BOOKS 154 Antique Native American Basketry of Western North America By Alan Blaugrund and John Kania. Photography by Anthony Richardson Published in English by Marquand Books, 2014 15 x 15”, 312 pages, 180 color illustrations, 21 maps ISBN-13: 978-0615984575 Hardcover: $125 The period between 1890 and 1930 is considered to be the “golden age” of Native American basket weaving. Ease of travel allowed tourism to flourish in what was then still considered to be the exotic West. Society was past the industrial revolution and experiencing the backlash of the arts and crafts movement, in which handcrafted goods were particularly appreciated. The Indian Wars were over and there was a widespread perception among Anglo Americans that Native American culture was dying out and should be documented. These factors created a rich environment for collecting Native American art, and one of the most popular genres was basketry. While most baskets from this period— which represent the overwhelming majority that we see today—were woven for sale rather than Native use, they are less tourist art than an evolution of an ages-old art form that was being repurposed. Today, identifying the makers of these baskets or even the culture they came from is a tricky business. This attractive volume by collector Alan Blaugrund and dealer and researcher John Kania specifically addresses this issue. Illustrated with remarkable examples from Blaugrund’s collection, it delves deeply into materials, manufacturing techniques, shapes, and patterns to allow for systematic identification of most examples produced from Texas to the California coast and from Mexico to the far north. This is a much-needed and beautifully realized addition to the literature about Native American basketry, which will enhance connoisseurship for years to come. Bateke: “The Fetishes” By Alain Lecomte and Raoul Lehuard Published by Éditions Alain Lecomte, 2014, as a bilingual French-English edition 25 x 30.5 cm, 306 pages, color illustrations ISBN: 978-2-9544167-1-7 Hardcover: 100 euros Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on sale through Galerie Alain Lecomte For several years now, Alain Lecomte has been producing art books. His latest work, devoted to the power sculptures—commonly referred to as “fetishes”—of the Teke is described in its own pages as an “iconographic research study on the corpus of objects we were able to discover in private and public collections and an in-depth study of the customs and mores of this great people.” With the exception of one by Raoul Lehuard titled “Religion,” the essays in this book are succinct and most are deliberately focused on the personal experiences and interactions with these objects that various individuals such as Georg Baselitz and José Bedia have had. This work’s strongest point is its eminently visual character. Most of the pieces in it are from the prestigious Raoul Lehuard Collection, which was assembled by his father, Robert. They are magnificently illustrated, life-size whenever possible, with photographs of a quality that makes it possible to appreciate the beauty of the materials that are so characteristic of this art. The result is a work that approximates a catalogue raisonné of Teke religious statuary. Nok: African Sculpture in Archaeological Context Edited by Peter Breunig Published in English by Africa Magna Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, October 2014 24 x 30 cm, 304 pages, color illustrations ISBN: 978-3-937248-46-2 Softcover: 49.80 euros Many art lovers will be able to identify with the experience of being frustrated by the fact that a new book on a subject of particular interest had appeared in a language he did not master. We freely admit that was how we felt in 2013 when a book titled Nok: Ein Ursprung Afrikanischer Skulptur was released in German in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition in Frankfurt. The book was edited by Peter Breunig, director of African archaeology at Frankfurt am Main’s Goethe University and the author of an article in this magazine’s autumn 2012 issue, which offered a preview of the book, which is a compilation of the results of in situ research on Nok art from Nigeria. This research began in 2005 and was conducted by a Goethe University team. It was the first investigation of major scope since Bernard Fagg’s work in the 1940s. Nok is one of Africa’s oldest and most emblematic art traditions and has also long been one of its most mysterious, given the lack of reliable information known about it. As such, this was a much-awaited publication, since it was hoped that it would shed new light on the subject. Barely a year later, in October 2014, we find ourselves pleasantly surprised by Africa Magna Verlag’s decision to publish an English version of the book, which includes essays by some twenty, mostly German authors and researchers, but also by archaeologists and curators of Nigerian collections. It is a work to be read and re-read for the fascinating insights it provides.
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