African Art in Transit

An analysis of the African art trade, looking at how the value and meaning of art is transformed as objects move from one culture to another.

Christopher B. Steiner (Author)

9780521457521, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1994

240 pages, 42 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.39 kg

"'African Art in Transit' is an important contribution to African studies as a whole, and the anthropology of African art and economics in particular. A detailed and lucid ethnographic account of the way in which middlemen construct value in the art markets in Abijan, Cote d'Ivoire, it is, for the field to date, the most theoretically informed study of authenticity as a construct, and as it is used in the market to create value. For African art, it is a landmark study for the ways in which it brings social and economic theory to bear on the creation of surplus value through bargaining processes, that is, through the competitive 'meditation of knowledge' in the art market." Jonathan Zilberg, The International Journal of African Historical Studies

African Art in Transit is an absorbing account of the commodification and circulation of African art objects in the international art market. Christopher Steiner's analysis of the role of the African middleman in linking those who produce and supply works of art in Africa with those who buy and collect so-called 'primitive' art in Europe and America is based on extensive field research among the art traders in Côte d'Ivoire. Steiner provides a lucid interpretation which reveals not only a complex economic network with its own internal logic and rules, but also an elaborate process of transcultural valuation and exchange. By focusing directly on the intermediaries in the African art trade, he unveils a critical new perspective on how symbolic codes and economic values are mediated in the context of shifting geographic and cultural domains. He questions conventional definitions of authenticity in African art by demonstrating how the categories 'authentic' and 'traditional' are continually redefined.

Introduction: the anthropology of African art in a transnational market
1. Commodity outlets and the classification of goods
2. The division of labor and the management of capital
3. An economy of words: bargaining and the social production of value
4. The political economy of ethnicity in a plural market
5. The quest for authenticity and the invention of African art
6. Cultural brokerage and the mediation of knowledge
Conclusion: African art and the discourses of value.

Subject Areas: International trade [KCLT], Anthropology [JHM], Folk art [AFTB]