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BOOKS 152 Afrique en Résonance: Collection du Musée Africain de Lyon Edited by Laurick Zerbini and Julien Bondaz Published in French by 5 Continents and the Musée Africain de Lyon, 2014 20 x 26 cm, 128 pages, more than 97 color illustrations ISBN: 978-88-7439-674-0 Softcover 30 euros The Musée Africain de Lyon is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding this year, a birthday that few institutions can boast of having attained. This has been the impetus for the publication of Afrique en Résonance. More than just a catalog, this book’s purpose is to present the museum’s rich collection for the first time. It is made up of more than 2,000 objects on permanent display and another 6,000 in storage. The museum’s collection is especially strong in objects from West African cultures. The essays penned by Africanists Joseph Adandé, Julien Bondaz, Pierre Boutin, Claude Prudhomme, and Laurick Zerbini are specifically about objects in the collection— the stories of their meaning, origin, context, and use. These are used as a springboard for shedding light on various facets of the arts of Africa. The Christian art of Ethiopia, the Yoruba twin cult of Nigeria, emblems of power, and the importance of animals in statuary and masking traditions, to name just a few, are all examined here. The essays are accompanied by nearly 100 illustrations of objects in the museum, and these are accompanied by field photographs from the Société des Missions Africaines de Lyon. Most of these are hitherto unpublished, and together they unveil a patrimony of works with which it is now important to become acquainted. Lalibela: Capitale de l’Art Monolithe d’Éthiopie By Jacques Mercier and Claude Lepage Published in French by Éditions Picard, 2013 24 x 30 cm, 344 pages, 355 color illustrations ISBN-978-2-7084-0966-8 Hardcover 54 euros The Christian art of Ethiopia has been the source of inspiration for many fine books. The most recent of these is Lalibela: Capitale de l’Art Monolithe d’Éthiopie, which appeared in November 2013 and was awarded the special juried prize at the 2014 FILAF (Festival International du Livre d’Art et du Film—International Festival of the Art Book and Film). Its authors, Jacques Mercier and Claude Lepage, who are affiliated with the CNRS, are two of the leading specialists in the field and have been devoted to the study of Ethiopia’s Christian art for several decades. Classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO, Lalibela sits atop the high plateaus of Ethiopia and is still a place of pilgrimage for the faithful. It is comprised of eleven rock-cut churches with sculpted walls that serve as the backdrop for sublime examples of religious art, including mural paintings, crosses, and illuminated manuscripts, reminders of the renaissance that took place in the Ethiopian kingdom several centuries after the fall of the former capital Aksoum. With its exceptional photography, this book is the first to present Lalibela in all its dimensions—archaeological, historical, cultural, artistic, and religious—emphasizing the unique nature of this remarkable place. Du fleuve Niger au fleuve Congo: Une Aventure Africaine By Claude-Henri Pirat; foreward by Anne-Marie Bouttiaux and preface by François Neyt Published in French with a translation in English by Primedia and Vision Publishers, 2014 35.5 x 25.5 cm, 322 pages, numerous black-andwhite photographs ISBN: 97890-7988-130-7 Hardcover 110 euros With the publication of this book, the corpus of works on African art now has a true “author’s book.” This is not the truism it might appear to be (what book does not have an author?) but a way of underscoring the absolute and decisive engagement of Claude-Henri Pirat, art collector and author of many other works on African art, in bringing this work to fruition. Not only did he write the twenty chapters that make up the book, in addition to the nearly 130 captions that shed light on the illustrations, but he also took the nearly 200 photographs in it, which depict African art objects he owns or has owned as well as the people and landscapes he has admired in the course of his many stays in various parts of the continent. The African adventure that the subtitle refers to was in every way his own. This particular adventure has included encounters with the major figures in the field of African art, aesthetic experiences, and in-depth discussion of complex and sensitive subjects like notions of expertise, the age of artworks, and how these unique creations should be presented in our Western museums.


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