Eisenhofer, Stefan. African Art. Los Angeles, CA: Taschen America, 2010.

With examples from every region of the continent - from Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo as well as a dozen other countries including Madagascar and South Africa - this book demonstrates the wide variety of African art, describing the social and religious background without which this art, which today is increasingly threatened with extinction, could not be understood.

[Source: Amazon].

Diakonoff, Serge. L’âme de l’Afrique: masques et sculptures [Africa’s Soul: Masks and Sculptures].Paris: les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2008.

This book sheds light on the incredible paradox that characterizes African art as it is both diverse and consistent. It shows, through the study of statuettes and masks, what is specific to the African intellectual nature and its contribution to mankind’s cultural and intellectual history.

[Source: Decitre.fr].

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Coquet, Michèle. Arts de cour en Afrique noire [Court Arts in Black Africa]. Paris: ABiro, 1996.

African royalties, such as the ones found in the East and the West, engaged artists’ services. Royal power relied on arts to build itself, spread and impose their own aesthetics. In these societies with no writing, symbols of sovereignty, such as crowns, headdresses, scepters, thrones, etc., are real works of art that fully participate, through their diffusion, to the extension of royal power.

[Source: Decitre.fr, adapted and translated from French].

Collier, Delinda. Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa. The Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas. Durham, N.C: University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012313

In Media Primitivism, Delinda Collier provides a sweeping new understanding of technological media in African art, rethinking the assumptions that have conceptualized African art as unmediated, primary, and natural. Collier responds to these preoccupations by exploring African artworks that challenge these narratives. From one of the first works of electronic music, Halim El-Dabh’s Ta’abir Al-Zaar (1944), and Souleymane Cissé’s 1987 film, Yeelen, to contemporary digital art, Collier argues that African media must be understood in relation to other modes of transfer and transmutation that have significant colonial and postcolonial histories, such as extractive mining and electricity. Collier reorients modern African art within a larger constellation of philosophies of aesthetics and technology, demonstrating how pivotal artworks transcend the distinctions between the constructed and the elemental, thereby expanding ideas about mediation and about what African art can do.

[Source: Duke University Press].

Cole, Herbert M., and Douglas Fraser, eds. African Art and Leadership. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972.

Fourteen thought-provoking essays by art historians, anthropologists, and historians analyze the complex interactions between art and leadership in sub-Saharan Africa. Amply and carefully illustrated throughout.

[Source: University of Wisconsin Press].

Cole, Herbert M. Icons: Ideals and Power in the Artof Africa. Washington, D.C: the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

This book looks at fundamental themes in African sculpture, shows a variety of iconic artworks, and describes their role in African society.

[Source: Amazon].

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