Art of the Ancestors Winter 2019 Reading List

Sacred Carving with Monkey Skull | Jaraik
© The Dallas Museum of Art | Texas, USA

Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands
by Reimar Schefold

This book presents a detailed and inspiring picture of the traditional ways of life and the impressive art of the Mentawai archipelago located off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. This shamanistic culture, most notably found on the northernmost island of Siberut, maintains an ancient relationship between man and the spiritual world.

Within this worldview, everything is animated. Not only do humans have souls, but so do animals, plants and objects. To please these souls and to create harmony, alluring artifacts have been created for generations. In this way life, art, ritual and esthetics are intertwined: a notion reflected in the field photographs and in the beautiful and rare objects that are described and illustrated here. Toys for the Souls reveals the richness and creative power of an artistic imagination, deeply rooted in Southeast Asian prehistory.

Korwar: Northwest New Guinea Ritual Art According to Missionary Sources
by Raymond Corbey

This text builds upon the author’s previous work to present an illuminating, extensive, and well executed study of the art of New Guinea with particular focus on European missionary collections of korwar ancestor figures. Many of these items passed through temporary missionary exhibitions in the Netherlands during the first half of the 20th-century. While converting the missionaries collected, but they also destroyed, or had destroyed, at least as many items. This c.400 pp. monograph with 320 illustrations chronicles and analyzes such goings-on between c.1860 and c.1940, bringing missionary and other sources to bear on c.300 mostly unpublished ritual objects and their itineraries.

Raffles in Southeast Asia: Revisiting the Scholar and Statesman
by Stephen A. Murphy, Naomi Wang, Alexandra Green

Sir Stamford Raffles is known for establishing Singapore as a British port, as the author of The History of Java, and as a collector of natural history and cultural materials. Opinions of Raffles have changed over time: he has been viewed as a scholarly expert on the region, a progressive reformer, a committed imperialist, and even a plagiarizer.

This catalogue was produced to accompany the Raffles in Southeast Asia exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum, which was co-curated with the British Museum.

Ancestors & Rituals: Europalia Indonesia
by Daud Tanudirjo, Pieter ter Keurs, Francine Brinkgreve

From Sumatra to Java, from the Moluccas to Papua, across the whole of Indonesia, ancestors have played and still play a leading role. Ancestor cults and representations bear witness to an enormous diversity, power and poetry. This intriguing catalog was created by European experts in collaboration with prominent Indonesian scholars and illustrates works from the National Museum in Jakarta and numerous collections from various regions of the archipelago.

Traditional Weapons of Borneo: The Attire of the Head Hunters. Volume 1: Shields and War Clothes
by Albert van Zonneveld

This present publication is entitled Traditional Weapons of Borneo: The Attire of the Head-hunters. Volume I Shields and war clothes. This is the first book in an ambitous trilogy on the subject of martial culture in Borneo. Forthcoming volumes also authored by van Zonneveld concern spears, blowpipes, swords and knives respectively.

Oceania
by Peter Brunt, Nicholas Thomas, Noelle Kahanu, Emmanuel Kasarhérou, Sean Mallon, Michael Mel, Anne Salmond

This volume accompanies a major survey in London and Paris of art from Oceania. It brings together up-to-date scholarship by leading experts in the field, encompassing a dazzling array of objects from the region, including many that have never been published before. Also included are many works that have historically been overlooked, such as painted and woven textiles, elaborate wicker assemblages and expressively sculpted vessels, alongside works by artists working in Oceania today.

Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific
by Steven Hooper

This publication by Steven Hooper accompanied the major exhibition Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific which celebrated the incredible craft and richness of Fijian artworks. The exhibition was on at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts from 15 October 2016 to 12 February 2017.

War Art & Ritual: Shields from the Pacific
by Bill Evans

War Art & Ritual: Shields from the Pacific is the result of many years of planning by Sydney-based collector and art dealer Bill Evans. In the course of its development, he identified 140 previously unpublished shields in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia, and they are reproduced in these volumes as full-page plates with details and supporting field photos.

Indonesian Textiles at the Tropenmuseum
by Itie van Hout

The Tropenmuseum Amsterdam houses about 12,000 textile objects that were collected over a period of 160 years. The majority of the objects were amassed during the time that Indonesia was a Dutch colony, the former Netherlands-Indies. This study presents the collection and the stories of the makers and users of the fabrics as well as those of the collectors who brought them to the Netherlands, who have studied and exhibited them.

New Guinea Highlands: Art from the Jolika Collection
by John Friede, Terence Hays, Christina Hellmich

The Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco consists of hundreds of objects and represents hundreds of clans and villages throughout the island of New Guinea. This lavishly illustrated volume focuses on the Highlands—a region of rugged mountains, fertile valleys, and a civilization that dates back fifty thousand years.

Here, in more than six hundred pages, are intricately crafted shields, masks, and headdresses, along with other remarkable ceremonial and personal objects—the majority of which have never before been published or exhibited.

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. Art of the Ancestors does not receive a commission should any of our readers purchase the aforementioned books.

Art of the Ancestors is a strictly non-commercial educational platform and has no vested interest in the professional activities of the authors listed above. Their opinions are their own.