Lucjan Buchalik, Jarosław Różański (red.), Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, t. VI, Żory: Muzeum Miejskie w Żorach, Polskie Towarzystwo Afrykanistyczne 2022.

Answering the question Quid novi ex Africa? The City Museum of Żory responds to this in the sixth volume of this series by pointing to some of the achievements of Polish researchers relating to the wealth of African aesthetics. Aspects from the fields of aesthetic beauty, survival, valuation and assessing of objects in terms of their artistic value, are a problem taken up numerous times by various currents of reflection, beginning in antiquity. As regards Africa, they are undoubtedly also a meeting of local concepts (not explicitly clarified) and the European view, which, nolens volens, has strongly influenced the perception and interpretation of that which is most often raised in aesthetics: “beauty.” Although this term is not unambiguous, and beauty is perceived in diverse ways by researchers of Africa, the texts collected in the present volume once again refer to this subject matter fundamental to aesthetics.

The texts collected in this volume clearly show that insight into beauty is much broader than classically understood art. The texts of this volume refer, for example, to the artistic production of ready-made, mass-produced items (batiks, pagnes wax, fashion trends, and a vast world of postcards). In the case of objects from the sphere of the sacred (masks, sculptures) it can be combined with the sphere of the sacred. Since the present publication series is from the City Museum of Żory, there is no lack of topics associated with specific museum sets and collections (in the National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw and the Missionary and Ethnographic Museum in Pieniężno). The perspective for the research in this volume is also contemporary concepts of visual culture, and more precisely, their interdisciplinary aspect in terms of cultural studies.  There is also the question of the standing of African art. Is it really—as Gilles Gontier, contrarily quoted in this volume, notes—that African art does not exist in Africa, if it does not represent a certain amount of European money, if it is not sold to Europeans?

Open access: https://www.academia.edu/98298564/Ex_Africa_semper_aliquid_novi