Papers by Sarah Brett-Smith
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1997
The Journal of African History, 2012
The Silence of Women: Bamana Mud Cloths is the first full-length scholarly book entirely devoted ... more The Silence of Women: Bamana Mud Cloths is the first full-length scholarly book entirely devoted to an African art form created by women. The mud-dyed textiles created by the women of the Bamana people in Mali, West Africa, have been treated as craft, but here these traditional mud cloths are presented as a complex art form. Author Sarah Brett-Smith illuminates the hidden cultural testimony written into the mud cloth patterns: women's silent and deeply reserved visual commentary on the events that dominate their lives-- excision, arranged marriage, childbirth and death. This book explores both art-historical and anthropological considerations of technique, style, symbolism and function in Bamana textiles and opens up areas of understanding that are closed to standard approaches. The Silence of Women is a major contribution to the study of female artisans/artists in Africa. With great sensitivity, subtlety and patience, Brett-Smith reconstructs the contours of an art form that ha...
Res: Anthropology and aesthetics, 2001
Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 1982
Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 1983
Why does this occur? This occurs because these lumps of dung are our tyrants. My purpose is to st... more Why does this occur? This occurs because these lumps of dung are our tyrants. My purpose is to study a category of objects that constitute the Bamana judicial structure: the Boli (plural, Boliw). Boliw are magical judges; they hear cases, evaluate evidence, divine the guilty ...
Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 1990
ideas take on material form as graphic signs. Among the Dogon these graphic signs infiltrate ever... more ideas take on material form as graphic signs. Among the Dogon these graphic signs infiltrate every aspect of a complex ritual life and provide diagrammatic models for a range of spectacular art objects. For example, Dogon men leave permanent marks upon the sheer cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpment in the form of painted red, black, and white signs that encode the esoteric knowledge available and restricted to Dogon men (fig. 1).1 Dogon men not only spread their graphic code across the sheer rock faces that dominate the Dogon landscape, but they also inscribe or model signs on the walls of sanctuaries. Signs are also used in more ephemeral situations: some are drawn onto the sand for divinatory purposes (Calame-Griaule 1986: 211-214). The Dogon view the earth they mark with graphic signs as feminine, having been created from the first primordial placenta; cultivated land and the bush correspond respectively to the placentas of two mythical beings, Amma and Yurugu (ibid.: 195, n. 110). The fact that the knowledge necessary for the interpretation and use of the esoteric Dogon sign systems is traditionally restricted to adult men and that these men inscribe their sacred signs on the "feminine" earth suggests that the use of such graphic systems incorporates and expresses ideas of masculine mastery and dominance. Griaule, Dieterlen, and Calame-Griaule all describe the signs of the male graphic systems as sharing a consistent aesthetic and conceptual structure (Griaule and Dieterlen 1951; Calame-Griaule 1986: 211-251). As in Western culture, it is the signs, the linear marks on the landscape, that define the bulk of the meaning within the graphic systems employed by Dogon men. The sanctuary wall, sheer rock face, or sandy soil remains an inchoate, "feminine" ground, a backdrop for the complicated meanings so beautifully described by Calame-Griaule (ibid.: 211-251). Throughout the male sign systems, meaning is attached to the mark made by the human hand, not to the spaces between marks. Given the plethora of information available concerning male graphic systems among the Dogon, it is legitimate to ask whether there are equivalent sign systems created by Dogon women. If so, are their aesthetics and graphic This article could not have been written without the help of Mr. Dogodiougou Dolo. I would like to express my deepest thanks to him and to my Dogon informants for their patience. In the United States I would like to thank Rachel Hoffman for generously sharing her research among the Dogon with me and Doran Ross, assistant director of the Museum of Cultural History at UCLA, for arranging for me to view the museum's Dogon textile collections. Warm thanks are also due to Kate Ezra, curator of African art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Primitive Art for her encouraging comments concerning an early version of this paper. I would like to thank Dr. Richard Simmons for his warm and ongoing support of my work and his stimulating questions. Thanks are also due to Roger Simmons for his comprehensive understanding of the famine situation in Mali and for creating a role for me and Mr. Dolo in famine relief efforts. Finally, I owe a great debt to my editor, Francesco Pellizzi, to whom the last, and much improved, form of this paper is due. In conclusion I would also like to thank the entire staff of the Mus?e National du Mali, especially its director, and Mr. Alpha Oumar Konar?, professor at L'ENSUP, Bamako, Mali. This article would not have come into being without the generous help of all my Malian colleagues. Kate Ezra provides the most recent, comprehensive bibliography of literature on the Dogon in her catalogue, Art of the Dogon: Selections from the Lester Wundermann Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988). 1. For the definitive study of Dogon graphic systems, see Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen (1951). According to Griaule, the Dogon manipulate several different sign systems, all ultimately related to myths that explain the creation and organization of the world (ibid., p. 7). Both Griaule and his colleague Dieterlen stress the complexity and the precision with which the Dogon interpret these signs and their crucial importance for an understanding of Dogon ritual and art. 164 RES 19/2
Res: Anthropology and aesthetics, 1997
Unfortunately, there is no single standard written form for Bamana and Malinke. The interviews us... more Unfortunately, there is no single standard written form for Bamana and Malinke. The interviews used as data for this article were transcribed by M. Seku Ba C?mara using the orthography preferred by the Direction Nationale de l'Alphab?tisation Fonctionelle et de la Linguistique ...
Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 1983
The colony of the Belgian Congo, the forerunner of mod-em Zaire, was created almost exclusively t... more The colony of the Belgian Congo, the forerunner of mod-em Zaire, was created almost exclusively through the personal interest and determination of the Belgian king, Leopold II (r. I865-I909). In I877 the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley journeyed down the Congo River and ...
Empirical Studies of the Arts, 1984
Bogolanfini are mud-dyed cloths painted by women of the Bamana tribe in Mali. Bogolanfini designs... more Bogolanfini are mud-dyed cloths painted by women of the Bamana tribe in Mali. Bogolanfini designs are regular geometric patterns, however they are invariably marked by “inaccuracies” and irregularities. It is argued in this article that these irregularities are not mistakes. Rather, they are intentional. The cloths are documents coding knowledge. The inaccuracies serve to conceal this knowledge from all but the initiated. They are analogous to the ambiguities in indigenous writing systems. In Bamana culture, direct speech is frowned on and metaphorical and ambiguous speech is favored. In some cases, direct communication of knowledge is believed to lead to madness. Hypothetically, the irregularities in Bogolanfini cloths reflect these cultural values concerning speech, writing, and communication in general.
Anthropology <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Humanism, 1997
Page 1. Commentary The Making ofBamana Sculpture: A Rejoinder to Barbara Hoffman SARAH C BRETT-SM... more Page 1. Commentary The Making ofBamana Sculpture: A Rejoinder to Barbara Hoffman SARAH C BRETT-SMITH Department of Art History Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ 08932 It is ironic that Barbara Hoffman, who ...
American Anthropologist, 2002
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Papers by Sarah Brett-Smith