" Au centre du monde "
Collective work edited by Francine Ndiaye.
Published in French and in Spanish by AMR Publicat Girona, 1999.
Format: 21 x 29.7 cm, 196 pp., 118 color illustrations, 21 B&W.
Softcover: 195 FF.
Illustrated with objects and antique photographs, this catalogue, which has been published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the city of Boulogne-Billancourt in France and the Caixa Foundation of Girona in Spain, addresses the art of the Plains Indians in all its originality and diversity. It includes essays by five French and Spanish authors who are specialists in Native American history and culture. Their studies explore the history of the Plains Indians, the role of women, religion, and the central importance of Vision in their culture. Although the Plains Indians created no monumental art and little sculpture, their artistic creations such as headdresses and ceremonial garments, horse trappings, weapons, and ritual objects survive as testimony to a unique and rich philosophy of life.
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Te Patu Tiki
Le Tatouage aux îles Marquises
By P. & M.-N. Ottino-Garanger.
Published in French by Ch. Gleizal Éditeur, Singapore/Moorea, 1998.
Format: 31,5 x 24,5 cm, 303 pp., 265 color illustrations, 145 B&W, 756 drawings and figs.
ISBN 2-913486-00-2.
Hardcover & case: 980 FF.
For information: Éditions Didier Millet, 62, rue du Couédic, 75014 Paris, Tel.: 01 43 22 45 66 -
Fax: 01 43 22 45 18 - E-mail: edmillet@easynet.fr
The art of tattooing is an important part of Marquesas Islands culture. On these islands, it was the skin that made the enata, a native of the Marquesas Archipelago. Though their society is dominated by oral tradition, the Marquesans have refined tattooing as a form of expression that allows a man to publicly expose the tangible, indelible, yet always changing image of his identity within his community. The images conveyed by tattoos in all their diversity were a source of beauty. They were symbols of knowledge and of the transmission of the collective memory, professing powers and serving as a means of teaching. Intimately linked to important stages of life change, tattoos were evidence of social recognition and admission within the clan. Chosen for their symbolic as well as aesthetic powers, the patterns protected the individual against disease and proclaimed his identity. Today, on the brink of a new era, they are coming back, a testament to the revitalization of the Marquesan cultural heritage.
The first of a series devoted to the art of tattooing in the islands of the Polynesian triangle, this remarkable book is based on the field work of archaeologist Pierre Ottino-Garanger and of ethnologist-anthropologist Marie-Noelle Garanger, with special thanks for the contribution of the late Henri Lavondès. The first section of this volume relates the history and the culture of the Marquesas Islands through the records of explorers and early residents. Next, the authors focus on the description of the art form, its symbolism, its function and its place in the Marquesan society. Finally, they study the ways tattoos are perceived and how they have evolved. Each of the 497 tattoo patterns listed is drawn, named, situated in its body location, and precisely described. A glossary and bibliography conclude this rich reference source.
This is an exhaustive and fascinating study of a little-known form of art. With its numerous and superb illustrations and its precise and complete text, this work constitutes an irreplaceable reference tool. One can only lament that an English translation has not been also offered.[back]
Secret Museum of Mankind
Anonymous
Reprinted in English by Gibbs Smith, Salt Lake City, 1999.
Format: 9" x 6", 576 pp, fully illustrated in B&W.
Softcover, $24.95.
This reprint of the frankly bizarre series of books from the early part of this century presents more than 1000 captioned black and white photographs depicting human activity from Africa to New Guinea to England. The new edition brings the original five volumes together into a single book with the addition of a brief foreword. The original editor and photographers remain uncredited. Originally published under the private imprint of "Manhattan House, New York," in a style then generally reserved for erotica, the series was clearly intended to provide a sensationalistic and stimulating tour of world cultures. Today it is an impressive document of Eurocentric attitudes that are themselves now a part of history, and its approach brings to mind the ways in which cultural documentation has and has not changed over the course of the century. But despite such captions as "Light-hearted aborigines enjoying dance and song," the grainy photographs remain interesting, often revealing the faces of indigenous peoples along with the art objects that have survived them to this day.[back]
Téké
Catalogue published in French by Galerie Ratton-Hourdé, Paris, 1999.
Format: 21 x 28 cm, 104 pp., 46 color illustrations, 2 B&W.
Softcover: 200 FF (available at the Gallery).
This new work follows the recent catalogue documenting a group of Bembe and Bwende sculptures, and is intended to accompany the exhibition of Teke art that the gallery showed this summer. It will be followed by another on Kongo art this fall. Teke sculpture is characterized by ritual figures, easily recognizable by the linear marks adorning the forehead and cheeks. The abdominal cavity of these fetishes is filled with a magic charge, and they bear a variety of power symbols, such as large iron-bladed axes, copper necklaces, and long elephant-hair chief's headdresses.[back]
Man Corn
by Christy and Jacqueline Turner.
Published in English by the University of Utah Press, 1999.
Format: 11 1/4" x 8", 552 pp, extensively illustrated in B & W.
Hardcover, $60.
The concept that the prehistoric Pueblo communities of the Southwest were pastoral utopias has been an ideal long accepted by many. In recent years, the history of this region has been reexamined, and the picture that is emerging is less engaging, but certainly far more typical of human culture, where warfare, flood, and famine figure as prominent elements of the cultural landscape. This new work, jointly authored by archaeologist and osteologist Christy Turner II of Arizona State University and his late wife Jacqueline, proposes additional unsavory elements: cannibalism and foreign political domination. Basing their research on generally obscure claims of evidence of cannibalism by other archaeologists, the Turners meticulously and exhaustively examine and discuss the human remains in question, covering more than seventy locations, primarily in the Chaco Canyon and Four Corners regions. In most cases, they confirm the existing interpretations, basing their findings on such evidence as tool marks on bones, breakage patterns, and signs of heating, burning, or cooking. The implications of widespread cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest are profound and, if true, demand extensive revision of specific historical interpretations and the more general perception of the region. In the final section of the book, the Turners take the first step in this direction, attributing the activity to the domination of the Chaco region by invaders from central Mexico. While they admit that their interpretations are not complete, their physical findings are difficult to deny, and this book stands as a milestone in what is certain to be a long and controversial rethinking of the history of the Americas.[back]
La Parole du Fleuve.
Harpes d'Afrique centrale
Collective work edited by Philippe Bruguière and Gaetano Speranza.
Published in French by the Cité de la Musique/musée de la Musique, and in English by éditions Klincksieck, Paris, 1999.
Format: 20,5 x 25 cm, 403 pp., 162 color illustrations, 229 B&W and figs.
Includes a compact disc.
ISBN : 2-906460-88-5.
Softcover: 320 FF. The CD is also sold separately for 85 FF.
Densely illustrated, this catalogue is associated with the exhibition organized by the Cité de la Musique/musée de la Musique. It contains essays by ethnomusicologists who have worked in different regions of Africa, along with a number of 19th century photographs and engravings. Following a geographical and historical overview, the authors explore the cultural and symbolic origins of the harp, as well as the various methods for manufacturing this instrument, which has been used in Africa for thousands of years: it appears in Egyptian reliefs and is represented in Saharan cave paintings. The color plates follow the text, grouped by subregions of the greater area under consideration, which reaches from the great lakes in the east to Gabon in the west. Drawn primarily from the collection of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, the objects illustrated are of very fine quality. The final section of this exciting catalogue provides detailed musical analysis and reproduces all of the objects from the exhibition in black and white. The instruments are sometimes carved to incorporate the form of a figure, or even the musician himself, and some sculptors have brought the production of harps to an artistic peak with their beauty of line and the execution of detail. This is a valuable reference work for those who are as interested in music as they are in sculpture.[back]
Peoples of the Northwest Coast:
Their Archaeology and Prehistory
by Kenneth M. Ames and Herbert D.G. Maschner.
Published in English by Thames and Hudson, New York, 1999.
Format: 10 1/4" x 7 1/4", 288 pp, 173 B&W illustrations, maps.
Hardcover, $45.00
For well over a century, the cultures of the Northwest Coast have been the focus of intense ethnographic and art historical research, yet the result has emphasized a distorted picture of static societies, of peoples without history. This new work by anthropologists from Portland State University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison brings together recent archaeological fieldwork and places the well-known nineteenth-century Northwest Coast cultures on a firm historical foundation that stretches back some 11,000 years. Their analysis ranges from aspects of the physical environment, such as the stabilization of the sea level and the establishment of salmon runs after 4000 B.C., to the development of warring societies based on slavery and hereditary nobility, to the emergence of the distinctive art forms of the region, beginning with 5000-year-old geometric petroglyphs. The book is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps, and technical drawings, and although the presentation is not elaborate, the early artifacts that it reveals are remarkable. It also reexamines the distribution of Northwest Coast art and culture, identifying objects of classical style with archaeological sites nearly 100 miles inland from the coast of British Colombia. This important account of Northwest Coast history is likely to remain definitive for many years to come.[back]
