Les statues meurent aussi

Title: Les statues meurent aussi

Director: Chris Marker and Alain Resnais

Writer: Chris Marker

Year: 1953, France

Running time: 30 minutes

Plot summary:

Les statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die) is a French documentary film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais released in 1953. It was sponsored by the panafrican magazine Présence africaine. Willing to answer to the question "Why African art is at the Musée de l’Homme, while Greek or Egyptian art is at the Louvre?", the two directors denounced the lack of consideration for African art in the context of colonization. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonialist approach.

"When men are dead, they enter history. When statues are dead, they become art. This Botany of death is what we call culture". So begins the controversial documentary which raises the question of the difference between Western art and African, but particularly focuses on the reasons why occidental art tends to underconsider or destroy what it does not understand.

Parcours des Mondes

Show: Parcours des Mondes. Les salon International des Arts Premiers

Date: Wednesday 8^th to Sunday 12^th October 2010, 11:00 to 19:00

Place: Quartier des Beaux-arts à Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris (France)

Galeries along streets Rue des Beaux-Arts, de Seine, Jacques Callot, Mazarine, Guénégaud, Visconti, Jacob and de l’Echaudé.

Webpage:  www.parcours-des-mondes.com

Admission: Free

Organizer: Tribal Art (www.tribalartmagazine.com)

Comments:

Parcours des Mondes  is the most important show of art by quality and diversity of its participants. Since 2002, it collects each year in Paris sixty galleries specializing in the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. During the second week of September, German galleries, American, British, Australian, Belgian, Canadian, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Swiss join their colleagues in Paris permanently installed in the area of Fine Arts in St. Germain-des-Prés.

In this exceptional concentration of works and experts in the form of an open living room with free access, visitors can browse through the quaint streets of this historic district. Each gallery offers an intimate and personalized presentation of unknown masterpieces from Africa or Oceania, the ethnographic works more affordable and sought after by collectors.

The largest international traders will offer to fans and collectors from all over the world masterpieces of Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas as well as beautiful ethnographic objects at a more affordable cost.

The success of the show is due to a combination of complementary elements: a healthy art market, the growing appetite of fans for these arts, efforts by merchants to propose thematic exhibitions of quality and vigilance of the organizers in terms of quality and expertise of exhibits.

With a dozen countries represented among the sixty galleries that participate in the event, this year Paris will be again the capital of primitive arts.

The art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs

© 2008, by A.Baghirzade

Azerbaijan Ministry of Culture & Tourism

The art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs combines poetry, storytelling, dance and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art that stands as a symbol of Azerbaijani culture. Characterized by the accompaniment of the saz, a stringed musical instrument, the classical repertoire includes 200 songs, 150 literary-musical compositions known as dastans, nearly 2,000 poems in different traditional poetic forms and numerous stories. The regional variations may include other musical instruments, but all are united by a common national language and artistic history. Ashiqs take part in weddings, friendly parties and festive events throughout the Caucasus and appear on concert stages, radio and television, sometimes synthesizing classical melodies with contemporary ones as they continue to recreate their repertoire. Their art is considered an emblem of national identity and the guardian of Azerbaijani language, literature and music. Even as Ashiqs represent the consciousness of a people, they also help to promote cultural exchange and dialogue: Kurds, Lezhins, Talishes, Tats and other ethnic groups living in the country often perform the Ashiqs’ art, and their poems and songs have spread across the region.
Inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
© Text and videos: UNESCO

Fleuve Congo, Arts d'Afrique Centrale

FLEUVE CONGO: ARTS D'AFRIQUE CENTRALE
22nd June to 3rd October 2010, Musée du quai Branly, Paris

©Musée du quai Branly

This summer, the musée du quai Branly will showcase 170 major works and eighty documents as part of an important exhibition devoted to the artistic traditions of Central Africa, namely Gabon, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A real trip of initiation that will take the visitor from the forests in the north to the savannahs in the south, the exhibition brings out the links existing between the works produced in the areas lying on the banks of the majestic Congo River by various communities which speak the Bantu language.
Behind the variety of masks and Fang, Hemba, Kwele or Kota sculptures, the exhibition highlights the major works emanating from Central Africa, in their conception, their structures and the artistic links that bring them closer.
The three themes of the exhibition, fundamental in the life of these image-loving peoples, are complementary:
·the "heart shaped face" masks and statues ensuring the unity and identity of the respective groups;
·the importance of the founding ancestor and the eminent members of his lineage;
·the representation of women in the kingdoms of the savannah, balancing the authority of men, linked to the mystery of regeneration of the earth, agriculture and human life.
The relationships between the cultures of the forested areas andthose of the savannahs are expressed in the material culture. Beyond the institutional and cultural transformations, the cultural unity of Central Africa is undeniable. It is an entire heritage of humanity, so often cut up into cultural groups separated by colonial borders, which comes to the fore. Beyond the differences between various communities, there are in fact common styles and usages which make it possible to get a better understanding of the masterpieces that have been showcased here. (François Neyt)

Hoa Hakananai'a

Name: Hoa Hakananai'a
Origin: Orongo, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Polynesia
Date: around AD 1000
Museum: British Museum, London
Dimensions: 55 centimetres from front to back, 2.42 metres high 
Weight: around 5 tons
Comments:
Easter Island is famous for its stone statues of human figures, known as moai. Hoa Hakanania'a means ‘Stolen or Hidden Friend'.
The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around AD 1000 until the second half of the seventeenth century, when the birdman cult became more central to the Easter Islanders.
When Captain Cook's crew visited Easter Island in 1774, William Hodges, Cook's artist, produced an oil painting of the island showing a number of moai, some of them with hat-shaped stone 'topknots'. Hodges depicted most of the moai standing upright on stone platforms, known as ahu. With the adoption of Christianity in the 1860s, the remaining standing moai were toppled.
This example was probably first displayed outside on a stone platform, before being moved into a stone house at the ritual centre of Orongo. It was collected by the crew of the English ship HMS Topaze, under the command of Richard Ashmore Powell, on their visit to Easter Island in 1868 to carry out surveying work.
Islanders helped the crew to move the statue, which has been estimated to weigh around four tons. It was moved to the beach and then taken to the Topaze by raft.
The figure was originally painted red and white, though the pigment washed off in the sea. The crew recorded the islanders' name for the statue, which is thought to mean 'stolen or hidden friend'. They also acquired another, smaller basalt statue, known as Moai Hava, which is also in the collections of the British Museum.
Hoa Hakananai'a is similar in appearance to a number of Easter Island moai. It has a heavy eyebrow ridge, elongated ears and oval nostrils. The clavicle is emphasized, and the nipples protrude. The arms are thin and lie tightly against the body; the hands are hardly indicated.
The back of the figure is carved with designs, believed to have been added at a later date. The back of the head shows a bird flanked by ceremonial paddles. The centre of the back is carved with a 'ring and girdle' motif, as carved on many wooden figures from Easter Island.
© Photos and text: British Museum