The cultural legacy of the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin is one of Africa's oldest and richest, extending for more than nine centuries. Among the most prized achievements of African art are the naturalistic terracotta sculptures produced for the royal Yoruba courts from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Also renowned for their beauty and craftsmanship are Yoruba ceremonial swords, elaborate beaded crowns, wood and ivory carvings, embroidered textiles, jewelry, and architectural works.

With twenty-seven color reproductions and eighty-one photographs - many published for the first time - accompanying essays by eighteen of the world's foremost Yoruba cultural historians, this book offers the most complete exploration of Yoruba artists and their work to date.

Documenting the full spectrum of Yoruba culture, this definitive work extends beyond the visual arts to examine, for the first time, the Yoruba use of such oral traditions as singing and chanting, as well as drumming, dance, and other artistic expressions, including an Ifa divination ritual that involves an interplay of arts.

The Yoruba Artist presents the latest in field-research and critical methodology, pointing to new directions in African cultural scholarship. The book explains the intricate linkage of a variety of Yoruba art forms and the role of oriki (praise poetry) songs in the transmission of knowledge. In one essay, Wande Abimbola illustrates how an extended praise poem serves as a source for knowledge concerning a famous eighteenth-century carver in the Old Oyo area.

In another, Oba Solomon Babayemi discusses the relationship between oral history preserved by singers and drummers and the architectural history of the palace at Gbongan.

In appraising individual figures such as Olowe of Isethis century's most important Yoruba artist - the contributors underscore particular oral and visual codes that identify authorship. Discussing the transition to current cultural forms, the essayists also show how contemporary artists in West Africa and the Americas have revitalized Yoruba aesthetic traditions.