Art Review: Magic Scrolls: ‘Talismanic Art of Ethiopia

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

NEW YORK - In 2005 the London dealer Sam Fogg blew us away with an exhibition of Ethiopian Christian liturgical art: open-work processional crosses cast in metal or carved from wood, along with brilliantly painted icons and illuminated Gospels, some made centuries ago in the great court ateliers of post-Byzantine Africa. Now Mr. Fogg, in association with Milos Simovic of Elizabeth Street Fine Arts, follows up with a smaller show of 18th- and 19th-century objects that emerged from Ethiopian popular religion. One of the oldest in the show, dating to the late-18th or early-19th century (Left), is punctuated by the image of an eight-pointed star, known as Solomon’s Seal, with a pair of starting eyes at its center and other eyes jutting from the sides like wings. [link]