The Essential Art of African Textiles:Design Without End (review)

The Essential Art of African Textiles was published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 30, 2008, to March 22, 2009. Along with honoring the acquisition of the textile/sculpture "Between Earth and Heaven" by the renowned Ghanaian artist El Anatsui—surely destined to be one of the most highly regarded African artists of the twenty-first century—the goal of this book was to explore the role of textiles in Africa as a form of creative expression and an inspiration for other types of art, including painting, photography, sculpture, and video.

Both explicitly and implicitly the book argues for the importance of textiles in African art forms. As LaGamma notes in her essay "The Poetics of Cloth," Western scholars and collectors of African art have often failed to give textiles the proper attention they deserve. "Despite abundant evidence of their cultural importance," she notes, "textiles have invariably been relegated to a secondary status in Western assessments of African art. Ironically, this has occurred while traditional patronage of sculpture—the African art form most valued outside of Africa—has declined in most of the continent over the last century. The production of textiles, in contrast, continues to be a vital creative activity and serves a great demand across West Africa" (9).

Comparing El Anatsui to a Renaissance artist inspired by ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, LaGamma and Giuntini skillfully compare contemporary African textiles (primarily from West Africa) to earlier examples from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of the older pieces—discussed individually in the second half of the book—were loaned by the British Museum and are important in their own right, both historically and aesthetically. For the nonspecialist, Giuntini's essay entitled "Techniques and Tradition" offers a concise introduction to the methods of weaving, dyeing, and embroidery most commonly practiced in West Africa, which allows for a greater appreciation of the artistry involved.

Although a few interpretations raise questions (for example: was the North African artist Rachid Koraïchi really inspired by the "vertical strip" that is so ubiquitous in West Africa? [16–17]), overall this book makes a wonderful contribution to the study of African textiles and African art in general. Many works of contemporary art, such as the sculpture "Nigerian Woman Shopping" by Sokari Douglas Camp and the painting "100 Years" by Yinka Shonibare, are best understood not just as pieces of "art" in the Western sense but as responses to the rich history of textiles in Africa.

In short, this book is more than just a catalogue; it represents a new baseline for evaluating and appreciating the full range of contemporary African art.