African Sculpture Speaks

PABLO PICASSO: “…when the form is realized, it is there to live its own life.”

HENRY MOORE: “The sculpture which moves me most is full-blooded and self-supporting, fully in the round; giving out something of an energy and power of great mountains, it has a life of its own independent of the object it represents.”

African Art Speaks, the first full appraisal of African art published in the United States, describes and illustrates the sculpted works of more than 150 West African tribes.

Ladislas Segy approaches African art from several different but interrelated perspectives, considering the sculptures first as products of a distinct African culture, then as high-quality works of art. Seeking to bring the African carver’s work within the scope of the Western observer, Segy stresses the need for appraising African art within in its own context, suspending established procedures for art appreciation and viewing the object as it actually is, not as we think it is or should be.

Bringing to bear the disciplines of aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, and phenomenology, Segy shows how the deep-seated magico-religious beliefs of the tribal carver creates such powerful emotional tension in his work that the viewer can recapture this emotion and identify it as part of his own experience.

This present edition is the Third Printing, originally published in 1961, and provides a systematic Style Guide, analyzing the characteristic features of the different styles of tribal sculpture. A special chapter for the collector tells how to buy and care for African art. Segy also discusses the styles of the main sculpture-producing tribes in East and South Africa. Included are maps, a bibliography and a list of illustrations.

“While much has been written about African sculpture within recent years, Mr. Segy’s book is undoubtedly among the finest published in this country.”—The San Francisco Chronicle