Review: Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, by Samantha A. Noël

Abstract

Book Review| April 01 2023 Review: Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, by Samantha A. Noël Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, by Samantha A. Noël. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. 264 pages. Hardcover $99.95, paperback $26.95. Vivian Braga dos Santos Vivian Braga dos Santos Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (2023) 5 (2): 151–152. https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2023.5.2.151 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Vivian Braga dos Santos; Review: Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, by Samantha A. Noël. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1 April 2023; 5 (2): 151–152. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2023.5.2.151 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentLatin American and Latinx Visual Culture Search Participating in a contemporary movement for the renewal of the humanities through an environmental perspective, Samantha Noël’s book offers a new approach to thinking about nature in art history from the viewpoint of Black modernisms. Investigating artworks, performances, and other creative manifestations developed in cultural practices in the Caribbean and tropical locations in the United States in the early twentieth century, the author elaborates the concept of tropical aesthetics. Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism defines an art that evokes tropicality in order to examine the relationship between Black Atlantic peoples and the lands they inhabited and labored on during colonial eras. Presented as a geographical empowerment, tropical aesthetics reify social geographies, creating spaces of memory for enslaved ancestors and Afro-descendants, engendering a sense of belonging. The theoretical approach inaugurated by Noël responds to and confronts racialized discourses that historically associate, pejoratively, tropical nature with Black people. Her investigation begins... You do not currently have access to this content.