Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba

Suzanne Preston Blier is Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts. Her first book, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge, 1987) won the Arnold Rubin prize. Her second book, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (1995), won the Charles Rufus Morey Prize. Other books include African Royal Art: The Majesty of Form (1998), Butabu: Adobe Architecture in West Africa (2003) and Art of the Senses: Masterpieces from the William and Bertha Teel Collection (2004). She was a member of the Collège de France International Scientific and Strategic Committee (2011–13) and is on the board of the College Art Association. Her past fellowships include CASVA (Paul Mellon Senior Fellow, the National Gallery of Art), John Simon Guggenheim, the Radcliffe Institute, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Fulbright Senior Research, Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Getty Center for the Study of Art.

• Introduction: art, risk, and creativity; Part I. Art, Risk, and Identity: 1. Art making: artists, subjects, technologies, and media; 2. Experiencing art: sight, site, and perspectives of viewing; 3. If looks could kill: aesthetics and political expression; 4. Embedding identity: marking the Ife body; Part II. Politics, Representation, and Regalia: 5. A gallery of portrait heads: political art; 6. Animal avatars: art, identity, and the natural world; 7. Crowning glory: the art and politics of headgear; 8. Battling with symbols: scepters, staffs, and seats; Conclusions.

'First encountered by foreign observers a century ago, the arts of ancient Ife have since astonished and baffled scholars and connoisseurs alike. Blier's research, Shakespearean in scope, at last connects these sublime sculptures to a tumultuous past and a vital present.' Donald J. Cosentino, University of California, Los Angeles