Research Catalog

Title

El Anatsui : the reinvention of sculpture / Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu.

Author

Enwezor, Okwui

Publication

• [Bologna] : Damiani, [2022]
• ©2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Anatsui, El, 1944-
• Okeke-Agulu, Chika

Description

359 pages : color illustrations, portrait; 32 cm

Summary

Written by two acclaimed scholars Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, El Anatsui, is the most comprehensive, incisive and authoritative account yet on the work of El Anatsui, the world-renowned, Ghanaian-born sculptor. The product of more than three decades of research, scholarship and close collaboration with the artist, this book shows why his early wood reliefs and terracottas, and the later monumental metal sculptures, exemplify an innovative critical search for alternative models of art making.The authors argue that the pervasiveness of fragmentation as a compositional device in Anatsui's oeuvre invites meditation on the impact of colonization and postcolonial global forces on African cultures. At the same time, the simultaneous invocation of resilience and fragility across his media invests his abstract sculptures with iconic power. Insisting on the intimate connection between form and idea in Anatsui's work, the authors show how, in his critically acclaimed metal works, the manual work of flattening, cutting, twisting, and crushing bottle caps and using copper wires to suture and stitch the elements into one dazzling, reconfigurable epic piece serves as a powerful metaphor for the constitution of human society. This book presents Anatsui as a visionary of incomparable imagination. Yet, it places his work within a broader historical context, specifically the postcolonial modernism of mid-twentieth-century African artists and writers, the cultural ferment of post-independence Ghana, as well as within the intellectual environment of the 1970's Nsukka School. By recovering these histories, and subjecting his work to vigorous analysis, the authors show how and why Anatsui became one of the most formidable sculptors of our time.

Alternative Title

Reinvention of sculpture

Subject

• Anatsui, El, 1944- > Criticism and interpretation
• Anatsui, El, 1944-
• Artists, Black > Ghana > Criticism and interpretation
• Artists, Black > Nigeria > Criticism and interpretation
• Sculptors > Exhibitions
• Sculpture, Ghanaian > Exhibitions
• Sculpture, Nigerian > Exhibitions
• Installations (Art) > Ghana > Exhibitions
• Installations (Art) > Nigeria > Exhibitions
• Sculpture, Ghanaian
• Art, Ghanaian
• Criticism and interpretation
• Artists, Black
• Sculptors
• Sculpture, Nigerian
• Installations (Art)
• Ghana
• Nigeria

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Exhibition catalogs.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Preface -- El Anatsui and modern African art -- "Go back and pick": new models of experimentation -- The aesthetic and rhetoric of fragmentation -- The metamorphic form, or "no condition is permanent" -- The epic and triumphant scale -- Bibliography -- Appendix 1: Narrative chronology / by Damian Lentini -- Appendix 2: Exhibition history and bibliography -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Authors' biography -- Index

Call Number

Sc+ G 23-24

ISBN

• 8862087632
• 9788862087636

LCCN

2022430449

OCLC

1273678232

Author

Enwezor, Okwui, author.

Title

El Anatsui : the reinvention of sculpture / Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu.

Publisher

[Bologna] : Damiani, [2022]

Copyright Date

©2022

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Subject

Black author.

Added Author

Anatsui, El, 1944-

Okeke-Agulu, Chika, author.

Research Call Number

Sc+ G 23-24