Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba

Reviews / Votes

'First encountered by foreign observers a century ago, the arts of ancient Ife have since astonished and baffled scholars and connoisseurs alike. Blier's research, Shakespearean in scope, at last connects these sublime sculptures to a tumultuous past and a vital present.' Donald J. Cosentino, University of California, Los Angeles 'Blier deploys an understated rhetoric in this well-researched, historically grounded, thought-provoking analysis of Ife art, reverberating far beyond the field of African art history. ... her fresh arguments are ... precisely what had to be achieved by new critical scholarship on such a well-established corpus.' Ikem Stanley Okoye, University of Delaware 'As much a history of ancient Yoruba art as an investigation into the ways in which the creation, exhibition, and preservation of art are seriously risky ventures, Suzanne Preston Blier's magisterial new book brings medieval African art alive and reminds us that art and its meanings have been and will remain a subject of heated contention. This is the definitive analysis of the arts and civilization in the long and splendid history of the Yoruba culture.' Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'In the beginning of each of the chapters that are grouped under two parts, Blier's deep understanding of the subject, particularly as displayed in some of the Yoruba proverbs as well as similitudes from revered western artists and thinkers, is not in doubt.' Tajudeen Sowole, Nigerian Guardian '... a text that will quickly become the foundational work on Ife art and a model for art history as a multidisciplinary enterprise.' Eric Gable, African Studies Review