Smithsonian Libraries African Art Index Project DSI Search this
Type:
Articles
Place:
Cameroon
Cameroon Grassfields
Africa
Date:
1992
Notes:
The iconography of objects from the Cameroon Grassfields derives meaning not from embedded symbolic codes, but from the means by which objects "preserve or enhance the power of the elite" (page 199). Objects signify not because they are aesthetic, but because they exist within a particular set of "relations between the object, the maker, the consumer and their ever-changing socio-political conditions" (page 204). To argue this theory, Argenti draws upon the work of Brain and Pollock on the Bangwa and Shanklin on the Afo-a-Kom.
