not listed.

A strong introduction to features and trends in African art.
This study provides an important examination of the major themes and accomplishments in African art over the past fifty years. Small black and white and a few color photos pepper the coverage but it's the orderly scholarship and history which will prove the attraction here, providing a strong introduction to the features and trends of modern African art.