An investigation of the methods employed by art historians who study creative production in Africa. While providing insights into the rich visual arts of the Lagoon Peoples of south-eastern Cote d'Ivoire, this study is one of the few attempts by an Africanist to situate local and regional artistic practices in the context of the global art market, and to trace the varied receptions an African art work is given as it leaves a local context and enters an international one. Drawing on her three seasons of fieldwork among Akan populations in Cote d'Ivoire, Monica Blackmun Visona provides a comprehensive account of a major art-producing region of Africa, and explores such topics as gender roles in performance, the role of sculpture in divination, and the interchange of arts and ideas across ethnic boundaries. 216pp, UK. ASHGATE.

The Guro people of the Ivory Coast are renowned for their rich mask and sculpture traditions. These objects are used in a variety of social and spiritual ceremonies. Art ethnologist Eberhard Fischer has spent decades researching the Guro traditions and documenting their way of life. In this book he presents a collection of hundreds of images, many of them published for the first time, of masks and woodcarvings, as well as lively scenes of Guro dances and artisans at work. Numerous interviews with prominent Guro, including religious officials, carvers, weavers, dancers, and cult masters, enhance the appreciation of this society. Notes, bib, 581 illus (383 in colour), maps, 520pp, GERMANY. PRESTEL.

An essay exploring Baule notions of personhood as they relate to the carved images that are created either as intermediaries to the spirits of the natural world, or to individual spirit mates that each human possesses. The text is well illustrated with images of Baule works of art held in the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles. Bib, 47pp, USA. UCLA FOWLER MUSEUM OF CULTURAL HISTORY.