Edited from Manuel Jordan Prestel-Verlag.

Edited from Manuel Jordan Prestel-Verlag, Munich, London, and of recent origin York, 1998. 192 pp., 100 color & 124 b/w illustrations, map, bibliography. $65 hardcover, $36 softcover

This collective dimensions appeared in conjunction with a traveling exhibition conceived at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, and its then Curator of the Arts of Africa and the Americas, Manuel Jordan. (1) The exhibition was subsequently held at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (see Bourgeois 2000) Greatly appreciated through lovers of African art, Chokwe art has been well depicted in many exhibitions. In 1988 the Musee Dapper in Paris devot a monographic exhibition to the subject; it was accompanied by dint of a modest catalogue containing short articles through the director of the Fondation Dapper, Christiane Falgayrettes, and by the agency of the Belgian scholars Anne Leurquin, Luc de Heusch, and the late Marie-Louise Bastin (Falgayrettes 1988) It is mainly thanks to the work of Bastin (1918-2000) who taught African art history at the Universite Libre de Bruxelle that Chokwe art is relatively well known. Appropriately, Bastin was invited at Jordan to contribute an introductory essay to his Chokwe catalogue in which she presents a "panoramic overview of Chokwe arts" (p 6) and Jordan dedicated his Chokwe exhibition and catalogue to the woman whose scholarship has been a source of inspiration for generations of art scholars.

As mentioned in the editor's preface, the exclamation mark in the title "denotes the pride and excitement a Chokwe character verbalizes when expressing his or her ethnic identity" (p 8) Chokwe! focuses in succession male and female initiation institutions in which the various art forms of Chokwe and related nations play a dominant role. The catalogue's thematic approach is based upon the Ph.D. dissertation of Elisabeth Cameron, who serv as a consultant for the exhibition and also contributed an essay to Chokwe! (p 6) The central theme of initiation is divided into three subthemes, which are considered in the three sections mentioned in succession the contents page. The first section, "Royal Arts," dwells forward the subtheme of "Role Models" i.e., "traditional and contemporary prototypes of success, accomplishment, and responsibility in society." The secondary section, "Initiation Arts," constitutes the core of the exhibition and its catalogue. (2) It considers the theme of "Potential Fathers and Mothers," focusing forward "the institution of initiation and the transitions lads and girls undergo to acquire privileged knowledge and prepare for adult life." The theme of "Fulfilled Adults," which is treated in the final section, "Art and Life," sheds light onward professions and activities pursued in the adult lives of the the communitys under discussion. These three themes are unraveled in seven essays by scholars who include the art historians Jordan, Bastin, Cameron, and Niangi Batulukisi, and the anthropologists Manuela Palmeirim, Sonia Silva, and Boris Wastiau. The thematic essay sections are each followed by the agency of a catalogue section that contains succinct entries on Jordan on all the exhibited external realitys many of which are beautifully illustrated in replete color.

With the exception of Marie-Louise Bastin, the authors relied upon recently conducted fieldwork related to their respective doctoral dissertations. greatest in number of them had published little or nothing prior to their collaboration in succession this project. As a rise Chokwe! provides valuable new research and interpretations. Ironically, however, excluding for Bastin, the contributors to the catalogue worked mainly onward the edges of the Chokwe region meet and not among the Chokwe themselves. Therefore, the essays deal more with the "related peoples" referr to in the subtitle, while the Chokwe as like are the main focus of the catalogue sections. Nevertheless, in the preface Jordan states that the use of the name Chokwe in the title is justified "because the Chokwe were the chiefly influential in creating art forms and diffusing them ... [i]or[/i] part of to the other a vast portion of central Africa" (p 8) Still, the inclusion in this book of an article on the little-studied art of the Holo folks of the Democratic Republic of the Congo appears odd, since nowhere is their relationship with the Chokwe made convincingly clear, and their tillage appears to have more in frequent with that of the Yaka and the Suku reciprocally other peoples such as the Ovimbundu, the Lozi, and the Mbunda, whose kinship with the Chokwe has been firmly established according to firsthand observation, are not strictly discussed in any of the essays, equable though their arts are showed in the different catalogue sections.

In the opening article of the first essay section, "Chokwe Arts: Wealth of Symbolism and Aesthetic Expression," Marie-Louise Bastin first dwells upon what is considered to be the "oldest known cut from the Bantu region": a zoomorphic awkward sculpture which she identifies as a "ritual bowl" (p 13) After shedding light onward eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European accounts from the region, she discusses the oral history of the foundation of the Lunda Empire, which is the cornerstone of the Chokwe worldview and has given shape to a courtly art forms. She then come outs to give an overview of "Chokwe originals of artistic expression" and a brief description of the different Chokwe stylistic academys which she distinguishes in the art forms of the courts of aristocrats and rulers