Description
The aesthetic qualities of the works produced by the Bamana of Mali (also called Bambara) long seduce Western eyes. The book presents these religious art while allowing the reader to find their social and cultural dimensions. In fact, any plastic creation activates a network of complex values, sometimes only accessible to a few insiders, but still deeply rooted in a system of thought and a lifestyle that only the anthropological field research can try to approach and study. To place the works in their local context, the book reviews the initiations of young and funerals, basic rites of passage which one can not escape. For the conduct of rituals, each of these associations staged a large number of artistic productions. Their aesthetic qualities are essential criteria for assessing the Bamana looking to their religious and political powers are sublimated in a logic combining formal and conceptual efficiency.