Baule: African Art, Western Eyes

  • Susan Mullin Vogel
Yale University Press, $60, 30
The striking masks made by the Baule people of the Ivory Coast are increasingly familiar objects in Western art galleries and museums. In Baule. African Art, Western Eyes (Yale University Press, $60, 30), Susan Mullin Vogel uses 25-years’ experience of living and working with the Baule to explore both the Western perception of the art and the use of the sculptures by the Baule people themselves. The book, containing many stunning photographs of both art and everyday life in West Africa, shows that the masks are part of a wider sculpture tradition embracing artefacts of many kinds And though some examples of the art, such as this Mblo rabbit mask, now in a Belgian collection, are everyday items in Baule life, others have a darker significance in which display plays no part.