the arts and man; the unesco courier: a window open on...

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TREASURES

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WORLD ART

Photo © Marino Benzi - Asa Press

From Mexico's ancient pastOne of the great enigmas of Mexican antiquity is the civilization of the Olmecs which grew andflourished for 1,600 years (800 B.C. to 800 A.D.) in the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico.The Olmec civilization produced a wealth of artistic works, including monumental sculptures, bas-reliefs, stone masks and figures and ornaments carved in jade. The Olmecs, whose name means"people from the country of rubber" (a plant which grew on their lands) evolved a system ofarithmetic, developed hieroglyphic writing and devised a system of reckoning time which becameone of the most accurate calendars known. Worshippers of fire, the dead and an animal god, thejaguar, the Olmecs were the first to depict the sun in the form of a human head with strands of hairsymbolizing rays of sunlight. This figure of a young man a nobleman or a priest is a detail ofa relief carved on an Olmec altar, from the museum at La Venta, State of Tabasco, Mexico.

CourierMAY 1969

22ND YEAR

PUBLISHED IN

TWELVE EDITIONS

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THE ARTS AND MAN

By d'Arcy Hayman

DREAMS AND INVENTION

THE SYMBOL AND THE MIND

THE CRAFTS

An embodiment of the great folk tradition

By Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

THE ART OF AFRICAN PULLEYS

By Francine N'Diaye

FOUR PAGES IN FULL COLOUR

UTENSILS AS WORKS OF ART

By Veniamin Fabritsky and Igor Shmelyov

NEW SHAPES TO DELIGHT THE EYE

CURVING RHYTHMS

POPULAR IMAGERY FROM BRAZIL

UNESCO NEWSROOM

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

TREASURES OF WORLD ART

From Mexico's ancient past

Cover photo

Stage curtain designed by theSwiss sculptor Jean Tinguelyfor "L'Eloge de la Folie"(In Praise of Folly), a balletby the French choreographerand dancer Roland Petit. First

presented in 1966, the ballet isa humorous satirical skit on modern

life in nine parts (among them,"Advertising" "Women in Power","Pills" and "The Machine").

Photo © André Morain, Paris

3

THE ARTSAND MANNine of the world's most respected authorities in the plasticarts, architecture, the crafts, industrial design, literature,theatre, cinema and music discuss the rôle and functions of

the arts in society, in a forthcoming Unesco book, "The Artsand Man". In the article below, d'Arcy Hayman tells whyUnesco has felt the need for a book of this kind which

describes the many functions of the arts, explaining thesefunctions in terms of the art disciplines, professions, tradi¬

tions and art forms which have evolved throughout man's

history. She quotes salient passages from chapters written

by Sir Herbert Read (U.K.), Pier Luigi Nervi (Italy), Basilio

Uribe (Argentina), Richard Buckminster Fuller (U.S.A.), AndréMaurois (France), William W. Melnitz (U.S.A.), Grigory Ko-

zintsev (U.S.S.R.), and Yehudi Menuhin (U.S.A.). On page 15,we publish the chapter by Mme Kamaladevi Chattopadhyayon The Crafts as an Embodiment of the Great Folk Tradition.

by d'Arcy Hayman U,

4D'ARCY HAYMAN has been head of the Arts

Education Section, Department of Culture,Unesco, for the past nine years. Author andpainter, she taught art history, aesthetics andart education at the University of California,New York University, and Columbia Univer¬sity between 1950 and 1960.

INESCO will shortly pub¬lish an unusual book entitled "The Arts

and Man" (1). It must be understoodat the outset that this is not an "art

book" in the ordinary sense of thatterm. What this book ¡s about is that

aspect of man's nature, that facet ofhis Intuition and inventiveness which we'

can call the aesthetic realm. This un¬

ique work concerns itself with the artsinasmuch as they are the naturalmanifestation of the human spirit, andconversely as they provide the forms,symbols and languages which serveman in endless ways.

"The Arts and Man" is about the

(1) "The Arts and Man", to be publishedshortly by Unesco, has 196 pages, including64 pages of black and white Illustrations and20 pages in full colour. Cloth bound, it willappear in the U.S A. as a co-publication withPrentice-Hall Inc.; provisional price: $12.95.(Fuller details will be given In a forthcomingissue of the "Unesco Courier").

aesthetic nature of man, the aestheticsense of men, women, youth andchildren, of all nations, socio-economicand ethnic groups, every human individ¬ual on this earth. A major objectiveof this publication ¡s to give evidencein words and visual images of the way¡n which the arts embody the universalqualities of mankind as well as theendless individual and cultural differ¬

ences which exist within the familyof man.

The Universal Declaration of Human

Rights affirmed for all mankind bythe General Assembly of the UnitedNations states that "Everyone has theright freely to participate in the culturallife of the community, to enjoy thearts." The fundamental need for per¬sonal involvement in the aesthetic level

of human existence is the underlyingprinciple on which this right has beenbased; it is to this end that Unescodirects the attention of its world-wide

public to the significant contribution

Blown up reproductions of paintings by Wassili Kandinsky are usedhere by a television producer to create a striking stage backdrop.

made by the arts to every part ofman's life.

Unesco's book attempts to analyseand describe the ways ¡n which thearts in their various aspects and man¬ifestations serve the human objective.At the same time, it is concerned withmaking a comprehensible descriptionof the many functions of the arts, ex¬plaining these functions in terms ofthe art disciplines, professions, tradi¬tions and art forms which have evolved

throughout man's history.

The book covers a vast area-, it givesattention to the whole range of artsdisciplines, including drawing, painting,sculpture, crafts, architecture, indus¬trial, graphic and environmental design,literature, theatre, cinema, and music.It examines and documents these

art areas at many different levelsof production and participation, includ¬ing that of the professional artist andconsumer and audience for arts, theart of the child, folk arts, and other

cultural forms

a vital rôle.in which the arts play

Unesco, which reflects and acts uponthe trends and directions of its 125

member nations, publishes this bookin a time of great change within allof man's activities. Einstein gavewords and numbers to the cosmic prin¬ciple: "the only constant is change."Our own time is marked not only byconstant change, but by what maysome day be seen as a period ofmore rapid and profound change thanman has ever before experienced. Letus consider here a few of the funda¬

mental changes now taking place whichdirectly affect the arts and man.

. We live ¡n an age of melting fron¬tiers, of dimming boundary lines; this¡s true within socio-political contextsand also applies to nations, religionsand surely to those human disciplineswhich for an artificial time in our recent

history have been Isolated one fromthe other.

Man has actually made a circularjourney through time; he came fromintegrated tribal units in which thearts and sciences were fundamental

and Inherent qualities of his everydaylife; he went through a time of everincreasing specialization, compartmen-talization, in which city-states and thennations, religious sects and even thevarious human disciplines were atwar with one another; and now hebegins to search for ways of find¬ing a new form of Integration: Inter¬nationalism, universalism, ecumenism,interdisciplinary, inter-cultural action.

It is quite obvious that the techno¬logy of our time, sometimes producedas the result of certain specialization,leads us with almost a will of its own

towards generalization. Man intuitive¬ly accepts the rôle of specialist onlyas a transitional measure which will

allow him to make the technology thatwill liberate him from the necessityof doing the repetitive, monotonous

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

5

THE ARTS AND MAN (Continued)

A circular journey through time

tasks which until now have kept himenslaved. The electronic and mass

produced "brain" of the computer, will(let us hope) allow man to returnto his original rôle of creative, compre¬hensive thinker.

The arts do not exist ¡n a vacuum:

they reflect and embody even the mostsubtle change experienced by man.New forms of transportation and com¬munication give to man the power topenetrate cultural and intellectual bar¬riers which in other times remained im¬

penetrable by all but a precious few.

wE

6

[E live in exciting times andwe see amazing things: the young gen¬eration of artists is especially blessedby the riches laid at Its feet. Spring¬ing from Liverpool, the Beatles werefirst nourished by American Rock andRoll and folk music, the source ofwhich was African and Elizabethan

rhythms and songs Interpreted byNegro slaves and Ozark mountaindwellers; then they were touched bythe electronic music and sound of their

time as well as by such ancient class¬ical musical forms as the Indian Raga.

The resulting music of this younggroup as well as of other Inventive"pop groups" throughout the world to¬day is often startling, sometimes shock¬ing, but always rich and rewarding inits creative Imagination and revolu¬tionary musical ecumenism.

The new film makers in Czecho¬

slovakia are experimenting with dram¬atic art forms born of the union be¬

tween the traditional theatre arts and

products of modern technology. Theirrecently Invented Polyvlsion producesits fantastic effects with twelve cinema

projectors and twenty-eight slide pro¬jectors working simultaneously to pro¬duce a single image.

The Intricate system of Diopolyecraninvolves one hundred and twelve mov¬

able cubes, each cube making use oftwo slide projectors simultaneously andall ¡n all requires five thousand elec¬tronic signals to operate it eachsecond.

The Kinoautomat extends its dimen¬

sions to vast audience participation inthe actual creation and direction of

the story or plot of the programmeby taking into consideration thethoughts, feelings and desires of eachmember of the audience attending theperformance. This audience partici¬pation and direction is made possiblethrough the use of the computer.

The architects of today are influenc¬ed by many historical periods and cul¬tures other than their own, the strongand monumental styles of feudal Japan,the ornate and elegant forms of Arabicarchitecture, are some of the sources

of inspiration ¡n contemporary Westernarchitecture.

Structural elements which can be

assembled overnight into such formsas the geodesic dome reaching thesize of skyscrapers and beyond, pointto new directions and provide solutionsto architectural problems in the SpaceAge, at the same time producing radi¬cal aesthetic change and Innovation.

And the architect himself is chang¬ing: he can no longer be confined tothe designing of isolated buildings; hehas become concerned again withman's total environment, expandinginto the fields of city planning andenvironmental design.

The painter and sculptor too arereaching out beyond their canvasframes and marble blocks. It becomesever more difficult to label a work

of art in our time; one can hardlydistinguish between the new three-dimensional paintings and sculpture,between walk-In sculptures and archi¬tecture, or between painting and music,sculpture and theatre, as the visualarts take on audio and theatrical di¬

mensions and vice versa. The bound¬

ary lines are dimming, the labels arefading.

Marshall McLuhan reminds us that

we are entering a "post literate" and"post linear" stage in our evolution.As our thought is conditioned, to someextent, at least, by the medium throughwhich Information comes to us, we canquickly see that these multiple visual¡mages, these inter-media contacts,these total environments and spontan¬eous "happenings", make differencesin the way we learn, think and finallyact.

Other changes are taking placewhich also affect artists, the arts andthe relationship between these andwhat we call the general public, theconsumer, the audience for the arts.

In traditional societies, there is no

separation between the public and thearts: all members of the tribe or the

village community take part in thepopular theatre, participate ¡n thedance, sing and play musical instru¬ments, decorate the home and uten¬sils. There is no need here for mus¬

eums in which to appreciate the arts,¡n which to view the arts behind glasspartitions; for art objects are theobjects of everyday use and are famil¬iar as ceremonial forms and symbolicimages.

In modern technological societies,man is now searching for ways to re¬integrate the arts in society, to assoc¬iate the public more closely with thecultural life of the community. This isneeded as a result of the long andartificial separation between the artsand their public which began with theage of specialization.

The point at which man finds himselftoday ¡s a point of departure. In man'sfuture home among the stars andgalaxies, his measurements, his hori¬zon, his entire perspective will bealtered. The universal environment

will bring changes in man's relationto earth and man's relation to man.

Human communication will become

ever more complex and difficult. Soc¬ial structures will change and all ofthe established human institutions will

be altered in some way.

Because man's aesthetic nature is a

reflection, a manifestation of all of

the other aspects of his personality,it is especially important that an exa¬mination now be made of those waysin which the arts function in the life

of man and contribute to his well-

being and continuing evolution.

|T ¡s ¡n this time of profoundand rapid change in the history of manthat Unesco's book, "The Arts andMan," ¡s required and issued. It is abook which speaks about the artsand man, telling its story in bothverbal and visual images. The wordsare spoken by some of the world'smost respected contemporary author¬ities in the arts and in some cases bythe artists themselves.

Sir Herbert Read, the distinguishedBritish art historian and critic, whocompleted the opening chapter of thebook for Unesco not long before hisdeath, envisages art and society asthe view that contemporary civilization¡s ¡n danger of becoming "aesthetical¬ly impotent" due to "alienation" or theprogressive divorce of human facultiesfrom natural processes, scientific ra¬tionalism which tends to destroy themysteries of holiness and beauty, andgrowing mass systematization whichis Inimical to art, the arts being theproducts of individuals.

The author here offers one solution:

"education through art," which recog¬nizes that art ¡s a binding force insociety, and that the absence of thiselement has fatal consequences forcivilization. Sir Herbert says:

yr ". . .Very few philosophers, thoughPlato is one of them, have seenthat art and society are inseparableconcepts that society, as a viableorganic entity, is somehow depend¬ent on art as a binding, fusingand energizing force. . . Art ¡seternally disturbing, permanentlyrevolutionary. It is so because theartist, ¡n the degree of his great¬ness, always confronts the un¬known, and what he brings backfrom that confrontation ¡s a novelty,

a new symbol, a new vision of life,the outer image of Inward things. . .I believe that there ¡s only one wayof saving our civilization and thatis by so reforming its constituentsocieties that, in the sense of thephrases already defined, the con¬crete sensuous phenomena of artare once more spontaneously

.a. manifested in our daily lives. . ."

Kamaladevl Chattopadhyay, whoonce worked with Gandhi and Nehru

to develop India's great Indigenousarts, speaks of the crafts as thecreation of ordinary people, part of theflow of events of the common life.

She sees no real dividing line betweenthe so-called "fine arts" and the crafts,both being expressions of the humanspirit in material form. Drawing uponthe ancient traditions of the East, shepoints out that the craftsman, like anyother artist, is engaged ¡n a totaloperation involving the emotions, themind and the body, and that he isseeking rhythm, form and harmony forlife through art (her text appears onpage 15).

Pier Lulgl Nervi, the noted Italianarchitect-engineer, speaks of thearchitect and his rôle ¡n contemporarysociety, and he calls for a return fromwhat he describes as architectural

discussion and theory, which has littleto do with the physical world andhuman need, to the appropriate andresponsible job of the architect: theart and science of constructingbuildings which are adequate ¡n termsof durability, beauty and economy.Nervi says:

"^ "... Architecture ¡s construction

and as such it cannot evade obed¬

ience to all the objective limitationsimposed by the materials it usesand to those laws, not made bymen, which govern their equilibrium.Yet I firmly believe that implicit inthis obedience are to be found the

real seriousness and that inde¬

pendence of passing fashion thathave always characterized truearchitecture, whether Imposed bythe specific qualities of the marblein the Greek temples or the massivebrickwork of the Romans, the

delicacy of Gothic, or the greatstructural possibilities of the mat¬erials and techniques of today thattake up so marvellously well thedaunting challenge of the problemsof contemporary social and techni-

^, cal development."

Photo Unesco - Cart

The Argentine poet and director ofArgentina's National Institute of Tech¬nology, Basilio Uribe, expresses hisviews about the twentieth-centurydiscipline of industrial design which hesees as having a structural rôle to play


"Man's ultimate leap, when approaching his God, is through music",writes the celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin in "The Arts and Man".

"Man's ultimate release of exuberance can be through music,from drinking songs to dances... Music begins where words end", asthis minstrel playing in a street of Cuzco, Peru, seems to be saying.

7

ART

ON THE

MOVE

Photography enabled modern manto record fixed images of objects,persons and events to which motionpictures later restored natural lifeand movement. In nature all is

movement and change, and evena motionless object such as a stoneis subject to the varying interplayof light. Kinetic art has now takenits place alongside traditional art,with its use of mechanical movement

and other elements such as air,light and water to achieve actualmotion. Analysis of movement, fromthat of the stars to a hand usinga tool, offers the artist a new vision

of forms to incorporate in hiscompositions. Left, a kinetic work

by the Soviet sculptor, A. Volgulne,exhibited in Moscow in 1966.

Right, photographic study of dancemovements by the Frenchphotographer Max-Yves Brandily.


The new aesthetics of our Space Age

8

in the establishment of necessaryrelationships among the humanenvironments: technical, economic,aesthetic, cultural. Uribe points outthat:

"* "... It is customary to speak oftwentieth-century aesthetics in thesame way as we might speak, forinstance, of fourteenth-centuryaesthetics, although in fact it isevident that, in our century, thewhole question has assumed differ¬ent dimensions. If absolute time

Indeed exists, we are not aware of

it; we apprehend it only ¡n relationto space.

"As long as man journeyed onfoot or on horseback and the world

could not be encompassed, therewas a sense in which one could

talk about the sensitivity and per¬ceptivity of a century as a whole;but things have now changed. Nowthat the impact of events is nolonger confined to the region ¡nwhich they occur, but is felt simul¬taneously over the whole face ofthe globe, now that traditionalfrontiers have been swept away by

artificial satellites circling the earthevery sixty minutes, now thatcomputers can solve in a momentequations that once would havetaken more than a lifetime to work

out, what is the sense of talkingabout the aesthetics of a periodwhose extent can only be definedin relation to the space that canbe traversed in that time?

"There is no one aesthetic

pattern, no one way of under¬standing and appreciating the twen¬tieth-century: the first fifty years ofthe century saw many such patterns,there have been countless others

in the fifteen years or so that haveelapsed between then and now, andmany more will emerge ¡n the yearsto come. The aesthetic theories of

yesterday are already out of date,those of today are born obsolete,those of tomorrow will cease to

apply even before they emerge."

Richard Buckminster Fuller, theAmerican designer-philosopher-scien¬tist-poet, who refuses to be put intoany one professional category and

prefers to be known as a "compre-hensivist in an age of specialists",believes that all human beings are born"artist-scientist-inventors", but that lifeprogressively squelches the individual'sinnate drives and capabilities. Hecalls for a new kind of education and

social structure which encourages thedevelopment of man's intuitive-inven¬tive-aesthetic powers. Richard Buck¬minster Fuller feels that:

". . . Children are all born with

the equipment and capabilities ofwhat is called 'genius'. They be¬come sub-genius or de-geniused byvirtue of the progressive frustrationsof so-called 'growing up' (therebeing neither 'up' nor 'down'directions in the universe!) . . . Aes¬thetics and intuition are the same

but the first is the subjective andthe second ¡s the objective phaseof the conscious-subconscious,threshold-crossing, communicationsystem ...

". . . The artist-scientist-inventors

are the men who have graduallyand now almost completely trans-

Photo <S Max-Yves Brandi ly, Paris

formed the environment of man, byvirtue of whose activity about halfof all the problems to be solved tomake 100 per cent of humanityphysically and economically suc¬cessful, have already been solv¬ed. .. I intuit that artist-scientist-

inventors who have reached

maturity without critical impairmentof their original faculties will nowbecome responsible for initiatingand industrializing the remainder oftechnology-advancing Inventions,for realizing the comprehensivephysical and economic success ofworld man, and that with universal

abundance, the warring, official andunofficial, will subside to innocuous

magnitude. With that artist-scien¬tist-inventors' accomplishment, hu¬manity may, for the first time ¡nhistory, come to know the meaningof peace . . .

"...At this moment in history,heretofore preponderantly innocentand ignorant humanity, operativeonly with subconscious success, isbeing required by universal evolu¬tion, and led by the artist-scientist-inventors, to participate¡n increasingly conscious degree inhumanity's evolutionary transitionfrom a very local parasite on theplanet earth to an energy-conservingIntellectually effective universeman."

An author read and loved by a publicfar beyond his native France, AndréMaurois points to the great contributionmade by the literary arts to the life ofman, and demonstrates how the greatauthors, poets and playwrights haveprovided substance for the imagination,order for the mind, and a model forlife. In this text which was among thelast words he wrote ¡n his long andproductive life, André Maurois says:

"...The superiority of literatureover reality lies ¡n the fact that awork of art allows what real life

almost always forbids, that ¡s,objective contemplation. True, wemen and women of this frenzied

age have, like the heroes of ournovels, lived through war andpeace; we have experienced love,jealousy and pity; but in whatconditions? Doomed to immediate

action, a prey to anger, fear oranxiety, we have lived our lifewithout really understanding ¡t.We have been constantly goadedon by the necessity for choice oraction . . .

"...The classical theatre of the

ancients stirred the emotions of all

the citizens of Athens or Rome.

Everyone understood, everyonerecognized himself. Great literaturepurified men and made them,

I believe, better . . . Literature makesIntelligible for us emotions whichare not understood in real life.

"We spend our whole lives along¬side parents, children, husbands orwives whom we scarcely know.Sometimes we imagine we do knowthem and suddenly their behaviour¡n a crisis reveals that our judge¬ment of them was completelymistaken. We do not even know

ourselves.

"Reality is shrouded ¡n mist andeludes our grasp. I turn to analysethe reflection of some emotion on a

well-loved face, but already thatreflection has vanished like a rippleon the waters. Our own emotions

are as changing as an April sky.But a well-constructed novel offers

us characters who, though some¬times mysterious, are neverthelessalways more intelligible than thoseof the real world, because they havebeen created by the mind of a man."

William Melnitz, who worked in the

great theatrical movements of Berlinin the twenties, sees the theatre as a

synthesis of many arts and skills which nhad their origins in the rituals, myths, Hreligions, education and entertainmentof all peoples of the earth. Melnitzputs forth the idea that:



10

"...The ancient theatre wasexalted because it was Inspired byreligion. The theatre offered an¬other realm of religious experiencein terms of dramatic art. There are

all /sorts of theatre today, as thereare all sorts of literature. Theatrehas become very powerful in itsInfluence on society. The theatrehas always a social function,whether its apparent purpose bereligious, artistic, educational ormerely commercial. Its socialfunction is to unite people ¡n ashared experience. The audienceis as much a part of theatre as arethe play, actors, singers, musicians,dancers and a place in which toforegather and share the perform¬ance. Theatre and society arefirmly wedded . . .

"...Theatre is a complicatedmedium; it ¡s an organism thatcontinually renews Itself ... it shouldbe ¡n constant confrontation with

modernity. In this respect theatrecreates and reflects the society ofan age . . .

"...Through a hundred centuriestheatre has never died. It willcontinue to exist as 'a school of

weeping and of laughter", as GarciaLorca so felicitously called ¡t and"a rostrum where men are free to

expose old and new standards ofconduct, and explain with livingexamples the eternal norms of the

j^ heart and feelings of man'."

In the short space of half a centurythe cinema has developed from asimple form of entertainment particu¬larly marked by its technical noveltyto an art form which, with television,

has become an Integral part of ourculture. This evolution is presented ina concentrated picture by GrlgoryKozintsev, the Soviet film maker anddirector who has both participated init and notably influenced its course.Kozintsev believes that:

"^ "...while a film is a work of

art, it is not only the artist whospeaks to the audience but onepeople which speaks to another.Akira Kurosawa brought Japan toEurope; Satyajit Ray has enabledpeople in many countries to knowIndia better. The spectator todayfollows a wholly different route.The film paints a chronicle of thetimes People see new generationsarriving and the old fading away,they see the unravelling of past andthe genesis of future tragedies.Seeing both themselves and theirage, they come to know more of

ja. both."

The musician, composer, educator,Yehudi Menuhln, who makes his home

in Europe as well as ¡n the U.S.A.,speaks of music and shows that it isan art intimately connected with thevery physiological functions of man,

CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

y

DREAMS

AND

INVENTION

Photo © Hans Namuth, from "The Arts and Man'

"Really great artists are scientists and the really great scientists

are artists and both are inventors. I call them artist

scientist-inventors," writes Richard Buckminster Fuller in the

Unesco volume "The Arts and Man." The weJI known American

designer-scientist-philosopher has consistently spoken out against the

divorce of aesthetic intuition and scientific objectivity. His

geodesic dome (above, Buckminster Fuller behind one of these

structures of interlocked curved triangles) has been used for

over 3,000 structures in 50 countries. As an original aesthetic

solution to specific technical problems, it has an ancient counterpart

in the Islamic "stalactite" domes, such as that of the Palace

of Ali Qapu, near Ispahan, Iran (detail left). There, the architect

ingeniously built up a series of small pointed niches to join the

circular ring of the dome to the square shape of the building.

When Buckminster Fuller gives free rein to his intuitions, his vision

transcends the apparent bounds of present-day technology,

as in the case of his "Project for Floating Cloud Structures"

(top left). His photo montage recalls a 1932 work by Belgian

surrealist painter, René Magritte, "Voice of the Wind" (far left),one of his variations on the theme of the bell.

11

Photo © Ezra Stoller, New York

THE SYMBOL

AND

THE MIND

Not satisfied simply to portrayreality, the artist feels hemust evaluate it and interpretit for others. Depending onthe era, place, or need, thisinterpretation can take infin¬itely diverse forms as itseeks to reconcile imagesand symbols with culturaland scientific truths. Left, afunctioning model of a humanbrain showing the sensorymechanisms of sight andhearing. Illuminated impulsestravelling over nerve pathwaysfrom the eyes and ears andphotographic images on asymbolic "consciousnessscreen" illustrate how the

brain experiences and res¬ponds to the sight and soundof an opera singer. Right,a 14th century Japanesesculptor has etched into thecarved head of a monk, "Myname is Koshun. I am a

master of Buddhist art from

the Kofuki-ji temple in the

The two-headed

mace of the

Marquesa Islands

In traditional societies, there is no

division between art and the people;art objects are an intrinsic part ofeveryday life and the symbolicmeanings of the forms are familiarto everyone. The head-mace, left, of

the Marquesa Islands is a strikingexample. The head is composed oftwo faces back-to-back and is con¬

ceived by the islanders as a micro-

SOLAR EYES: they see in all directions, the three dimensions of

space and the magic dimension of the Mind. Each eye has a head:

the spirit of sight is located in the centre of the power of sight.

NASAL HEAD: a tiny mask emerging from the centre of the face

symbolizing the sense of smell. This is the spirit of odours, which

represent the secret language of the forces of Nature.

MAGIC ARMS: vibratory arms capable of capturing all currents

and fluids of nature. The magic arms or hands direct and canalize

the flow of waves, acting as transformers of energy to meet the qneeds of the Spirit.

MOUTH EYES: a spirit of taste. This taste has eyes and sees as

well as interprets, judges or classifies. It conveys the idea of

conscious contact, assimilating all, revealing all.

THE PEDESTAL or CHIN: symbol of matter, matter in its primeval form,

in the first stage of plasticity, the still raw elements untransformed by

the Spirit. These are the available forces, Beginning and End. Perfect

harmony resides in the dual existence of Beginning and End.


rsu

5-°< c

©<

o n

0.5

southern capital." A remark¬able example of the harmonythat can be attained between

man and his environment is

the double-faced mace (below)from the Marquesa Islands.

relating the musical elements ofrhythm, tension, counterpoint, etc. withman's heartbeat, breathing, bloodpressure. Thus he illustrates histhesis that music penetrates directlyto the subconscious mind, and becomesan immediate revelation requiring littleinterpretive effort. Music beginswhere words end, it is devotion to thetimeless and" the infinite. YehudiMenuhin writes:

"... It is no wonder that ancient

sages sensed music in the move¬ment of the heavenly spheres.Thus the fundamental relationshipof one-to-one as man to woman,

or yin to yang, finds its audiblerendering in musical forms: expos¬ition-recapitulation, a form whichgradually extends around its seedto produce and embrace a contentthe development section . . .

"...The more rapid frequenciesfind their musical counterpart inthe tidal, as ¡t were, increase anddecrease in volume and in the

contrasting characters of the musi¬cal elements. The physiologicalfrequencies of breathing and pulse,of pressure and relaxation, of workand rest, find their musical counter¬

part in the basic pulse and counterrhythms, in the rise and fall of aphrase and Its interweaving counter¬point, and in the Increase anddecrease of tension. The faster

frequencies of pitch and the simul¬taneous sounds and the changingrelationships of notes at differentpitches affect us deeply andirresistibly as they penetrate andreveal the subconscious and the

intangible . . .

". . . Man's ultimate leap, whenapproaching his God, is throughmusic; man's ultimate release ofexuberance can again be throughmusic, from drinking songs todances. . .; he falls in love to music.Music serves the shepherd, as acompanion ¡n his solitude or tocommunicate with other shepherds,as it serves the Tibetan lama, the

sovereign of England, to solemnitygreat public ceremonies. . .

"Through music we share andbecome part of all great occasions.We are welded into one groupsharing each other's sense ofsorrow or exhilaration. Music can

also reveal more penetratingly thenature of peoples alien to eachother: our understanding forinstance of the African temperamentand character has come about more

through their Influence upon ourdally music than through any In¬tellectual, social or other contact . . .

"...Art is an effort to expressthrough our senses all that iswithin and beyond our reach. Artis a call, a union like love withthat which, while within and partof ourselves, is also and by thissame token greater than ourselves.This ¡s why art and deep religious

feeling have so often been in¬separable. . .

". . . Our civilization ¡s almost a

vicious circle of which the drivingforce is denial denial of the

creative moment, the creative act.

Fig leaves were perhaps the firstsuch denial and led the way to evermore elaborate, subtle, tantalizing,deceptive and sublimating forms ofart and artifice; creative art and

growing consciousness always wenthand in hand, not without someembarrassment . . .

". . . Until we can restore the

spontaneous elation that comes ofone's efforts with one's own

capacities upon a piece of wood,a sheet of paper, a length of clothor leather, or upon one's ownmind, as does a philosopher, orupon one's own physique as doesa dancer, until a substantial pro¬portion of our population isacquainted with the sensations ofartistic endeavour, we will notsuccessfully overcome the debase¬ment of human values."

These are but a few of the Inspiredwords that speak from the pages ofthis new Unesco book, and there is

more: Three hundred and twenty-fivephotographs, some in colour, form aremarkable collection of visual informa¬

tion about the arts and man.

These illustrations coming fromeighty-five countries offer a continuingparade of images from Africa, theAmericas, Asia, Europe, the MiddleEast, all parts of the world; they makevisible the creative artist at work in

his studio, the performing artist andthe artisan at their craft, as well as

the public which becomes the artaudience, consumer, amateur and

patron of the arts.

The photographs were contributedto this Unesco publication by some ofthe most outstanding photographers ofour time: Edward Steichen, MarvinLazarus, Wayne Miller, Hans Namuth,Gar Lunney, Marc Riboud, Van Lukas,Dagmar Hochova, K.M. Lee, E. Molnar,A. Drago, are but a few of the greatnames in photography represented.

The pictures in this book tell theirown story about the arts and man.There is the Peruvian street musician

in affectionate embrace with his harp,who brings the joy and warmth of hismusic to the village square; there arethe two Australian Aboriginal boysfollowing the tradition of theirancestors by making drawings in thesand, and the very young Czecho¬slovak girl who expresses amazeddelight as the picture she is drawingreveals some untold wonder to her.

There are glimpses of the pro¬fessional painters ano- sculptors atwork in their studios Arp, Appel,Miró, Pollock and many others. Andthen we see the craftsmen and women

in Togo, Chad, Tunisia, Mauritania, the


13


The spark within all of us

Sudan, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia,Central African Republic, Jordan, Iran,India, Ecuador, and Mexico involvedin the art which has been theirs for

centuries.

There are next the great architecturalmonuments of Nubia, of the Incas, ofCambodia alongside the more humblebut equally beautiful dwellings of thepeople of Morocco, Niger, Cameroon,Malaysia. And too, the works of thegreat architects of our own and recenttimes Gaudi, Le Corbusier, Frank

Lloyd Wright, Nervi, Kenzo Tange,Buckminster Fuller and two examplesof city planning: one made not longago for the reconstruction of Skopje

(Yugoslavia) and the other whichpictures a traditional village in Ugandaplanned according to social, culturaland personal aspects of the lives ofthe village members.

Then come the colourful objectsborn of the union between the arts and

the technological sciences, Industrialand graphic design; we view a Japaneserecord player, an Italian sewing machi¬ne, a Swedish television set, an Englishsailing boat, an American computer, aposter from Poland.

From the world of letters we can

examine photographs of pages fromoriginal manuscripts by Proust, Tolstoy,Hugo and compare them with Egyptian

In the tradition of city children, this little girl draws with chalk on thepavement, recording familiar images within the structure of her childhood games.In this way, artistic expression helps the individual to bring into a coherentpattern the fragmentary experiences of everyday life.

hieroglyphics and Chinese writing.The theatre comes to life with scenesfrom the traditional dramatic arts of

Chile, Bulgaria, Libya. And then weare presented with great momentsfrom the film classics: Griffith's "The

Birth of a Nation", Chaplin's "ModernTimes", Wiene's "The Cabinet of

Dr. Caligari", Kurosawa's "Rashomon",Fellini's "La Strada", Bergman's "TheVirgin Spring", and we see in otherpictures Buñuel, Truffaut, Satyajit Raydirecting the cinematic works of ourtime.

And at last music and dance are

brought to life as we can hear thePan Pipers of Bolivia, the Tibetantrumpets from Nepal, the Gamelanorchestra of Indonesia, the sitar andtablas of India and Pakistan, theGhanaian drummer, Tyrolean bag¬pipers, the American negro saxo¬phonist, the Indonesian Kenong playerand the majestic sound of a fullsymphony orchestra in the U.S.S.R.And we can see the dance in all

aspects of Its glory: the flamencodancers of Spain, traditional dancesof Greece, Panama, Senegal, theRussian ballet, the classical templedance of Thailand. And hundreds

more images that fill the eyes and themind's ears with the magnificence thatis The Arts and Man.

IHERE have been times and

places in our human history where thearts were neglected or made so pre¬cious and remote a commodity that fewwere allowed to partake of their riches.The concept of the arts belonging to anélite, an aristocratic few who had thetime and the money to spend on life'sluxuries while a mass labour force

performed the "less cultivated tasks"¡s no longer valid; this attitude is atthe peril of man himself. The artsbelong to all men. If we make theman arbitrary addendum to life, if weconsider them non-essential, a refine¬ment only, we lose a great part of thatwhich makes us human.

The artist's act has moral signifi¬cance because he not only discoversreality, but evaluates it, interprets itfor others. The arts are products ofpurposive activity, and the artistaccepts the responsibility of affectingthe basic pattern of others' conduct.

To put man in touch with himself,to make him fully aware of his innateethical-aesthetic inclinations at a time

when spontaneous individual decisionscan determine the fate of millions of

lives and perhaps the destiny ' ofmankind, ¡s the urgent and unique taskof the humanities and the arts in our

time. Unesco, dedicated to this task,is publishing "The Arts and Man."

The ancient books of the East say that when the hands of a craftsman are engagedin his craft, the act is always a ceremonial. Tools are but an extension of thepersonality of the artisan to reach beyond the range of human limitations. Here, aSudanese craftsman fashions an object decorated with elephant motifs.

Photo Sudanese National Commission for Unesco

THECRAFTSby Kamaladevi

Chattopadhyay

LArticle copyright © Reproduction prohibited

, ET me first of all clarifywhat I mean by craft as skilled labour¡n materials, not necessarily merehandwork that is simply manual dex¬terity as opposed to cultivation of themind. Here I take craftsmanship asreferring to a total operation involvingthe emotions, mind, body and therhythm which such a co-ordination setsup. Nor is craft divorced from a degreeof mechanism, because from earliesttimes man started evolving tools as

KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAY, one of theleaders of India's cultural renaissance move¬ment, is chairman of the All India HandicraftsBoard and founder-president of the IndianCo-operative Union. She was instrumentalin organizing the All India Women's Confer¬ence, and was the first woman to stand forparliamentary elections in India. She is amember of the Indian National Commission

for Unesco and was one of the original orga¬nizers of the Unesco-affiliated World Crafts

Council, of which she is senior vice-president.Among works she has written are "IndianHandicrafts' , "At the Cross-roads (SocialProblems of India)", and "Towards a NationalTheatre".

an extension of his being and did notrest content with the unaided skill of

his physique.

We must also recognize that craftis as much an expression of thehuman spirit in material form, whichgives delight to mankind, as any ofwhat are termed fine arts. In the craft

world, however, there need be no

hiatus between serviceability andaesthetics. One may say that in goodcraftsmanship the means and the endsare identical, for while the article is

useful it will also be rich ¡n appear¬ance and good to look at.

Craft has always been a basicactivity in human society, in fact it isconsidered more cohesive and perm¬eating in human relationships thaneven language, for it can penetratemany barriers to communication.Particularly has this been true of theolder societies such as those in Asia,South and Central America, Africaand countries like Greece or Spain,where certain aspects of the ancient


15

THE CRAFTS (Continued)

When the pot calls the kettle beautiful

handed down cultures still continue to

produce powerful impressions thatseem almost ageless.

The growth of crafts in society wasthe sign of the cultivation of sensitivityand the stirring and mellowing ofhumanism. It stood for man's endeav¬

our to bring elegance and graceinto an otherwise harsh and drab

human existence. In fact, man's

elevation from the gross animalexistence ¡s marked by his yearningfor something beyond the satisfactionof mere creature comforts and needs,which found natural expression incrafts.

The most primitive people began toornament their articles of everydayuse, later weapons, then their garmentsand their own person and surround¬ings. The rough and severe walls oftheir huts became canvases on which

blossomed pictures. A death-dealingbut very strategic item like the bowand arrow became embellished with

decorations, water pots took on pleas¬ing shapes and alluring designs wereinvented for mundane kitchen pans.

Here we see the transformation of

the mere functional into works of art,the common becoming the cherished,the joy giving. Gradually the wallpaintings, the ornamentation of thefloor where one worshipped, perform¬ed ceremonies or even took food, thedecoration on the doorstep and infront of the house, all became pur¬poseful creations, almost ritualistic.

N,

16

I O aspect of life was too in¬significant or humble to lay claim tobeauty or acquire sanctity as a symbolof good omen. The use of specialarticles for special occasions in theway of clothes, jewels, vessels, etc., allof which had to have a certain qualityto ensure a high standard even in dailylife and use, meant a continuous out¬flow of creatlveness, a sustainedspirit of animation and freshness dis¬pelling staleness and monotony.

We find, for instance, that in manycountries to give solemnity to certainthings a convention was establishedby which they were made into cere¬monials. The tea ceremony of Japanis a good example. It requires aspecial pavilion offering seclusionfrom the bustle of everyday life, in itsown surroundings, and the use of itsown vessels or cups, involving themanufacture of special pottery.Though the ideals sought were relax¬ation, contemplation of beauty andcommunion with nature, these alone

were not regarded as giving completefulfilment unless they were made partof one's intimate daily life, hence theintroduction of the tea ceremony.

Where the earth is dry and burnsunder voluptuous rays as in deserts,

where life ¡s grim and severe andresources poor, the people seem tocompensate with riotous colour andexuberant forms, creating a sense ofluxuriance and plenitude throughtheir crafts. There is a breathless

eagerness created in the atmosphere,rapturous vivaciousness in the articlesthat are used, a springtime dazzle ingarments and even in the harness andtrappings of domestic animals.

Yet all this mingles with a sense ofrepose and stillness as comes attwilight over the weary earth. Thewhirlwind of the sandstorm is temper¬ed by a kind of midnight calm. Forwhat takes form in crafts are feelingsactually experienced, not just conjuredup ¡n imagination. For such depth orvitality cannot be introduced into acraft form unless it flows from within

as an inner reality.

Craftsmanship, it must be remem¬bered, is not a matter of mechanicalreproduction. It ¡s creation that is notdivorced from production, where thedesigner and the producer are oneunlike studio designing which isremoved from the actual object that isto be made. In fact one of the allures

of the crafts lies in that as it were

magical involvement of the artisan'spersonality with the product from itsinception to Its final application.

One may say that there is no suchthing as craft for craft's sake. It ¡snot an exercise of the intellect, whichfinds a form in a secluded studio to

become the proud possession of anindividual or institution. It arises from

the deeper hunger of humanity, itsfunctions are socialized for its use and

distributed through the family and eventhe entire community. Craft is notpreoccupied with subjective feeling andthought, but with objectification.

It would need a thesis by itself toexplain man's Innate need for beauty,the why and wherefore of the pleasureand satisfaction experienced throughstimulus and response generated bythe sight or touch of certain forms,the emotions stirred within us bycolours and rhythmic lines that evenin concrete objects seem to flow whilethey stand stolidly rooted to theground.

Beauty ¡n objects around us providesvisual comfort, equilibrium and relax¬ation. In craft we have the identific¬

ation of the self with the object notjust a sentimental sympathy becausecraft is really an extension of oneself,growing out of one's physical andpsychological need.

Crafts create an instinctive apprec¬iation of beauty rather than a self-conscious striving after it. They callfor as subtle an understanding ofcomposition as any work of art; thecombined use of form and curves to

advantage; the avoidance of odd orawkward empty spaces by filling them

up appropriately to contrast with themore ornamental parts; subtle empha¬sis on lesser parts to make them standout more clearly; and also blendingand highlighting the lustre and mellow¬ness of light and shade.

Folk craft tries to express somethingmore than the visible appearance, tobring out an element which seems tolurk in the depths of a more significantreality than facile reproduction. Thisis a characteristic of all the old cul¬

tures, frequently dismissed as "fan¬tasies" and attributed to a lack of

knowledge of perspective and chia¬roscuro. The fact is overlooked that

oriental crafts, for example, were theexpression of a will, the fulfilment ofa purpose, with none of the nebulousvagueness that comes of subservienceto a passing mood.

The craftsman seeks rhythm in hislife, colour in his composition andharmony in his form in order to per¬fect an object which has a functionand at the same time provides visualpleasure. Here the material and ex¬pression move and balance within the

magnetic field of the operation.

c RAFTS have been the indi¬

genous creation of the ordinary people,a part of the flow of events of the com¬mon life, not cut off from the main

stream. They grew up in the peace andseclusion of the countryside, where thecommunity evolved a culture of itsown out of the steady flow of its ownlife and of the nature around it.

The community acted as a singlepersonality because of its communalactivities, in response to commonoccasions and landmarks that stood

out in the flux of time, and the changeof seasons. Out of a million colouredstrands of traditions and memories

filled with song and verse, legendsand myths, fables and local roman¬ces, from the core and substance oftheir daily existence and out of nature'sown rich storehouse, was woven arefulgent creative and forceful culture.

This was the issue of an unhurried

rhythm of life and a spell of serenity,as contrasted with the bustle of the

present machine age. Its products hada vitality and character of their ownin that they were the direct expressionof the craftsman, with a careful em¬phasis on functional beauty. Yet atthe same time a very significant factorwas the anonymity of the producer, instriking contrast to the present age ofsignatures and publicity. Evidentlythe name did not add to the value of

the article and beauty was acceptedas an end ¡n itself, and service to thecommunity a source of complete satis¬faction.

What was of great significance in

this context was the status assignedto and security provided for thecraftsmen, to preserve and providecontinuity to the crafts and save themfrom the gnawlngs of anxiety and theparalysis of insecurity. A craft-orient¬ed society was based on personalrelationships, not contracts and com¬petition.

Crafts are Imbued with a certain

Idealism not normally associated withan Industrial pursuit. Craft work isnot just the plying of a trade butrather a social act. The human touch

does something to the fragmentswhich are brought together in a craftwhere they seem to mingle and clingtogether drawn by the magnetism oflove, seeking one another, to givebirth to a new life in a fresh form

unlike the tumult and pressuringexercised by a powerful machinewhere the pieces seem helpless andlost.'- Thus traditional decorative mo¬tifs can lend colour and mellowness

to our current existence, otherwise

stern and grim, with its many privationsand denials.

The ancient books of the East saythat when the hands of a craftsman

are engaged in his craft, the act isalways a ceremonial. Tools are butan extension of the personality of thecraftsman to reach beyond the rangeof human limitations.

The craftsman thus combines within

his being the functions of both theconcelver and the executor. He sym¬bolizes to his society the outwardmanifestation of the creative purposeand the unbroken link in the tradition

that embraces both the producer andthe consumer within the social fabric.

IWO significant characteris¬tics of crafts are that aesthetics and

function are integrated, and ornamenta¬tion and decoration are not divorced

from utility. And even where crafts¬manship is based on tradition, the dan¬gers of stagnation are minimized byfreeing each productive act fromImitative intention and linking it withthe stream of life, making it a dynamicmanifestation of man's endeavour to

express universal human emotionsand Interests.

Even though craftsmanship hasalways been considered hereditary,passed on from generation to gener¬ation, inheritance of actual skills wasnot assumed. The emphasis on thecontrary was on proper education andthe right environment for the growinggeneration. The young craftsmanlearnt in the family workshop as anapprentice the techniques in theirentirety in direct relation to basic pro¬duction and problems, primarily bypractice. In fact he was just as much

CONTINUED 01» PAGE 32

Young people have avast potential of hiddencreative talent which

with a little

encouragement

quickly develops andproduces strikingresults. Here, a youngEgyptian boy in avillage workshop nearCairo puts thefinishing touches on atapestry he hasdesigned and woven.

Before the festival of

the goddess Kali, greatpreparations are madefor the celebrations

that take place allover India. Below,statues of the goddessare sculpted and _painted by local artists 5specially trained for !j"~"this delicate and

traditional task,

artists are not

craftsmen in the usual °|sense of the term

which is strictly gapplied to thosewhose works of art

have a primarilyfunctional purpose.

These s^S"

From the simple weaving loom

pulley the African craftsman hasevolved a world of rich artistic

variety and beauty. Guro sculptors

from the Ivory Coast embellish

pulley supports with a variety of

expressive animal figures, from

elephants, antelopes and monkeysto domesticated birds like this

cocky rooster.

Photo © Musée de l'HommeDorine Destables

THE ART

OF AFRICAN

PULLEYS

by Francine N'Diaye

II HE European artists who"discovered" African art at the turn

of this century, and collectors of"Negro art," were for long interestedonly in the main achievements of Afri¬can plastic art sculpture and masks.Only recently has interest been shownin everyday and household objectssuch as boxes for holding cosmeticsor jewellery, cups, different kinds ofvessels, headrests, seats, carvedshutters and doors, jars and pottery.

Such objects are today as eagerly

FRANCINE N'DIAYE, ethnologist and art his¬torian, Is on the staff of the African Depart¬ment at the Musée de l'Homme, Paris. Ateacher of art history at the Dakar School ofArts (Senegal) from 1961 to 1967, she is pre¬paring a study on weaving loom pulleys fromWest Africa in the Musée de l'Homme collec¬

tion, which will appear in the Museum's review'Objets et Mondes." The pulleys describedin her article and shown on the followingpages are from the collection of the Senegalpainter Iba N'Diaye.

sought after as masks and sculpture;like the highly developed arts of per¬sonal ornament in tropical Africa, theybear witness to the elaborate artistic

refinement and taste revealed ¡n the

most commonplace activities of every¬day life. One example of this newtaste ¡s the large number of collectorsof weaving loom pulleys.

In many West African countries, suchas Mall, the Ivory Coast, Guinea andDahomey, the pulleys used by weaversall have some kind of carving. Theweaving loom pulley, consisting of thepulley itself, which revolves on anaxle, and its support, has the importantfunction of alternately raising andlowering the heddles moved by theweaver's feet. A small iron ring, a holecarved in the top of the support, ora small handle, is used to attach thepulley to a cross-piece of the loom orto a branch of the tree that providesshade for the weaver as he works.

Not only is the support quite un-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 23

Colour pages :

OPPOSITE (page 19): The small size of African weaving loom pulleys (10 to 20 centimetreshigh) in no way handicaps craftsmen from turning them into miniature works of art. Theexpressive qualities of their mini-size carvings are exemplified in this head,a characteristic work of Senufo artisans from the north of the Ivory Coast and theborders of Mali and the High Volta. Photo © Musée de l'Homme - Dorine Destables

CENTRE COLOUR PAGES (pages 20 and 21)

Page 20: top right, Bambara pulley from Mali crowned by a crescent representing a pairof ram's horns; its simplicity of form is typical of the abstract motifs used by Bambarasculptors. Baule craftsmen of the Ivory Coast -work wood or metal with equal versatility,creating sculptures with the expressive features and finely detailed decorations seen in'the three other pulleys on page 20 and in the full page reproduction, page 21. Pulley shownat top left, page 20, has faces on both sides decorated with ritual incisions found onfunerary masks. Bottom right, head copied from a deity of the Baule pantheon. The hornssurmounting it (only one remains) are those of the goat, symbol of fertility.

Photos © Musée de l'Homme - Dorine Destables

THE ART OF AFRICAN PULLEYS (Continued from page 18)

A weaver: 'We cannot live without such beautiful things'

necessary the pulley, a carved fruit-stone or adapted bobbin, could simplybe suspended by a string from theframe of the loom but a bulky sup¬port may be so Inconvenient that theweaver occasionally uses the bobbinwithout it. When the German anthro¬

pologist, Professor Hans Himmelheber,of Heidelberg University, asked a Guroweaver from the Ivory Coast why hestill preferred carved pulleys, he re¬plied: "We cannot live without suchbeautiful things."

The craftsman's reply suggests thatthe pulley does not have, or no longerhas, a ritual purpose or symbolicalsignificance. But we know that thisis not the case with the Dogon peopleof Mali, whose mythology closely asso¬ciates weaving with speech. The Do¬gon name for the pulley is "the hiddenword," because Its rhythmic creakingrecalls the speech of Nommo, the firstmanifestation of the spoken word.

(Geneviève Calame-Griaule, in "Ethno¬logie et Langage, la Parole Chez lesDogon," Gallimard, Paris, 1965).

Except for one Bambara pulley fromMali (see page 20, top right), all thepulleys illustrated in this article comefrom the Ivory Coast from the terri¬tories of the Baule, Guro and Senufopeoples. Consciously or unconscious¬ly, Ivory Coast weavers look to pulleysto provide them not only with aesthe¬tic pleasure but also with protection.This assumption is borne out by thetype of carved motifs, borrowed fromtraditional religious designs, and bythe twofold meaning of the adjective"beautiful" (beautiful = good) in mostAfrican languages.

It is probable, however, that sincethese humble objects had no precisereligious function, they contributed tomaking the vocabulary of forms usedby sculptors relatively more secular (1).The result is even greater freedom for

the sculptors, whose designs rangefrom the highly figurative motifs of theBaule to the highly abstract motifs ofthe Bambara. For the functional rea¬

sons already given, there is a clearpreference for long slender shapes in¬side an isosceles triangle whose basecoincides with that of the support.

Although some examples in ivory arefound among the Guro of the IvoryCoast and the Ashanti of Ghana, pul¬ley supports are generally carved fromwood, not by smiths as among theDogon of Mali, but by craftsmen expertin working wood who chiefly makeobjects for everyday use such as tool-handles, pestles, mortars, seats andspoons.

The Belgian anthropologist, Father P.Knops, who has studied the work ofSenufo craftsmen during several visitsto West Africa, notes however that"the weaver has the right to make hisown loom and to decorate the shuttle,the piece of bone used to separatethe strands, and the pulley."

I

The hornbill, a bird of the

African savannas, is

designated in Senufo

mythology as one of the

first five living creatures.The others are the

chameleon, the tortoise, the

snake and the crocodile.

This elegant bird is often

depicted on Senufo pulleys,sometimes decorated with

ornamental incisions (colour

page opposite), sometimes

in an austerely simple

form (right).

Photo © Musée de l'Homme

Dorine Destables

HE same technique is usedas for carving statuettes. The motifchosen, whether a human or animal

figure or a geometrical form, is roughlyhewn with a broad axe; it is thenshaped with a short-handled adzewhich has a long, thin, slightly curvedblade with its end sharpened and flat¬tened out fanwise. A double-edgedknife is used to chisel the details, suchas fine scarifications, elaborate head¬dresses reproduced to the last details,and zigzag lines, that give such charmto these small objects, which vary ¡nsize from 10 to 20 centimetres.

Rough leaves are used for polish¬ing, after which the pulley is dyed ina bath of boiled leaves and smeared

with palm-oil, which gives It Its warmdark patina. Like all frequently-handledobjects, the pulleys are smooth andagreeable to the touch, any roughnessor sharp angles having been worn awayby use.

The type of wood used, hardwoodsfrom the Ivory Coast forest, the qualityof the patina, and the richness of theornamentation are features that givean undeniable unity to the pulleysstudied in this article. A clear dis-


(1) The British ethnologist, William Fagg,In "The Sculpture of Africa", Thames andHudson, London, writes, "No ritual purposeis ascribed to these pulleys." This opinionis not entirely shared by Jean Laude, who saysin his book, "Les Arts de l'Afrique Noire",("Collection Livre de Poche", Librairie Géné¬rale Française, Pans, 1966) ". . .these objectsare obviously secular, but an interpretation oftheir carvings shows that they always have acertain degree of religious significance."

THE ART OF AFRICAN PULLEYS (Continued)

tinction can however be drawn, if onlyin respect of the motifs favoured, bet¬ween two groups of pulleys: theBaule and Guro, and the Senufo.

With the former, which owe their

great charm to the extremely fine detailof the scarifications and the head¬

dresses (see pages 20 and 21), thecarved part above the support ¡s inmost cases clearly separated from itby a long neck ending either ¡n a smallfemale or male head, reminiscent of thestatuettes known as waka-sona (por¬traits made to order or images of thedead) or sometimes in a cock's head.

The contrasting short compact Baulepulley (see colour photo page 20, topleft), with its small head, which alsorecalls an ancestral portrait and looksas if it had been added on to the topof the support, acts as a sculptural linkbetween the two groups of pulleys.

The same Insertion of the carved

motif Into the support is found in theSenufo pulley (see page 19). Here, how¬ever, the vertical line is accentuatedby the pair of horns ¡n the form ofa half-moon rising above the long tri¬angular face, similar to those of thesmall anthropomorphic masks, chargedwith spiritual feeling, which are wornfor ritual dances.

The hornbill, symbol of male fertility,is depicted so frequently and in sucha variety of forms that it appears tohave the same Importance in Senufoiconography as the ancestral portraithas for the Baule. In decorating theirpulleys, Baule sculptors also take otherforms and motifs from ritual sculpture,for example the baboon or the buffalo;

the Guro use the antelope or the ele¬phant. Some Senufo pulleys are carvedat the top ¡n the form of the waniugobuffalo mask used in Initiation cere¬

monies. Other pulleys are decoratedwith purely geometrical motifs.

The two pulleys which are shown onpage 22 and 23 reveal the visual Imagi¬nation of the sculptors who have pro¬duced .two very different versions ofa single theme. The second pulley ¡sausterely simple, the sculptor havingadmirably conveyed the elegance ofthe long purely-carved beak; the firstpulley is decorated with lavish orna¬ments which give life to the surfacewithout affecting in any way the flow¬ing proportions.

It might even be argued that respectfor an imposed theme, in this casethe hornbill, and for the stylistic conven¬tions of the group in which the sculptorworks, far from hampering him, hasgiven him even greater freedom tostudy purely plastic problems and towork out a strikingly successfulsolution.

Weaving loom pulleys are today muchsought after collectors' pieces, butthey should be something more thanthat. As profoundly significant exam¬ples of the re-utilizatlon for purely de¬corative purposes of motifs that wereoriginally magical and religious, theyshould have pride of place in thecatalogue of themes and styles to bedrawn up for tropical Africa. If thisachieved nothing else, it would atleast preserve for modern craftsman¬ship the genuine local flavour whichunfortunately is now gradually dis¬appearing.

Below left, the traditional weaving

loom; below centre, detail of the loom

showing the decorated pulley in place.

The simplicity of the loom four

wooden poles fixed in the ground and

connected by intersecting branches

contrasts with the artistic refinement

of the carved pulley. Below right,a Baule pulley on which

has been sculpted the head of a

woman (one leg is broken).

In Russia, the Ukraine andByelorussia, for centurieswood was the only availablematerial for making objectsof everyday life. Theseobjects range frommonumental sculpturalworks to simple householdarticles in which the hand

of the craftsman has

integrated beauty withutility. This head, whichstrikingly recalls one of thegiant statues dotting theslopes of Easter Island inthe Pacific, is the decorativetop of a bottle stopperfashioned by a village woodcarver in early 19th centuryRussia.

UTENSILS

AS WORKS

OF ARTby Veniamin Fabritsky and Igor Shmelyov

VENIAMIN FABRITSKY and IGOR SHMELYOV are Soviet architects

whose designs have gained numerous prizes and awards. In the studyof the ancient art of wood carving they found an absorbing hobby towhich they have devoted many years of research and travel in themost distant parts of the U.S.S.R. They have described their searchfor masterpieces of folk craftsmanship in "Sagas in Wood", a bookpublished in Russian in the Soviet Union last year.

IN Russia, a land of denseand boundless forests, wood has

always been the most accessible andwidely used material. And in the handsof the Russian craftsman, the axe, a

rudimentary tool, becomes endowedwith magical qualities.

In times when saws and nails were

still largely unknown, craftsmen usedthe axe to make household objectsembellished with elegant carving andto hew and shape the solid timber-work of log cabins as well as palacesand churches. The skill of the archi¬

tects ¡n integrating these structures Intothe surrounding landscape still amazesus today.

The art of wood carving goes backmany centuries to the time of theEastern Slavs who settled on the banks

of great rivers such as the Dnieper,the Volga and the Don and aroundLake Urnen in the first millennium A.D.

These peoples deified the primitiveforces of nature. They worshippedmighty rivers, great mountains and


UTENSILS AS WORKS OF ART (Continued)

The master carvings of the 'Volga Boatmen'

rocks, towering trees, and madewooden idols with human features. The

walls of their temples were adornedwith wooden figures of human beings,birds and animals so realisticallyportrayed that they seemed to be alive.

Slav pagan religion and mythologycontinued to Influence Russian art

down through the centuries. Woodenvessels of today still resemble theduck-shaped cups unearthed from an¬cient sites in the Urals; the traditional

Russian log hut, the izba, is basicallyunchanged after hundreds of years;and the sun, represented as a circlewith a fan-shaped pattern of rays,remains a widely used motif ¡n woodcarving. Such carvings of the pagansun god were once carried as protec¬tive emblems at the mast-heads of

ships.

Christianity was adopted in Russiaat the end of the 10th century andbrought with it new ¡mages and emo¬tional qualities to enrich Russian art,which drew inspiration from the highestforms of Byzantine culture and assim¬ilated the artistic heritage of classicalantiquity.

The new works were shorn of all

but essential elements. Backgrounddetails were shown as clearly as thosein the foreground. Sculptural workswere characterized by their terseness,clear cut rhythm and stylized form, andthe central figure was made dispropor¬tionately large to emphasize its pre¬eminence and moral status.

These characteristics are seen in the

surviving examples of two types of13th century monumental wood carv¬ing: the framework of the iconostasisand the so-called Ludogoshcha cross.

The 13th century iconostasis (ascreen separating the sanctuary fromthe rest of the church) is divided intorectangles in which reliefs are sculpt¬ed. The whole composition is austereand rhythmical; the carved formsconcise, stylized and extraordinarilyimpressive.

The Ludogoshcha cross has a mostunusual shape resembling that of abranchy tree. Bas-reliefs in circularframes are placed at different levelson its surface which is covered with

Photo © APN - Novgorod History Museum

intricate carved patterns that unite thedifferent ¡mages into an expressiveensemble.

Both the 13th century iconostasiscarving and the Ludogoshcha crossare representative of the art of oneof the oldest Russian cities, GreatNovgorod, whose works are distin¬guished for their strong, clear line andtheir monumental yet austere formand expression.

The people of Novgorod were oftencalled "the master carpenters", suchwas their fame as craftsmen ¡n wood.

All Russia admired their wooden

churches, carved poles, sleighs, boats,beautiful handmade objects carved inboxwood and Caucasian walnut, and

the giant oak pipes that served aswater mains. At the end of the 10th

century, the craftsmen of Novgorodbuilt St. Sophia, a huge wooden cathe¬dral with 13 belfries.

In the 13th century the Tatar invas¬ion placed the Russian people undera yoke they were to endure for 150years.

In wood carvings of that time saintsare often depicted as inspiring figures;the most popular were the fieryArchangel Michael, sword ¡n hand,and St. George, a courageous, hand¬some youth in armour and on horse¬back. Grey-haired St. Nicholas per¬sonified man at his best wise, kindand charitable to others.

In 1380, the Russians routed theTatars at Kulikovo and drove them

out of Russia. The country rose fromits ruins to begin a new life.

Some 30 years later, Andrei Rub-lyov, the greatest icon painter ofancient Russia, created a work thatmarked the beginning of a new epochin Russian art: the famous "Trinity".Crystal clear, harmonious and lyrical,it was a masterpiece that revealed thevery quintessence of human feelings.Symbols and forms Intended to expressthe immutability of religious dogmasinstead reflected, in this profoundlyemotional work of art, the complexityand diversity of life.

Philosophical content and profoundemotional expression were traits thatRussian art shared with the masterly

Artists and craftsmen of

all periods have usedtheir art to express theideas of their time and

to depict events thatchanged the course ofhistory. In the 15th and16th centuries, Russiawas striving to weld itsfar-flung territories intoa single state. In 1551,an unknown wood

sculptor decorated theceremonial seat of Ivan

the Terrible, in theCathedral of the

Assumption, in Moscow,with scenes depicting amultitude of events in

Russia's history. Detail,right, from one panelshows cavalryapproaching a fortifiedcastle.

*iV vflf

An outstanding centre of the woodcarver's art in ancient Russia was

Novgorod, from the 9th to the12th century a dependency of Kievand for the next three centuries a

medieval republic Sovereign GreatNovgorod. By the 13th centuryits famous craftsmen had developed acharacteristic form of sculpturalwood carving, an austere yetexpressive style that is still evidentin the crosspiece of a crucifix shownbelow, carved at Novgorod in themid-1 7th century.

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compositions of Western Europe, thefrescos and sculptures of India, theclassical landscape paintings of Chi¬na, the miniatures of the Near andMiddle East, indeed, with all the art

of the Middle Ages.

Within the bounds of medieval

thought and knowledge, wood sculp¬tors and carvers used their art to

express with tremendous force theideals of their time, as well as toobserve and comment on events that

changed the course of history.

The ceremonial seat of Ivan the

Terrible in the Cathedral of the As¬

sumption, in the Kremlin, is an out¬standing example of 16th century woodcarving, and at the same time its com¬positions are a record of historicalevents compiled at a time when thevital task facing the country was tounite all its territories into a singlecentralized state. These reliefs are

images from the pages of Russian his¬tory, depicting among other episodes,the reception of ambassadors, the con¬ference between Prince Vladimir Mono-

makh of Kiev and the Boyars, andRussian cavalry on the move.

Traditions and techniques of sculp¬ture in wood were passed on fromgeneration to generation. NorthernRussia became famous for its uniquewood carving which, with Its simplepatterns composed of slanting andzig-zag lines, triangles, diamonds, ro¬settes and indentations, perpetuatedthe traditions of the art of Great Nov¬

gorod. Architecture in wood, too, wasdeveloped to a remarkable degree ¡nthe north where the Church of the

Transfiguration in Klzhl surmounted by22 domes still stands as a masterpieceof design and construction.

Another outstanding centre of thewood craftsman's art was the Volgaregion where the famous "ship carv¬ing" originated. Initially found onlyon the boats which plied the VolgaRiver, it spread far and wide to adorngates, porches, poles and windowmouldings. From its original austere,geometrical patterns, it evolved intoimaginative, embroidery-like designscreeping plants, leaves and flowers,fantastic birds, friendly-looking lionswith splendid manes and flowers intheir tails, mermaids, and herons with

a bunch of grapes in their beak. Allthese inspired poems in wood wereexecuted with superb craftsmanship.

The skill of the carvers, their abilityto conjure the maximum effect fromtheir material and above all their love

of beauty are clearly evident in theforms of utensils and other household

objects indispensable to a farmingcommunity.

With their perceptive understandingof wood and its plastic qualities, thesecraftsmen excelled in using to the bestadvantage its natural grain and pattern,and in utilizing roots and knots tofashion decorative motifs.

Every household article, howeverinsignificant, was given a distinctivebeauty: distaffs hand painted in brightcolours, heavy benches with carvedbacks, boards for making richlydecorated honey cakes and others forprinting colour patterns on fabrics,finely carved jugs, cups and salt cellarsshaped like boats, ducks or swans.

In this way, even the simplest every¬day activities fulfilled the purpose ofthe craftsman: the integration of beautywith utility.

27

Photo © Alfieri and Lacroix, Milan

NEW SHAPES TO

28

There was a time when the phrase "mass-produced

object" was synonymous with ugliness, inferior

quality and gimcrack products. In certain casesit is still true today and the unsightly articles

placed on sale in many countries are sad proofof this. But more and more, the creative designers

of today are seeking new forms that are both a

joy to the eye and a joy to use. Right, a windowdisplay poster by the German decorative artistBarbara Brenner of modern Danish cutlery. Japan¬

ese boxwood combs graphically arranged in

display, left, are so lovely that to even handlethem would be a delight. They are modern

products and designs inspired by traditionalJapanese forms and are often used as ornaments

in Japanese coiffures. Above, a sliding door of

original design offers a most unusual perspective

of Japan's great Izumo Shrine. It is the work

of Kiyoshi Awazu, one of Japan's leading creative

designers, who is responsible for the graphic

designing and plans for Expo 70, to be held InOsaka next year. Top left, an example of sym¬

bolic advertising design by an Italian artist, Franco

Grignani. No effort is made to advertise the

product directly, but instead the design attemptsto catch the viewer's interest by the striking

nature of the graphic construction. The design

is an advertisement for a printing company.

DELIGHT THE EYE

The phrase "beauty for beauty's sake" can be aptlyapplied to these prismatic-shaped towers which stand onthe outskirts of a town near Mexico City. The work ofsculptor Mathias Goeritz and architect Luis Barragan,they have no functional purpose other than to delightthe passerby with the beauty of their harmoniousprofiles outlined against the sky.

29

The speed of our modern age is already engraved in the urbanlandscape, in the curving shapes and patterns of concrete highwayjunctions and overpass bridges. Below left, a superhighway inter¬section in a U.S. city. Below right, "Endless Rhythm", a paintingby Robert Delaunay seems to echo the same pattern.

CURVING RHYTHMS

Above, soaring 13th century columns

and vaulting of the choir in Beauvais

Cathedral, Franceone of the great

masterpieces of Gothic architecture.

Right, the impressive ceiling of the

Palazzo dello Sport, Rome, built by

the Italian architect, Pier Luigi Nervi

in 1959. Its ribs are constructed of

prefabricated units of reinforced

concrete. These splendid examples

of architectural design, ancient and

modern, show that the mastery of

technics is a key to the purity and

boldness of structural forms designedfor mass audiences.

",

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E. o

NSíSS?>#8§^&>ss B§

31

SCULPTURES IN FLOUR AND YEAST. The flowing rhythm, sense ofproportion and ceramic-like quality of the figures above illustrate theremarkable talent of pastry chefs in such central European countries asCzechoslovakia, Rumania and Hungary. These works are part of a longtradition of artistic pastry-making that has been carried on for centuries. InHungary, little masterpieces of decorated bread and pastry are part of everywedding ceremony, and the objects are carefully preserved for years.

Ingeniously carved "proverb lids" for earthenware pots are used by theWoyo on the African coast near the mouth of the Congo as a mute buteloquent means of relaxing maritial tensions. A woman who, for one reasonor another, wishes to rebuke her husband, serves him his meal in a casserole

with a wooden lid on which carved figures convey a meaning which is clearto everyone and which never fails to have an effect on the husband. Awoman tired of being scolded for her cooking would use the lid below, show¬ing a man pointing to a bowl of sliced bananas, "a dish fit only for bachelors."

THE

CRAFTS

Continued from p. 17

engaged in learning metaphysics andthe true value of things; in short, inacquiring a culture.

There was no isolation of the school

from the larger life. For in this settingthe child learnt little tasks as part ofthe daily routine, picking up skillseven as he did other components ofhis way of life. The problems werereal, not make-believe, as the aim ofeducation was understood to be the

unfolding of the personality to makefor fuller life.

For the quality of inspiration whichtransmutes skills and competence canhardly be taught. It has to be culti¬vated by experience. This makes fora very special relationship between theteacher and the pupil, an intimacybinding the two. The latter looks upto the former as the source from which

knowledge is Imbibed, great truthslearnt and Interpreted.

The teacher educates the pupil asmuch through his own personalconduct as through studies, and isexpected to show the same respectand regard for the pupil as he wouldfor his own progeny and family.The sharing of problems and variedexperience is a real contributionto the enrichment and formation of

the pupil's personality.

In a craft society the master crafts¬man ¡s also a social leader and an

important entity in the community. Theteacher keeps nothing worthwhileback as a trade secret from the pupil.This form of institution makes crafts¬

manship a living thing, giving prestigeand value to sound standards. The

teacher spurs the pupil on to surpasshimself and takes genuine pride inconceding superiority to the student.

In a society which accepts craftsand still finds an honoured place forthem, there is a free exchange ofideas between fine arts and the crafts,

each accepting cues from the other.Similarly the man of taste is rated asequally gifted and with the same sens¬ibility as the man who creates. So

appreciation is in a sense on a parwith creation, because it is felt thatthe man of sensitivity participates withalmost the same excitement and

exhilaration when he appreciates aswhen he creates. This concept is animportant and Integral part of the craftworld.

Moreover, the Insistence on goodtaste ensures a consistently highstandard for all arts and crafts. Even

the common terracotta shows a vigourof muscle and at the same time a

fluidity of line as if to prove that theearth is not static but has a dynamicrhythm realized ¡n a flux through acontinuous process. Craft meanscultivation of an intimacy with humanlife and creation, a sympathy for allliving things and the realization of thefundamental unity of all aspectá of lifethough diverse in form.

A, society dominated by me¬chanical industrialization tends to exalt

efficiency over creative gifts, thoughthe' latter are rarer and more preciousfrom the human point of view. Thusadministrative staff enjoy better status,higher .salaries and are generallyconsidered more Important than expertcraftsmen.

It must be remembered that over¬

emphasis on techniques that acceler¬ate speed and swell the quantum ofvolume, but are divorced from imagin¬ation and intellect, can result in theloss of that exaltation which stimulates

creative activity in craft production.Similarly the pivotal importance accord¬ed to facts in education may drawaway all inspiration and leave life tooflat to awaken any sense of wonderin the young. Such overemphasis canbe just as hard to shake off as thesuperstitions of the imagination.

We once believed that a full per¬sonality is fostered by ideals in relationto which the course of life is set and

plotted through the observance ofcertain disciplines. It may be thatideals have fewer chances of survival

in an atomic age. Moreover, theever-increasing invention of sensitivemachines and instruments places lessand less premium, in a way, on man.

The trend now ¡s to give pre-emin¬ence to the machine. In a world

where life is being increasingly gearedto predominantly physical targets thathave to be achieved through highlycomplicated mechanical processes, therôle of man must inevitably necessarilypale and shrink. He has therefore tobe compensated by artifices.

The modern concept of the build upof the personality flows largely from amachine dominated age. Personalitybuild up today is made into a kindof a cult. Wide publicity is given totips and practical hints towards thisend: wear the right kind of clothes,have the right make-up for the com¬plexion, use the right type of perfumefor the evening. Surely, these do nothelp the blossoming of a personality.

The more frequent use of automaticmachines curtails the demands on

man. Less and less of him is called

into action. Geared to automation,

human beings must increasingly con¬form to machines: individual oppor¬tunities for choice and decision narrow

and, in the ultimate, leave the wayopen for the replacement of man bymachine. Large units constantly ex¬pand into larger ones and the concen¬tration of machines becomes still

heavier. In this gigantic grind, thehuman personality may well be under¬mined if it is not balanced by anaccompanying pattern of production,as in the crafts.

One is gradually becoming awareof a lowering of quality standards inthe current age, compared with thecraft age. People's taste is deter¬mined more by other opinions, called"fashions", than by the intrinsic valueor merit of a product. Similarly thesolidity or endurance of a productbecomes a less important factor.

Craftsmanship on the other hand ismore a tribute to the high function ofthe human being, who is not just aphysical frame, but is endowed withcreative talents. Society needsconstant reminders of this and of the

corrective and balancing force whichcrafts so naturally provide.

The alternative, for the majority ofpeople, may all too easily be a formof escapism, a flight from the mono¬tony and the stifling pressure of massproduction. In such an atmospherepeople tend to become preoccupiedwith careers rather than a sense ofmission or service. At the same time

they are readily attracted by anythingthat is new and, because of its nov¬

elty, exciting, with little discriminationor concern for proper values.

' E must not forget that whilescience may open up the fourth-dimen¬sional world, and technology the widefirmament, the individual in technolo¬

gical society seems to get compressedas it were into a single dimension.The responsibility he exercises istrivial, his power of decision nil. Onlya small part of him operates.

Craftsmanship, on the contrary,involves the entire person, relating themind and the material to a certain

function for a specific purpose. Whilethe tempo of the craft age gave theIllusion of timelessness, the currentage rushes on at the astronaut'sspeed. It is largely against this back¬drop that we have to view the valueof crafts and their relation to contem¬

porary society.

Crafts have a special rôle andsignificance in the creation of a home

home to mean all that part of one'senvironment that is personal and intim¬ate as distinct from temporary andutilitarian. When the machine usurpsthe essentially human part of perfor-


y i

r^ 'i

»

ti ~.,

i

)i

ESKIMO SCULPTURED MAP

19th century ethnologists discoveredthat Eskimos who lived along the eastcoast of Greenland had developedtheir own wooden relief maps whichnot only show the outline of thecoast but the contour of the land, rockFormations, storage places, and portageroutes for carrying kayaks overlandwhen ice blocked access to the sea.

The hand carved map, above, showsthe peninsula between the Sermiligakand Kangerdluarsikajik fjords. Areaswhich Eskimo map makers knew wellwere often enlarged and shown ingreater detail than lesser knownregions, and islands were carved on

a separate piece of wood and posi¬tioned alongside the main map toshow offshore areas.

Drawing from 10th Annual Report, Bureauof Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute, USA

33

Alitor Preliro Pimmai

UM NOVA-CEITA QUE

VIROU BODE

?tm CM 600


Throughout north-easternBrazil a popular imagery ofextraordinary richness anddiversity has developedsince the turn of the

century in the form ofblock-engraving illustrationsfor the covers of modest

booklets of poetry and folktales (photo 2). Asspontaneous as theliterature they are helpingto popularize in city suburbsand villages, the engravingsare the work of anonymousartists. They showlegendary heroes, scenesfrom everyday life, orfabulous animals such as

the werewolf (1), astrange "Pegasus" (3),lizards on their hind legs (4)or a hallucinating shape,half-devil, half-animal (5).

The soup's more delicious with a pretty spoon

34

manee, it cannot but reflect on theintimate environment.

In the furnishing of the home adirect association with the original andauthentic register a personal impres¬sion on us, as with an original painting,a manuscript, a relic, things that areproduction cannot equal no matterhow perfect it may be. Here onesenses all the difference between the

work of a master and a machine.

Crafts form part of the daily environ¬ment and fit ¡n naturally and grace¬fully in the arrangement of the home.

In upholding crafts one does notnecessarily by implication rejectmachines or make an impassionedplea for a return to hand production.There is, ¡n fact, a basic relationshipbetween small tools and large mach¬ines. Where we take the wrong turn¬ing is in failing to make the properappraisal of and acceptance of therôle of each ¡n its own sphere, whichwould still leave the community tomake a choice. There would then be

no danger of man being bullied by themachine.

Tradition respects the natural limitsof craftsmanship and the harmony thatis established between the craftsman,

the materials he uses and his tools.

The pride the craftsman derives fromhis creation and the delight in the per¬fection of his finished product sustainhim. It is this knowledge enshrined inthe crafts that gives them an abidingplace in our social set-up.

The very fact that even in thisgrowing forest of machines with itstriggery tempo, far from being smoth¬ered crafts are once more coming intoworld focus, is evidence enough thatwithin us pulsates an innate yearningto use our hands and to feel the

surface of individually created objects.

c.RAFTS embody certainqualities and a depth of experiencearising out of direct expression which¡s very different from studio work.Craft work is an acknowledged formof therapy for those who are mentallyunsettled and nervously upset: it is asource of rhythm and stability in living.Even hard labour done rhythmicallybecomes more bearable.

The problem before us is thereforenot man versus machine but rather

how to promote a harmony and cohes

ion between the two, a regulating ofeach in its own appropriate field.

The need for saving and developingcrafts is felt to be vital even by thosewho follow or are caught up ¡n otherpursuits. For it enables them to main¬tain contact with those aspects of ourculture that are characterized by crafts,and to absorb some of their eleganceand grace.

Crafts are particularly important withyoung people for the qualities theyhelp to develop. For inherent in thecraft tradition are abundant reserves

of sustenance and delight. As longas crafts continue as living and com¬pelling witnesses of these culturalresources, art will remain intimatelyconnected with the dally usages ofman.

Crafts also have a special vitalityas a direct human answer to direct

human needs. As has been said, the

demand ¡n eating calls as much forsatisfaction from the right kind ofspoon as from the food to be eaten.Crafts have therefore an Intimate

kinship with and understanding of thehuman needs its products serve,which Induces an intuitive sense goingwith rather than against the grain of

POPULAR IMAGERY

FROM

NORTH-EAST BRAZIL

life, absent in the assembly linepattern.

In craftsmanship man is in full controland can make his own decision at

every point. In large machine estab¬lishments the workman is likely to besubjected to the deadness of outwarduniformity and the gnawing pressuresof his inner self seeking release. Thevery fact that in the modern highlysophisticated period a compelling needis felt to reach back into the remote

past, with its naivety and simplicity, totry to flood our being with Its springlikefreshness, is a clear demonstration ofthis sustaining rôle of crafts.

Under social pressures, the essenceof things gets overlaid by more super¬ficial layers of modes and manners. Ithas been truly said that the virtue of aplant is in its seed and its form ¡n itsfirst shoot. Craft is not a disinterested

extraneous function complementary tolife but divorced from the inner beingof the community. Rather it is anintensification of life, a stirring of thepulse, a quickening of the heart, areleasing of the muscle, in short a com¬pelling and natural mode of expression.

Crafts are not stylized imitations ofnature but actually help to harmonizelife with nature. In a way, they teachus what to look for and how to see.

Craft forms have roots ¡n the soil as

well as in the imagination of the crafts¬man. They become a direct and sin¬cere expression of the character andlife of the people, and therefore speak

a language all their own. As the sayinggoes, music is more intelligible to themusician than speech.

|N the present age wherecrafts are exposed to many dangers, aparticular responsibility devolves oncraft lovers. It is significantly said thatthe disintegration of a craft-orientedsociety is reflected in the disintegrationof its crafts.

Crafts need not, of course, be boundup exclusively with tradition. For lifeis on the move and patterns of livingchange with habits and customs. Newrelationships are evolved with thecurrent flow of life and new traditions

created.

But there are certain values indispen¬sable to mankind which crafts preserve,and those craftsmen and craft lovers

who draw on this perennial spring of in¬spiration and experience its unchang¬ing sense of fulfilment have a preciouscharge to keep.

New exchanges are taking place inmany spheres and fresh breezes arewafted across that touch and transform

worn-out and weary spirits. The longcenturies of political and economicrule of some regions by others aregiving way to a growing realization ofa common brotherhood and destiny ofmankind.

The less industrially developed areas

have retained more of the craft heri¬

tage along with their other traditions.As they emerge from the old sup¬pressions and come to life, thesethings slip into proper perspective.The result is a growing realization ofthe significance of their contributionto the world of culture.

The people of the former rulingcountries too are waking up to agreater discernment and appreciationof the gifts and qualities the newlyfreed have to offer. Today, much ofthe old obtuseness and casualness on

the part of the more industrializedpeoples towards the less industrializ¬ed nations is giving place to a moreintelligent and sensitive understand¬ing of the old cultures and traditionalvalues, and a recognition of the needfor and significance of mutual under¬standing and appreciation and ex¬change.

There is also a realization that the

tissues of an older way of life are notto be swept away like so many cob¬webs, for to a sympathetic mankindthey reveal untold charms and subtleand restrained overtones of abidingvalue and vibrant meaning.

Anand Kumaraswamy, the greatinterpreter of oriental arts and crafts,says that "years ago, under pre-industrlal conditions, the public hadperforce to accept good art, gooddesign, good colouring, because no¬thing worse was hardly available."


35


36

Now mass production under advanc¬ed mechanization places the ignorantand the aesthetically untutored at themercy of those who seek larger mar¬gins of profit.

The time for a choice has come.

Good taste and greater opportunityto live in intimacy with beauty shouldnot be the privilege of the few, butthe common inheritance of all. This iswhat the crafts have to teach and offer

us. The two paths have already cross¬ed. Western science is no longerregarded as just a mechanism but hasacquired also an element of philo¬sophy.

The rôle of crafts in the economy ofa developing country has become asubject of world-wide significance.Economists all over the globe havedirected their vision and experience tothis study. And indeed it is clear thata sentimental regard for traditionalismalone will not take us very far in oureffort to give these ancient activitiesa modern vitality and meaning.

The modern demand ¡s for beautyas a supplement to usefulness. Thenagain, the concept of usefulness itselfhas changed because of the transform¬ation of our modes of thought, ofliving habits and environment. Nor isthere any longer the same fastidious¬ness for the purity of material or theauthenticity of form. With the adventof cheap alloys, even for jewellery,artificial silk and synthetic materialslike plastic, the emphasis has definitelyshifted to cheapness. Similarly, theinsistence on durability has beenreplaced by a demand for greater var¬iety. Modern taste is restless andprepared to renew and replace articlesmore easily and more frequently.

It is therefore in the very nature ofthe craft Industry that great sensitivityand delicate handling, infinite patienceand tireless perseverance will beneeded before crafts can play anappropriate role in contemporary so¬ciety. The public must bear with thisgreat heritage of mankind in its periodof mutation, and remember that even

though its birth and flowering belongedto another age, another atmosphere,a totally different pattern of living andtempo, it nevertheless has somethingsignificant and Important to bring tothe modern context.

There is nothing spectacular aboutcrafts. You do not find them in Impos¬ing structures humming with life andlit by million candle-power lights.They have mostly to be unearthed intwilit corners and humble cottages.Even though millions are engaged incrafts all over the world, they are neverfound in large concentrations. Theirtools are modest and unostentatious.

The importance of crafts cannot there¬fore be measured through super struc¬tures or streamlined machines. Theyspeak of an age when dignity lay insilence and beauty in subtlety.

This text, taken from "The Arts and Man",to be published shortly by Unesco, is copy¬right. Reproduction prohibited.

"D

lb EJ caMenace to coffee

There's still a lot of coffee in Brazil.But unless the activities of the "Meloido-

gyne coffeicola" are .checked, there may bemuch less. This minute parasite feedsoff the roots of plants, killing them orreducing their yields. The pests have laidto waste a number of Brazilian coffee

plantations, and federal and state govern-,ments, with help from FAO and inter¬national chemical companies, are mountinga vigorous eradication campaign.

Food aid for Morocco

The World Food Programme will contrib¬ute $13 million in food aid to an ambitious

Moroccan project to help rural peoplebuild and improve houses and schools. The$60 million scheme, to be developed inten different locations, involves building60,000 new houses and renovating30,000 homes, building schools, healthand social centres and streets, and

providing water supplies, sewage systemsand street lighting.

Kimono renaissance

The kimono, traditional Japanese costume,Is regaining favour. Relegated to the backof the closet for years because it wascumbersome and expensive, its annualsales are now increasing by 20 to 30 percent. Much of the kimono's returningpopularity is due to the substitution ofwool for silk, thus cutting the price byas much as 90 per cent.

Putting human rightsto work

A new survey of international effortssince World War II to enforce human rightsappears in a recent Issue, of International

Conciliation, published by the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace. "The

Key to Human Rights Implementation",written by Dr. William Korey, director ofthe B'nai B'rith United Nations office, citesindifference of governments and suspicionof former colonial countries as deterrents

to progress, and calls attention to thehampering effect of political problems onhuman rights action. Conversely, he citesthe International Labour Organization andthe Council of Europe as two organi¬zations that have made encouraging break¬throughs.

'Vision and Value': new

focus on art and science

Some of the world's foremost scientists,scholars, artists and educators have con¬tributed to "Vision and Value", a seriesof six volumes dedicated to the search

for values common to contemporary scien¬tific, technological and artistic achievements.Prepared under the editorship of GyorgyKepes, professor of visual design at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology,U.S.A., each volume Is dedicated to abroad basic theme and contains some

15 essays and over 150 illustrations. Thesix titles in the series are: "Education of

Vision", "Structure In Art and in Science","The Nature and Art of Motion", "Module,Proportion, Symmetry, Rhythm". "The Man-Made Object", "Sign, Image, Symbol".This unique series is published by GeorgeBraziller, Inc., 1 Park Avenue, New York,N.Y. 10016 ($12.50 per volume) and byStudio Vista Ltd., Blue Star House, HighgateHill, London, N.19 (63/-. per volume). Pleasedo not order through Unesco.

Polio on the rise

Poliomyelitis, so dramatically reduced inNorth America, Europe and Oceania, hasshown a three-fold rise in tropical andsemi-tropical countries. Chief victims arechildren under five. Studies show that

vaccination 95 per cent successful intemperate climates is only 60 per centeffective. Scientists supported byWHO are investigating this problem.

Tree bark vs. oil pollution

Ordinary tree bark ground into powderhas come to the rescue of water pollutedby oil from ships and industry. Stuffedinto sausage-like booms of nylon, the barkeffectively absorbs the pollutant. The wasteit contains makes it highly combustible andafterwards it can be used as fuel. Tests

show that two litres of bark powder absorbone litre of liquid.

Museum computer network

Fifteen museums in New York City andone in Washington D.C. have set up thefirst computer-based central archive of theprincipal art resources in the U.S.A. Thismuseum computer network, which is todistribute information to museums, libraries,

PEACE THROUGH INTERNATIONAL LAW

The United Nations has dedicated its latest

commemorative stamp, issued on April 21, toPeace Through International Law. The new stampalso commemorates this year's 20th anniversarymeeting of the International Law Commission,established by the U.N. General Assemblyin 1947 "to promote the progressive developmentof international law and its codification." The

new stamp appears in 6 and 13 cent denomi¬

nations. As agent in France for the U.N. PostalAdministration, Unesco's Philatelic Service stocks

U.N. stamps and first day covers currently on sale. For further details, write toall

the Unesco Philatelic Service, Place de Fontenoy, Paris-7e.

and other educational institutions, aims torecord all U.S. public collections, beginningwith those in New York and Washington.

Renaissance libraryrecreated in one book

Treasures from the famous Bibliotheca

Corviniana of Buda in Hungary have beenmade accessible for the first time to the

general public by Editions Europa of Buda¬pest which, in co-operation with Unesco,has published a beautiful volume containingmany remarkable, illuminated manuscriptpages which once belonged to the library.Founded at the beginning of the Renaissan¬ce by King Matthias of Hungary, the Cor¬viniana Library's original collection number¬ed 2,500 pieces, many of which are nowthe property of other European libraries.Unesco has financially aided the projectand arranged for Corviniana works in 40libraries to be photographed for the cata¬logue. The beauty of the Corviniana manu¬scripts is illustrated by 143 full page colourphotographs accompanied by texts andartistic and historical notes by distinguishedHungarian scholars. First published inHungarian In 1967, the volume Is now beingprepared in other languages.

Man through his art

Mm f/irt>ut(/i //is \n

jve and Marriage

.a

"Love and Marriage" (cover above) isthe fifth volume in the series, "Man ThroughHis Art", 14 books which present, describeand annotate artistic masterpieces from theworld's major cultures. Each book exploresa different aspect of human life and showshow man has given artistic expression toit. The first four volumes dealt with: "War

and Peace", "Music", "Man and Animal"

and "Education". Each has 20 plates,including 16 in full colour, and over 100text Illustrations. The collection is publish¬ed for the World Confederation of Organiz¬ations of the Teaching Profession withthe co-operation of Unesco, and the editorsare Madame Anil de Silva (Ceylon), Pro¬fessor Otto von Simson (Fed. Rep. ofGermany) and Philip Troutman (U.K.).Orders and Inquiries should be sent tothe following addresses: (U.K edition)Educational Productions Ltd., East Ardsley,Wakefield, Yorks, (school ed. 25/-, generaled. 30/-); (Canadian ed.) The Queen'sPrinter, Ottawa, Ont. (school ed. $5.00,general ed. $8.00); (U.S. ed.) New YorkGraphic Society, Greenwich, Conn, (schooled. $5.75, general ed. $7.95). For Scandin¬avia: International Publishing Co., Box 404,Orebro, Sweden (45 Kr.). PLEASE DONOT SEND ORDERS TO UNESCO.

Air pollution antidote

Ninety-eight per cent of the pollutantsulphur dioxide can be removed from theflue gases of heavy-oil fired boilers bya new Swedish process, which also elimin

ates 90 per cent of flue gas dust. Thenew system washes the flue gas with alime solution; the resultant sludge is dis¬posed of easily and safely. Though design¬ed to combat sulphur dioxide, the pro¬cess can also be used against other gases.

International efforts

to conquer cancer

The foundation stone of the headquartersof the International Agency for Researchon Cancer was laid recently in Lyon,France. The Agency, an autonomous bodywith nine member countries and operatingwithin the framework of the World Health

Organization, was founded in 1965 to pro¬mote and participate in international co¬operation in cancer research. It collabo¬rates with over 60 centres in different partsof the world, and has set up regional cen¬tres in Nairobi, Singapore and Jamaica tostudy environmental factors.

Unesco teams to studywind damage

Unesco plans to send teams of expertsin structural engineering and the aero¬dynamics of structures to areas of theworld where damage has been causedby strong winds. Their mission will be toreduce future damage by assessing howbridges, towers, and chimneys are affectedby high wind, and studying the pattern ofdamage left by a storm. They will comparethe relative merits of traditional and new

building methods and materials, andsuggest design and construction Improve¬ments. Wind damage throughout the worldcosts an estimated $1,000 million annually.

The promotion of literacy

The Pontifical Commission for Justice and

Peace has recently created a committeefor the development of peoples, under thepresidency of Monsignor de Araujo Sales,Archbishop of Bahia (Brazil). The com¬mittee will work to promote, organize andco-ordinate the contribution of the Roman

Catholic Church to the basic education ofhundreds of millions of illiterate adults.

Pope Paul VI has emphasized that thisstep was taken in response to an appealby Mr René Maheu, Director-General ofUnesco, for the Church to actively co-op¬erate in the campaign for basic educationand functional literacy which Unesco isstriving to promote throughout the world.

Flashes...

Europe, with 13.5% of the world'spopulation, produced over 44% of theworld's books in 1965, reports the UnescoStatistical Yearbook.

The rate of increase of Spain's universitypopulation is seven times greater than thatof the country's total population. Whilemale student enrolment has tripled in recentyears, that of women students has increas¬ed tenfold.

Britain's roads, the most congested inthe world, carry 55.3 vehicles per miledouble the density in the U.S.A. and France.

The United States has nearly 2,000 mus¬eums, which are visited by almost200 million people annually.

No matter what control measures are

used, world population will have doubledin the next 40 years, according to WHO.

BOOKSHELF

RECENT UNESCO BOOKS

Index Translationum 20

(International Bibliographyof Translations)1969 ($36; £10.15s. stg.)

Children's ProgressStories of Unesco-Unicef

programmes in educationBy Richard Greenough(Unesco and its programme) 1968

Teachers for the Schoolsof Tomorrow

By Jean Thomas

(Unesco and its programme) 1968

Appraisal of the Major Projecton Mutual Appreciation ofEastern and Western Cultural Values :

1957-1966

8 mm Film for Adult Audiences

Reports and Papers on MassCommunication, No. 54

1968 ($1; 6/- stg.)

The Study of Environmentin School

International Bureau of Education,Geneva - Unesco, Paris, 1968

($6.50; 39/- stg.)

The Japanese Character

(A cultural profile)By Nyozekan HasegawaTranslated by John BesterA Japanese National Commissionfor Unesco publicationKodansha International Ltd.,

Tokyo, Japan ; Palo Alto, California,U.S.A., ($5)

Fighting Discrimination inEmployment and Occupation

(A workers education manual)International Labour Office,

Geneva. 1968 ($0.75; 5/3 stg.)

Languages and the YoungSchool Child

Edited by H.H. Stern witha research guide by John B. Carroll(Language and Language Learning)Oxford University Press, London,1969 (20/- stg.)

Africa South of the Sahara

(Culture Regions of the World Series)By Philip J. Foster

The Macmlllan Company, New YorkCollier-Macmillan Ltd., London, 1968

(22/- stg.)

Indonesia

(The Modern World)By Malcolm CaldwellOxford University Press, 1968(8/6 stg.)

Universities in the Modern World

By Basil Fletcher

Pergamon Press (Commonwealth andInternational Library), Oxford, 1968(30/- stg. cloth; 21/- stg. paper cover)

A Hundred Years of Sociology

By G. Duncan MitchellDuckworth, London, 1968

(42/- stg)

37

Letters to the EditorPROBLEMS OF THE BIOSPHERE

Sir,

We were delighted to note the empha¬sis of your January 1969 issue on theproblems of the biosphere, in excellentarticles by Michel Bâtisse, René Dubos,Jean Dorst and Frank Fraser Darling.Through your own 12 editions, and Ihope through wide reprinting, theyshould do much to stimulate more posi¬tive action to change some of the tragicimbalances resulting from centuries ofmindless exploitation.

I should like to call your attention tothe fact that Dr. Harold Coolidge isnow President of the International Union

for Conservation of Nature and Natural

Resources (IUCN), having succeededDr. François Bourlière at the General

Assembly in Lucerne in 1968. ProfessorDorst is VIce-Chalrman of the IUCNSurvival Service Commission.

E.J.H. Berwick

Secretary-General, IUCNMorges, Switzerland

IN THE EPIC TRADITION

Sir.

Congratulations on the issue devotedto "Two Great Epics of Asia, Rama-yana and Mahabharata" , (December1967). I have just re-read your brilliantand unusual account of these two greatEastern epics. Would that more suchstudies were carried out for the benefit

of all people proud of an undying andrich culture and tradition. Would a

WHEN THE EARTH SHOOK IN KHORASSAN

Sir.

Congratulations to Rex Keating forhis vivid description in your February1969 issue of the effects of the recent

Khorassan earthquake in Iran. We spenttwo and a half months in the devastated

area helping to assess and restoregroundwater supplies, and can endorseheartily most of his observations andcomments.

Nevertheless, the photograph on page33 is misleading, for although the captiondoes not state that the fissures shown

result directly from shock waves, thisis clearly implied.

In this part of Iran, as elsewhere inarid territories, small cultivated areas

along the bottoms of stream valleyshave been laboriously terraced over thecenturies Into a series of flat or almost

flat fields bounded by irrigation ditchesand along their lower sides by earthenembankments locally known as bansar.Each bansar is surmounted by a ridgeof earth 1-2 feet high, the function ofwhich is to pond back rain or irrigationwater so that the field behind maybenefit by thorough saturation. Severalditches and bansar can be seen In the

photograph. The original stream iscanalized along the side of the valleyand flanks the cultivated area so that

water can easily be directed into theirrigation system. Under normal cir¬cumstances each field regularly receivesIts quota of water and is temporarilyflooded to a depth of a few inches.

Your photograph (below left) showsnot earthquake fissures, but an almosttextbook example of a ramifying drain¬age pattern. Probably this formed over

38

an extended period before the earth¬quake as a result of successive winterflooding of deserted land with conse¬quent breaching of the bansar anddevelopment of drainage channels. Ifit can be shown conclusively that thepattern postdates the disaster, then,more interestingly, the effects can beattributed to a failure to stop the flowof irrigation water to the fields immedi¬ately after the shock, with consequentexcessive flooding and rapid erosionof the soft, sllty soil by the outrushof water through bansar breached byoverflow.

We saw fissuring directly attributableto shock waves near the villages ofSaliani and Sefidasht in the middle of

the plain of Dashti Biaz, along thenorth side of which ran the course ofthe main fault. These fissures werearcuate or almost circular and in our

opinion were caused by the shaking andcompaction of the thick silts which hereform the alluvium of the plain. Thispattern bore no resemblance whatever

to the ramifying pattern in the photo.

Your readers may be interested tosee a photograph (below right) of themain fault-plane of the earthquake,which here has a vertical downthrow

of about one metre and a lateral dis¬placement of about two metres.

John B.W. DayPrincipal Geologist

E.P. WrightPrincipal Scientific Officer

Hydrogeological Dept.,Institute of Geological Sciences

London, U.K.

similar treatment of the Greek epicsIliad and Odyssey be possible in yourmagazine?

lay NaidooDurban, Natal, South Africa

YOUTH 1969

Sir,

A brief word of thanks for the

immense hope that your issue "Youth1969" (April 1969) has brought to youngpeople. Transcending the subjectiveaspects and particularities of the prob¬lem, this outstanding number foreseesthe profound transformation to whichworld civilization is already committedand shows how a new awareness to

the problem has been awakened.

Jean-Paul JacquetVernaison, France

FROM A 12-YEAR OLD

MEDIEVALIST

Sir,

I read your December 1968 issue ofthe "Unesco Courier" entitled "Venice

in Peril". I adore medieval clothes,

songs, musical instruments, castles,weapons in fact, everything in thatperiod, especially the old way of speak¬ing. I hate the more up-to-date versionsof all these, things. Sometimes I feelthat I was born in the wrong century.

It made me really very sad to readyour December number. It seems tome that all the old (medieval or notmedieval) things are either disappear¬ing or have already gone. What willthis world be like In the year 2000?(I hope I'm not alive, thenl)

As the world grows older, peopleshould be trying to restore beautiful oldbuildings and cities.

Because of this I have started a club

called SVAMIT (Save Venice and Med¬ieval Italian Tradition). The medievalItalian tradition bit is added because I

hate the way beautiful old Italian citiesare getting ruined by modern factories,oil rigs, and modern industry.

Anyway, we would love to know ifthere is any place that we could sendthe proceeds of our fêtes and collectionsto. We want Venice to stay the samemarvellous, magnificent, beautiful citythat It always has been. And even ifthis world develops into the horridworld that men in power (in the 20thcentury) want it to, we want Veniceto always stay the same.

In our club we have medieval parties.We eat food that is prepared and servedin medieval fashion. We speak in theold way and dress in the old way too.It is almost as good as being alivein 1600.

Anne Souter (aged 12)London, U.K.

Contributions towards the preservationof Venice should be sent by chequeto the Bureau of the Comptroller,Unesco, Place de Fontenoy, Paris 7',with a note indicating the purpose forwhich the money is intended Editor.

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Just published by Unesco

AN ANTHOLOGY OF TEXTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS

prepared under the direction of Jeanne Hersch

"Birthright of Man", published by Unesco to mark the 20th anni¬versary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, illustrateshow people everywhere, throughout the ages and all over theworld, have asserted and claimed the birthright of man (select¬ed passages published in the November 1968 issue of the"Unesco Courier").

Contains over a thousand fragments culled from every epochbetween 3000 B. C. and 1948 A. D., the year the UniversalDeclaration was adopted.

Brings together texts from every continent, every latitude andlongitude, from fable and tragedy, legislation and proverb,political treatises and ritual texts, from funerary inscriptionsand popular songs.

Presents the broad canvas of themes which have inspired theUniversal Declaration : the human person, power and limitationsof power, civil liberty, truth and freedom, social rights, education,science, culture, servitude and violence, law against force,national identity and independence, universality, sources andends of rights.

592 pages (93/4x6V2 in.)

12 full-plate illustrations, including 4 in colour, and 21textual illustrations.

Cloth bound $12.00; £3 (stg.); 35 F.

ORDER FROM UNESCO SALES AGENTS LISTED BELOW

birthrightof MAN

WHERE TO RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONand order other Unesco publications

Order from any bookseller, or write direct tothe National Distributor in your country. (See listbelow ; names of distributors in countries notlisted will be supplied on request.) Payment ismade in the national currency ; the rates quotedare for an annual subscription to THE UNESCOCOURIER in any one language.

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UTENSILS

AS WORKS

OF ART

With their love of beau¬

ty and creative skills,craftsmen of pre-in-dustrial days turnedeven the most common¬

place objects and uten¬sils into works of art.

Modern assembly-lineproducts often sacrifi¬ce aesthetic qualitiesto demands of speedand quantity. The crafts¬man's appreciation ofbeauty is displayed inthis wooden distaff

stand with its gracefulpainted reliefs, carvedby a 19th century arti¬san, Lazar Vasilyev, inthe Nizhni Novgorod(now Gorki) region ofthe U.S.S.R. (see articlepage 25).

From the collection of

the History Museum, MoscowPhoto © APN

the arts and man; the unesco courier: a window open on...

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