Note on Illustrations

Boone, Sylvia Ardyn

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Note on Illustrations

Sylvia Ardyn Boone

Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art

~Most of the photographs for Radiance from the Waters were taken on location in Sierra Leone by the talented photographer Rebecca Busselle. I was fortunate in having from her a marvelous choice of images that so well illustrate the ideas and concepts of this book; I feel that the aesthetic arguments made by the text are amply supported by her pictures. Specifically, the Busselle photographs are figures 3–8, 10–15, 17–30, 32–35,...

Author

Sylvia Ardyn Boone

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21875

Note on Illustrations

Most of the photographs for Radiance from the Waters were taken on location in Sierra Leone by the talented photographer Rebecca Busselle. I was fortunate in having from her a marvelous choice of images that so well illustrate the ideas and concepts of this book; I feel that the aesthetic arguments made by the text are amply supported by her pictures. Specifically, the Busselle photographs are figures 3–8, 10–15, 17–30, 32–35, 38–53, 56, 59–66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 77, 81–83, 86–92. I appreciate her fine contribution to this work.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to several individuals and institutions for kind permission to use their materials. Priscilla Hinckley, Ed.D., provided the drawings for figures 54, 55, 57, 74, 75, 78–80, and 84. They correspond to figures 76, 30, 13b, 7a, 19, 16, 40, and 35, from her monograph, The Sowo Mask: Symbol of Sisterhood (1980). Figure 85 is from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum: “object #69.39.2, Sierra Leone, Mende, late 19th century, early 20th century; black stained wood helmet mask of female with European style crown as headdress, supposedly taken from coins of Queen Victoria; ht.- 40.6 cm; the Brooklyn Museum, Exchange.” The photograph for figure 58 of “Mende, Sowei Masks, Bundu Dancers” was taken in Kenema, Sierra Leone, in 1973 by William L. Hommel, Ph.D. Figure 1, “The Mende Script,” is from S. Milburn, “Kisimi Kamara and the Mende Script,” Sierra Leone Language Review, no. 3 (1964), p. 21. Pamela S. Baldwin drew the map for figure 2. The remaining illustrations are photographs by the author. All masks pictured are Mende Sande Sowo wooden helmet masks, stained and polished black, approximately 14–18 inches in height, dated twentieth century and contemporary.

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Book details

BOOKRadiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art

Sylvia Ardyn Boone

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00275

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21863

Photographs by Rebecca Busselle and Sylvia Ardyn Boone

The Sande Society of the Mende is a widespread secret female regulatory society that both guards and transmits the ideals of feminine beauty that comprise the fundamental aesthetic criterion in Mende culture. The Sande initiation camp is conceived as a realm beneath the waters, a domain from which beauty and art emerge, a sacred space where women rule. In this eloquent and moving book, Sylvia Ardyn Boone describes the society, its organization, some of its rituals, and finally the mask worn by its members—an archetypal African sculpture called the Sande Sowo head. Her observations are not only an evocative account of Mende life and philosophy but are also a unique approach to the study of African art, an approach based on African conceptions about the human body and the person. Boone's engaging text is accompanied by extraordinary photographs of Mende women by Rebecca Busselle.

After introducing the reader to Mende history and ethnography, Boone discusses the Sande Society as a program for promoting the spiritual and physical beauty of Mende women. She then shows that an examination of the physical qualities and proportions of feminine beauty is a portal to an understanding of Mende ideas of morality and power. Under the tutelage of Mende elders Boone learned, for example, that the sight of a luxuriant head of hair arranged in an intricate style gives pleasure, but that is also encodes at higher levels notions of right behavior, successful social relations, progeny, and abundance. Equipped with this intimate knowledge, Boone is able to analyze in new ways the symbolism of the Sande Sowo head, and uncovers the meaning of this sculpture by viewing it against the background of the Mende natural and metaphysical world from which it emerges and to which it refers.

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Author

Sylvia Ardyn Boone

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date August 1986 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300035766

EISBN 9780300266016

Illustrations 92

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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