Post #496195 by bigbrotiki on Sat, Nov 28, 2009 6:28 PM

On 2009-11-28 16:06, Sabu The Coconut Boy wrote:
Bigbro - you would love this book. It's the english translation of a German book by Alfred Buehler and all the images within seem to be taken from the collection of the Museum fuer Voelkerkunde in Hamburg.

You mean THIS book :D :

Yah yah, those Germans and their Oceanic Art books....

I do see myself in the tradition of Karl von den Steinen, whose books helped Marquesan Art to survive. Also, the first book on African "primitive" art ever was written by a German, Carl Einstein (no relation to Alfred) in 1915, around the same time Picasso and the moderns discovered its power.

Apparently, it had quite an impact on African American artist Hale Woodruff, here an excerpt from his bio:

Hale Woodruff began to copy newspaper cartoons and images in the family Bible, and at Pearl High School, he was the school’s newspaper cartoonist. After graduation and a brief summer job as a hotel houseboy in Indianapolis, he began art studies at Herron Art Institute.

While there, he became friendly with German-born Herman Lieber who gave him a book entitled “Afrikanische Plastik” by Carl Einstein in 1923. Fifty years later Woodruff still treasured this book. It made him one of the first black artists to study African art intensively and be influenced by it.<

Here's what Woodruff said about it:

I kinda fancy my Book of Tiki having a similar effect on the American Tiki carver. :D