African art is any form of art or material culture that originates from the continent of Africa. This article discusses primarily visual art; for information on African music, see Music of Africa.

The arts and material culture of the African continent constitute one of the most diverse and innovative artistic legacies on the planet. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is actually full of a multitude of peoples, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual culture.

Despite this diversity, there does seem to be some unifying artistic themes when considering the totality of visual culture from the continent of Africa.

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Arts & Culture

Peter Schjeldahl: French Connection
Peter Schjeldahl Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
Pluck a magnifying glass from a rack at the Frick and sift great from good in “Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection.” The prodigious Dutch connoisseur Lugt (1884-1970), a collector by the age of eight, acquired thousands of Old Master drawings, with a special . . .
Jill Lepore: Why is American history so murderous?
Jill Lepore Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, who met three years ago in a Hartford drug-treatment center and shared a room in a halfway house in between stints in prison, were both seasoned burglars, though Hayes, a forty-four-year-old crack addict, was quite a bit older than Komisarjevsky, who . . .
Hilton Als: Matinée Idol
Hilton Als Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
You might not associate avant-garde theatre with sexiness, but, for a time, the Wooster Group embodied it in the form of Ron Vawter. Other members of the company, such as Willem Dafoe and Spalding Gray, went on to have successful film careers, but Vawter, who had AIDS and died . . .
Goings on About Town: The View from Abroad
Richard Brody Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
paragraph class="noindent">Hollywood has always been a haven for immigrants with talent. One of the greatest, Ernst Lubitsch, arrived there from Germany in the early nineteen-twenties, not pushed by political turmoil but pulled by money. American wealth is at the heart of his 1938 comedy, “Bluebeard’ . . .
Goings on About Town: The Theatre
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
PageBreak --> OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS Please call the phone number listed with the theatre for timetables and ticket information. THE AGE OF IRON To kick off the Classic Stage Company season, Brian Kulick adapts and directs a mashup of Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida” and Thomas Heywood’ . . .
Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0000
8220;POLISH POETRY NOW” The poets Tadeusz Dabrowski, Bozena Keff, Marzanna Kielar, and Tomasz Rozycki are joined by the translators Bill Johnston and Benjamin Paloff for a reading and discussion. (Poets House, 10 River Terrace, Battery Park City. 212-431-7920. Nov. 3-4 at 7.) NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY The translator . . .

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