FÖRSTER, TILL

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French-speaking nations, which – thanks to the mediation of translators andpublishers in the United States, where African philosophy has made a signiﬁcantacademic impact and presence – have become an essential part of the resources ofthe English-speaking African school.Prime examples of such crossing are the works of V. Y. Mudimbe and PaulinJ. Hountondji. In this respect, one can contrast A Short History of AfricanPhilosophy with Grégoire Biyogo’s Histoire de la philosophie africaine, Livre II(l’Harmattan, 2006), which makes no mention of any work in African philosophyin the English language, or of an English-speaking African philosopher otherthan when he lists (pp. 216–17) some philosophers by their countries of origin.This expanded and updated edition of Hallen’s work will be a valuable asset asa highly accessible reference, not only for the undergraduate student, but also forgraduates and researchers.D. A. MASOLOUniversity of Louisvilleda.masolo@louisville.edudoi:10.1017/S0001972012000447MONICA BLACKMUN VISONÀ, Constructing African Art Histories for theLagoons of Côte d’Ivoire. Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing(hb £65 – 978 1 40940 440-8). 2010, 216 pp.Monica Blackmun Visonà is one of the few scholars who have done extensiveﬁeldwork in the south-eastern part of Côte d’Ivoire – a region largely neglected byAfrican art studies. Her book is an account of research conducted on the arts ofthe peoples living in the area and of her own ﬁeld research. Visonà invites thereader to follow her own experience since she started to do ﬁeldwork. Herdocumentation is based on three stays between 1981 and 1989, complemented byresearch in colonial archives. As an art historian, Visonà begins with a review ofdisciplinary assumptions that were taken for granted in the early 1980s when shestarted her ﬁeldwork. Visonà writes that she intended to focus ‘upon speciﬁccultures rather than upon theoretical questions’ (p. 9). This did not free her,however, from working within widely held assumptions of the time, such as the‘one tribe, one style’ equation or the decline of artistic practices with modernity.How Visonà became aware of such disciplinary shortcomings while conductingher ﬁeldwork is a thread that winds through much of the ﬁrst half of the book.Visonà insists repeatedly that she is an art historian, which appears a little datedas the ﬁeld of African art studies is thoroughly interdisciplinary. The chapternevertheless ends with a page on ‘new disciplines and subdisciplines’ (p. 23),where she claims that visual culture studies would perhaps contribute more to theunderstanding of Lagoon arts than conventional anthropology and art history.Visonà adopts a constructivist approach, identifying eight ‘styles’ and aresidual category that covers the artworks that do not ﬁt into one of the otherstyles. She builds her categories both on iconography and on style (proportion,shape and alignment). She outlines similarities and gives lists of masters and theartworks that they presumably have created. Almost all masters are anonymous.Some are identiﬁed by capital letters, many by a characteristic of their art, such as‘master of the huge hands’ (p. 80). Visonà’s attempt to construct a corpus ofLagoon sculpture is an impressive account of what can be said so far on the artcoming from this part of Côte d’Ivoire. What is missing is the social background.As the masters are identiﬁed by and through the artworks, it remains unclear towhat degree such styles were shared by more than one artist. As we know from506 BOOK REVIEWSof use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972012000459Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 14:56:12, subject to the Cambridge Core termsstudies of workshops in other parts of Africa, styles are often created through thecooperation of several artists who work together and exchange ideas regularly onhow a particular type of artwork should look. Whether this is a valid model forLagoon artists is a question that she does not raise.Visonà goes on to analyse art in the context of leadership and prestige. Here,she looks at artistic forms as part of expressive culture, in particular at art in thecontext of age grade ceremonies. The usual distinction of ﬁne and performing artsis abandoned in favour of an integrative analysis. Visonà comes back to herearlier statements about modern concepts and genres that do not ﬁt African arts.Though this debate peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, it is still worth rememberingwhat has been argued – in particular as the art market and its protagonistscontinue to reproduce Western notions.The ﬁnal section of the book is dedicated to ‘Lagoon artists in a global context’.Visonà ﬁrst traces how Lagoon artworks found their way into modernity and howthey were appropriated by the artworld as a global institution. She looks at thecomplexity of the relations that inform the exchange in the artworld. Her mainexample is Emile Guebehi, who is known for his life-size ﬁgures that are bothcommissioned by private collectors and local age-grade associations. Besides,he has powerful patrons as the former director of the National Museum, andsome of his work has been on display in New York. The divergence betweeninterpretations of Guebehi’s sculptures is striking: while some see it as a ‘hybrid’art that comments on Western notions of male consumption and femaleseduction, others claim that the sculptures record the history of the Ebrié andillustrate past events (pp. 172–3).Visonà adopts an art historian’s perspective, but the book raises morequestions, in particular about the present. Her empirical data mainly stem fromthe 1980s, which makes it all the more interesting to ask how Lagoon arts looktoday, after the end of the crisis that has rocked the country since the turn of thenew century. Monica Blackmun Visonà has published a book on the arts ofthe Lagoon people that will stand as a reference, particularly as the conﬂict hasinhibited many art historians from continuing their studies in the country.TILL FÖRSTERUniversity of Baseltill.foerster@unibas.chdoi:10.1017/S0001972012000459FERNANDO ARENAS, Lusophone Africa: beyond independence. MinneapolisMN and London: University of Minnesota Press (pb £14 – 978 0 81666 984 4).2011, 368 pp.This book sets out to draw on globalization and post-colonial studies in analysingLusophone Africa. There is much about these countries that would appear todefeat the purpose of looking at them as a coherent conceptual entity. To beginwith, nature has not been fair to all of them. Angola and São Tomé and Príncipehave oil; Cape Verde is a largely dry archipelago with a seemingly industriouspopulation that appears to have made the best of remittances from its migrantsand tourism; Mozambique is, as far as natural resources and size are concerned,richer than Guinea-Bissau but poorer than Angola. Moreover, their post-colonialpolitical fortunes are disparate. These different political paths in the aftermath ofindependence do not seem to suggest any obvious link back to their commoncolonial past that would help account for the differences. It is against thisbackground that Fernando Arenas’s book should be read.507BOOK REVIEWSof use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972012000459Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 14:56:12, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Book Review: Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d'Ivoire: VISONÀ MONICA BLACKMUN , Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d'Ivoire. Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing (hb £65 - 978 1 40940 440-8). 2010, 216 pp

Book Review: Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d'Ivoire: VISONÀ MONICA BLACKMUN , Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d'Ivoire. Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing (hb £65 - 978 1 40940 440-8). 2010, 216 pp

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