African Style

by Stéphane Guibourgé, Frederic Morellec (Photographer)

Sisal, hemp, stone, wood, root, clay, terra nature has provided the raw materials. People, through their cultures, beliefs, and rites, have transformed them.

Ocher sand, white shells, red earth, brown bark...colors become one with the materials, giving our interiors an incomparable charm and naturalness.

Symbolic representations of an imaginary or animal world, they derive from a belief, a rite that speaks a language familiar to the soul, the heart, the unconscious.

Pure forms, clean lines...Art and crafts combine to offer the very essence of simplicity.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published December 8, 1998

About the author

Journaliste (Figaro magazine), romancier, Stéphane Guibourgé a publié deux recueils de nouvelles et sept romans dont, chez Flammarion, Le train-fantôme (2001) et Une vie ailleurs (2003).
Il fait également des photographies.

Reviews

[Sotiris Makrygiannis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was created to promote French galleries that sell African art by educating also the reader a bit about the art tradition. I like how Africans cut wood, for example in the Nordics a vase out of wood will not have any imperfections, on the contrary an African vase will incorporate all of them into a masculine form, a more raw and in essence more real form of a vase. A primative form but there is nothing wrong with that. Book claims that early European cubist copied African design, might be true, I don't know much about cubism in anyway this book was again a quick introduction to the style of a continent and I must say that I like it, so was good to see the galleries of France at the last page, hope soon in other EU countries.