Mossi: Visions of Africa Series
Christopher D Roy
5 Continents
165 x 240 mm
160 pages
62 colour and 21 b/w illustrations
Paperback
Subject:
A new volume in the successful series Visions of Africa edited by Constantin Petridis, Head Curator of African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. Devoted to the arts of Africa, each volume in the series is dedicated to a different ethnic group and authored by a leading expert in the field.The Mossi people of Burkina Faso have a rich and complex history that is mirrored by the several types and styles of figures and masks they create. The Mossi people came into being in around 1500 AD, when a large group of horsemen from what is now northern Ghana rode north into the valleys of the Volta Rivers and conquered the local farming peoples. The descendants of the conquering horsemen became the chiefs and used political art in the form of royal figures to validate their rule, while the descendants of the conquered farmers became the spiritual class and made masks that represent the spirits of nature, and whose geographical
style diversity mirrors the different peoples who were conquered in 1500 and welded into the Mossi people we know today. Unlike several other West African peoples, the Mossi have not converted to Islam in large numbers, and so they continue creating brilliant art much as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Until the 1980s there was much confusion about the accurate attribution of Mossi art to the people who created it. This book makes clear that the Mossi have continued to create brilliant art that they use to this day to express ideas
about politics and religion.
STATO: In Commercio
€ 35.00
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