Result of the research : 'gouro'
Maître de Bouaflé
Simone Breton en 1927. Man Ray
Mask Gouro Maître de bouaflé
Vente record pour un masque ayant appartenu au surréaliste André Breton masque Gouro de Côte d’Ivoire a atteint la somme respectable de 1 375 000 euros
Mask Gouro Maître de bouaflé
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The Authenticity of African Sculptures
by Henri Kamer
The issue of authenticity of African art has been central to collectors for decades. Henri Kamer, who was president of the International Arts Experts Association at the time, published an outstanding account of the state of the matter in Artes d'Afrique Noire, No. 12 (1974). The text that follows is extracted from an English translation of that article, and has been edited further. The original includes a number of illustrations. They are not included here because I believe the text suffices without them.
The original version, including the illustrations, in French and with the English translation, is
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Guro
Living among the Baule and Yaure west, the Malinke north and south wé and Bete. The Guro live in an area covered by savannah and forest. They migrated from the north during the XVI and is now number two hundred thousand, they were called but when Kweni were colonized between 1906 and 1912 the French invaders, gave them the name of Guro. Guro villages consist of round houses in the north and rectangular in the south. Each village is governed by a council of elders, representing each family, and secret societies. The Guru mainly grow cotton, rice, coffee and cocoa, men and women involved clearing plantations.
The Guro Art is an art and elegant masks consists mainly of elongated figures with a concave profile and almond eyes.
Masks:
Different types of masks can be noticed. In the western part of the country Guro masks have a pointed chin, a protruding mouth, almond-shaped eyes bulging and a high forehead sometimes decorated with scarification. They have an apotropaic function but are also worn by executioners during executions.
The southern style is influenced by that of the neighboring tribe, the Bete. Their masks are identifiable, thanks to their more naturalistic features, their scars on his forehead, triangular noses and eyes surrounded by incised scarification, they are sometimes called masks Guro-Bete
Another type of mask found in this region, has a bulging forehead, a snub nose
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Who are the Baule?
About three million people living mainly in central Ivory Coast are defined as Baule. Yet after a closer study it semblairaient these men identify with villages or village clusters (ranging from 4 to 12) as an ethnic group. although the Baule ethnic reality remains msytérieuse can not be denying the existence of a style Baule. artists who use this style talk Baule and abroad their art is known as Baule for over a century.
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The eyelids are lowered but the eye is not completely closed. This is thus not about a dream. But what can one see
well under these conditions? They say they look beyond, this world that we cannot see normally but which the mask
can contact. The people of Africa imagined the dances of the masks to try to regulate problems which emerged to
the alive ones because of the dissatisfaction of the spirits. The dancer is thus inhabited by the spirit that the
mask represents, and he translates it in its dance. The masks themselves are secondary even if we are struck by
their plastic quality and the extreme diversity of the forms, even in the same ethnic group. However similar
plastic solutions are rather largely found. Thus the half-closed eye is a feature that we can find in many corpus.
The previous exhibition of the gallery L'Oeil et la Main presented a whole of masks portraits of the Cameroon and
there the eyes were wide opened. The fact to show the personnality of a character, not a state of intercession,
justifies the use of realism if this is that of the caricature. Quite to the contrary, in the present exhibition
we've selected various masks where the treatment of the eyes - any round
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Claude Lévi-Strauss
20th-century philosophy
Full name Claude Lévi-Strauss
Born 28 November 1908 (1908-11-28) (age 100)
Brussels, Belgium
School/tradition Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss; born 28 November 1908) is a French anthropologist.
Biography
Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Nicolas Poussin, whose work he later admired and wrote about. Lévi-Strauss's father was also a painter, and Claude was born in Brussels because his father had taken a contract to paint there.
At the Sorbonne in Paris, Lévi-Strauss studied law and philosophy. After an epiphany resulting from a late night conversation strolling around the grounds of True's Yard, King's Lynn with renowned cryptozoologist Lewis Daly,he did not pursue his study of law but agrégated in philosophy in 1931. In 1935, after a few years of secondary-school teaching, he took up a last-minute offer to be part of a French cultural mission to Brazil in which he
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African traditional masks
There are an enormous variety of masks used in Africa. In West Africa, masks are used in masquerades that form part of religious ceremonies enacted to contact with spirits and ancestors.
The Yoruba, Igbo and Edo cultures, including Egungun Masquerades and Northern Edo Masquerades. The masks are usually carved with an extraordinary skill and variety by artists who will usually have received their training as an apprentice to a master carver - frequently it is a tradition that has been passed down within a family through many generations. Such an artist holds a respected position in tribal society because of the work that he/she creates, embodying not only complex craft techniques but also spiritual/social and symbolic knowledge. African masks are also used in the Mas or Masquerade of the Caribbean Carnival.
African masks are made from different materials: wood, bronze, brass, copper, ivory, terra cotta and glazed pottery, raffia and textiles. Some African masks are colourful. Many African masks represent animals. Some African tribes believe that the animal masks can help them communicate with the spirits who live in forests or open savannas. People of Burkina Faso known as the Bwa and Nuna call to the spirit to stop destruction. The Dogon of Mali have complex religions that also have animal masks. Their beliefs are in three main cults - the Awa, cult of the dead, Bini, cult of communication with spirits and Lebe, cult of earth and nature. These three main cults nevertheless use seventy-eight different types of masks. Most of the ceremonies of the Dogon culture are secret, although the antelope dance is shown to non-Dogons. The antelope masks are rough rectangular boxes with several horns coming out of the top. The Dogons are expert agriculturists and the antelope symbolizes a hard working farmer.
Another culture that has a very rich agricultural tradition is the
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Claude Lévi-Strauss, né le 28 novembre 1908 à Bruxelles, est un anthropologue, ethnologue et philosophe français. Professeur honoraire au Collège de France, dont il a occupé la chaire d'anthropologie sociale de 1959 à 1982, et membre de l'Académie française, dont il est devenu le premier centenaire, il compte parmi les premiers théoriciens de la pensée structuraliste. Depuis ses premiers travaux sur les Indiens du Brésil, qu'il a étudiés sur le terrain entre 1935 et 1939, et la publication de sa thèse Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté en 1949, il a produit une œuvre scientifique dont les apports ont été reconnus au plan international. Il a ainsi consacré une tétralogie, les Mythologiques, à l'étude des mythes. Mais il a également publié des ouvrages qui sortent du strict cadre des études académiques, dont le plus célèbre, Tristes Tropiques, publié en 1955, l'a fait connaître et apprécier d'un vaste cercle de lecteurs. Biographie Enfance et formation
Claude Lévi-Strauss, issu d'une famille juive d'origine alsacienne, est né à Bruxelles de parents français. Son père était un peintre portraitiste, qui fut ruiné par l'arrivée de la photographie et son grand-père maternel était le rabbin de la synagogue de Versailles. Il fait ses études secondaires à Paris aux lycées Janson-de-Sailly et Condorcet ; puis des études supérieures à la faculté de droit de Paris (licence) et à la Sorbonne (troisième à l'agrégation de philosophie en
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- The exhibition « Africa Remix » in the Centre Pompidou from 25th of May until the 15th of August 2005, raised a panorama of African contemporary art.
A
Achi - Adangmé - Adio - Afar - Afo - Aka - Akan - Akyem -
Akwaim - Alagya - Aman - Amhara - Amba - Ambo - Angoni - Anga - Ankwé -
Ano - Anyi
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