Art of Tropical Africa [antikvár]

F, di tor's NoteToday, no one doubts the tremendous aesthetic value oj African art, especially of the world renowned sculptures of West Africa. However, only fifty years ago all these remarkable works of unknown African artists deposited in museums of Europe and America among ethnographic collections brought from various African countries attracted neither artists,, nor connoisseurs, nor art historians.African sculptures were studied only by ethnographers who concentrated mainly on everyday life of the Africans. For this reason, we shall not find the estimation of these objects from the viewpoint of their artistic value in the brilliant works of Leo Frobenius on secret societies and masks of Africa, on carved pictures of Cameroon boats, on the nature of African sculpture or in the "Studies of Comparative Ethnography" by André.The same is true of an interesting work by Paul Hermann, treating of wooden plastics of Cameroon peoples which gives important information on masks, sculpture and carved pictures on the platbands of windows and doors, which decorated houses and palaces in the steppe region of this country.The first, purely art study, works in which we find an aesthetic appraisal of African sculpture are apparently the two works written simultaneously by Carl Einstein and V. I. Matvei (Markov). The former was published in 1915 under the title name "Negro Plastics". Written during the years of the First World War, the book would have never attracted anybody's attention if it had not been for the second edition that appeared in Munich in 1920. The theoretical arguments of Einstein are disputable in many respects, but there is quite a number of interesting theses. For example, C. Einstein was the first to observe that the present-day African sculpture was the result of a prolonged course of development. In the African art, Einstein asserts, there lies its own profound and very significant African culture. "A present-day Negro", he sayst "corresponds to a 'Negro of Antiquity' about in the same way as a fellah to an ancient Egyptian." It should be recalled that at the time these words were written the ancient African culture was almost unknown. No discoveries were as yet made of the Nok or Sao cultures, no Benin bronzes were collected and described by F. Luschan and very little was known of Ife terra-cottas. The conclusion on the ancient character of African art was made by C. Einstein exclusively on the basis of his studies of wooden plastics.The Russian artist Vladimir Ivanovich Matvei (Markov), Einstein s contemporary, studied African art in the museums of Western Europe in 19121913. A graduate from the Petersburg Academy of Art, Matvei was interested in the art of the middle-age Europe, early Gothic and Renaissance, and Byzantine art and was then carried away by the sculptures of the peoples of Africa and Oceania. In 1914, he completed his research into African wooden sculpture, but the work was published only after his death. He died in the summer of 1914 and the war that broke out interfered with the publication of his book. It was published in 1919 in Petrograd by the department of fine arts of the People's Commissariat of Education.''The art of Negroes is a serious and independent art with its strict laws and traditions", writes Matvei. He asserts that African art is a great folk art which amazes us by its unusual forms but is artistically independent, rich and versatile. "This art", Matvei continues, "is unrivalled anywhere in the world. Nowhere such plastics can be found."Unfortunately, Markov's work remained unknown to the art critics of Western Europe and America, because it was published in 1919, during the years of Civil War and Intervention. The works of these two researchers initiated a scientific study of African art. It will be expedient to emphasize this fact now, when the art of African peoples has become a special subject of study.This album reproduces the works of African art from the collections of the Soviet museums. The year 1958 witnessed the publication of a small book by D. Olderogge uThe Art of Peoples of West Africa in the Museums of the USSR". The book reproduced, mainly for the first time, the most interesting examples of African sculpture from the Moscow and Leningrad museums: the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after Peter the Great of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad and the Museum of Anthropology of the Moscow State University.This album includes all the exhibits reproduced in Olderogge's book and many new ones not published before including items from other museums and private collections.Among all collections of the Soviet museums that of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Leningrad is the richest. The name oj this museum will be abbreviated in18