African Art History Research Articles

John Coltrane’s Pursuit of Elegance

This essay presents John Coltrane as a key transitional figure in the history of African American art’s relationship with the cultural mainstream, bridging the institutionalized cultural movements of the earlier part of the century, such as the Harlem Renaissance, and the more politically and formally radical ones—such as the Black Arts Movement—that succeeded them in the 1960s. The larger cultural transition that Coltrane both responded to and participated in can be traced through the seemingly contradictory ideas about the value of conventional aesthetic form expressed in his published writings—which include poetry, autobiography, statements of artistic purpose, and private correspondence—as well as in his interviews and major musical undertakings, such as his popular album A Love Supreme . Reading these documents in light of the cultural environment in which Coltrane received his early education can help uncover aspects of the role he played in mediating the institutionalized and mainstream-oriented aesthetic values in which he was raised for the artists and authors on whom he had such a singular influence in the 1960s.

COVERED IN SOME COLOURS: USE AND MEANING OF PAINT TO ASANTE AND KASSENA NANKANA ETHNICITIES OF GHANA

Cave art stands as a universal artistic heritage, harking to humanity's quest to proliferate reality, as well as live in a colourful ambience. It is logical to reason that, this Palaeolithic evidence of cave painting that occurred over the various continents extended into ancient cultures and subsequent generations the world over. Yet in documenting history of traditional African art, authors hardly delve into the subject of paint. Up to now, far too little attention has been paid to paint and its role in art among traditional Ghanaian ethnicities. This study therefore focused on the two regions of Ashanti (Asante) and Upper East. Using ethnographical, historical and phenomenological methods, 23 respondents were purposively selected and interviewed by snowball. At the end of the study 11 paints and pigments were found as integral to traditional Ghanaian art of ethnicities in these regions. The study revealed unique ways in which these media were sourced and employed as well as the philosophical meanings that underpinned them. The significance of this work is found in its systematic study of paints and pigments, as a contribution to discourse on traditional African art media.

Kasfir Dialogue: A Response

| 9 for the birth of the interest in the contemporary. Many of us had well before this battled the traditionist status quo for some presence to be granted the contemporary. The obvious reason was that not doing so froze Africa in the unchanging past that, as it turned out, Johannes Fabian had already critiqued in regard to anthropology. It is even more curious, as I and others have argued more recently in Nka, Critical Interventions, and earlier in Ijele, because the evidence will not support that memory’s representativeness. (Among many others are Okoye, in Nka 26, op. cit., 86–87, 128–29; Okoye, “Identity/Knowledge,” Critical Interventions 1 (2007); Nzegwu, “RIDING THE SPIRIT OF OGUN: The Art of Olu Amoda,” Nka Fall/Winter 1994 (1):15; Salami, “Towards “Radical Contemporaneity” in African Art History: The “Glocal” Facet of a Kinship-Based Artistic Genre, Critical Interventions 3/4, Spring 2009.) Nkiru Nzegwu had been arguing for the contemporary from her base in Canada. Salah Hassan and I, separately, had given papers at this same 1987 ACASA conference (I on Olu Oguibe and Greg Odo, and this was well before Americans would have heard of either of them). I am not sure what the basis is for granting Thompson leadership of the revolution, but certainly Samba was not more interesting, nor more representative of the real Africa than were Oguibe and Odo (especially if one recalls the post Biafra war decimation of the Nigerian middle class, and that access to post primary education right up to the university, was in Nigeria significantly meritocratic, and in art school especially not at all the ken of the economically privileged). Many who had struggled to assert the inclusion of the Contemporary should not know be being written out of the history by a reference back to those against whom we saw ourselves opposed, even if in hindsight our revolutionary zeal may have also clouded our reading of what and who stood in the way.

The contemporary present and modernist past in postcolonial African art

This article addresses ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ as two distinct categories in African artistic practices and art history. It engages with exhibitions as sites of knowledge production and examines how they construct narratives of artistic modernism, modernity, and contemporaneity. By focusing on the Tendances et Confrontations exhibition, at the Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Negres Dakar in 1966, and Dak'Art biennials since 1992, it explores the role of the two exhibition platforms in shaping artistic practices and discourse in two moments in African art and history in the last 50 years. The article also places particular emphasis on the interpretation of artworks in Tendances et Confrontations and Dak'Art to outline a transformation in artistic practices and knowledge production.

Lowenfeld at Hampton (1939-1946): Empowerment, Resistance, Activism, and Pedagogy

Viktor Lowenfeld (1903-1960) has been abundantly documented as having influenced art teaching in the United States. Scarce attention, however, has been given to the significant and remarkable advancements he made to resist structures of institutionalized racism and promote inter-racial cooperation. Lowenfeld was a mentor to several notable African American artists, who participated in his art program at the Hampton Institute, a historically Black college in Virginia (now Hampton University). While recognized in African American art history texts, it has been largely understated in histories of art education even though extant archival materials authenticate this aspect of his career. This article, based on archival research, revises Lowenfeld’s story to include his connection to his African American students whose agency shaped the art world and helped create social change. It also raises questions concerning the collection, documentation, and preservation of the historical record in furthering knowledge about art education that reflects inclusivity, plurality, and social justice perspectives.

Ivan Karp (1943–2011)

Mary Jo Arnoldi Where to begin when writing about Ivan Karp—his is a personality and intellect larger than life—he was my mentor, an inspiration, a valued colleague, and perhaps in the grander cosmic picture, a treasured friend. We first met at Indiana University in 1975 when I was a new Roy Sieber graduate student and Ivan was a new faculty member in Anthropology. These were heady times when interdisciplinary study was not only encouraged, but expected. Many of us in anthropology, art history, comparative literature, and folklore took Ivan’s courses. We were pretty much in awe of him, and maybe even a bit frightened as well—a bit like the magnificent OZ. Yet the man behind the curtain was completely different and he was a man with a great generosity of spirit. He introduced us to a world of rigorous anthropological inquiry and helped us to escape from the seduction of details to see the larger picture and to make meaningful connections among seemingly unrelated ideas and contexts. In an interview in Perspectives: Angles on African Art (1987), Ivan mused, “I began to notice African art only after I came in contact with students in African art history and anthropology who worked with it.” But it was more than just a notice, as I remember it. It was Ivan’s infectious delight in new ideas and his respect and openness in dialogues with both Sieber and with students, like me, which was a testimony to his ongoing commitment to African arts. When I joined Ivan at the Smithsonian in 1984, he had already immersed himself in the world of African objects. Yet his was not an antiquarian’s passion for African things, but rather a keen intellectual interest in forging a more robust and dynamic dialogue between objects and their social contexts. Ivan had a special gift for bringing creative people together from across a wide range of disciplines around important topics. At the Smithsonian he began to meet in memoriam

Performing Ferocity: Fancy Dress, Asafo, and Red Indians in Ghana

June 01 2012 Performing Ferocity: Fancy Dress, Asafo, and Red Indians in Ghana Courtnay Micots Courtnay Micots Spent Spring 2012 as a Visiting Scholar teaching African art history for the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. She has also taught at University of South Florida in Tampa and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research since 2007 focuses on the coastal arts of Ghana and specifically on hybrid forms found in architecture and performance. fanteart@gmail.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Courtnay Micots Spent Spring 2012 as a Visiting Scholar teaching African art history for the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. She has also taught at University of South Florida in Tampa and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research since 2007 focuses on the coastal arts of Ghana and specifically on hybrid forms found in architecture and performance. fanteart@gmail.com Online ISSN: 1937-2108 Print ISSN: 0001-9933 © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California.2012 African Arts (2012) 45 (2): 24–35. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2012.45.2.24 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Courtnay Micots; Performing Ferocity: Fancy Dress, Asafo, and Red Indians in Ghana. African Arts 2012; 45 (2): 24–35. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2012.45.2.24 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 ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California.2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

On the Concept of Prototype in Songye Masquerades

In 1986 I published a book on Songye masks and figure sculpture based on fieldwork conducted in the Lomami region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Hersak 2007). That publication is the product of a particular interdisciplinary way of seeing and thinking about African art history prevalent in the 1970s and ‘80s in anglophone scholarship. It encapsulates a slice of time and academic gymnastics that are also proper to a particular personal experience. In this paper I intend to revisit Songye masquerades (Fig. 1), from another time zone and from the wider angle of what is currently referred to as “expressive culture.” While I have previously concentrated on both field and museum contexts, there is no doubt that I see masking now as an even broader, more dynamic, fluid phenomenon in time and space that cannot be reduced to selective or singular image/performance study. It is a cultural expression that also begs to be viewed from the perspective of multiple sense-scapes and expressive forms in addition to the visual—the auditory or olfactory, for example. Moreover, we sometimes forget that the visual, material object is not necessarily of prime significance in many cultures; it is not considered in isolation, as Zoe Strother has clearly shown with the case of Pende masking, where “the invention of a new mask centers on its dance” (1998:42). As she points out, to Westerners it is difficult to conceive that the sculptor is the “last stop” in the creative process (ibid., p. 30). Hence, static analysis of collectable objects remains the focus of “collection and exhibition” histories which nourish the desired view of the private sector and formal institutional doctrines. The latter is also a traditional Western art historical approach based on a selective construct of the “art” category, privileging so-called high art and discriminating against lowly crafts and, of course, anything coming close to tourist production. Although it is not my intent to tackle all these issues in this paper, I do wish to venture beyond at least some of the previously safe academic havens and look at Songye masking then and now in various spatio-temporal representations. The particular emphasis on the concept of the “prototype,” inspired by a conference on the topic held at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in October 2010, provides interesting food for thought and challenging new angles of exploration.1 In taking this road, I am therefore obliged to ask different questions than those that have preoccupied me before and to accept the risk of healthy theoretical uncertainty. Such a path does not promise to be a straight one, but it can liberate and sharpen our visions, leading to potentially more sensitive and reflective interpretations. As a point of departure, I will begin simply and less tortuously by reviewing the familiar frames of the ethnographic context. The Songye masquerading practices that I had the opportunity to witness and document in the late 1970s were those of Eastern Songye (Fig. 2). It would appear that the origins of this tradition emerged in an area of admixture between Songye and Luba peoples and diffused throughout both culture areas and beyond, adapting to different needs and expressions as is the case with other masking societies (see Hersak 1993). In reality there is therefore not a singular Songye tradition; it is a dynamic, ephemeral phenomenon with variants that have come and gone and may never be known. But as Alfred Gell noted in relation to Marquesan art, “... despite [a] geographical scattering and contextual transformation [the] art retains an inner integrity of its own, as a macroscopic whole rather than as an aggregate of fragments” (1998:221). At the time of my fieldwork in DRC, folkloric masking practices had begun to make their appearance but it was the so-called traditional context of masquerades that was of particular academic interest, one in which ritual rather than theatricality was

Melvin Edwards in Conversation with Manthia Diawara and Lydie Diakhaté

Melvin Edwards is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. This interview relates his career as a black internationalist, a pan-Africanist, and a prime witness to modernist innovations in the New York scene, from the era of abstract expressionism to the current waves of conceptual art.

Globalization and sustainable development in Africa

Few studies of globalization have analyzed its impact on African societies from the viewpoint of sustainable development. This volume answers that need. The essays here contribute to the store of knowledge about globalization in sub-Saharan Africa by documenting the affect of this global force on the continent's growth-economic, political, and cultural. This interdisciplinary collection provides comprehensive analyses-at the international, national, and local levels-of the theoretical issues revolving around the complex process of globalization, while offering detailed examinations of new models of economic development that can be implemented in sub-Saharan Africa to enhance economic growth, self-sufficiency, and sustainable development. These models are accessible to politicians, public policy analysts, scholars, students, international organizations, nongovernmental actors, and members of the public at large. Finally, the essays here provide insightful case studies of African countries that already demonstrate creative, indigenous-based models of entrepreneurship and discuss efforts to achieve sustainable development and economic independence at the grassroots level. Contributors represent the disciplines of law, history, political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, business and management, African studies and art history, criminal justice, and education. Bessie House-Soremekun is the Public Scholar in African American Studies, Civic Engagement, and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Political Science and Professor of Africana Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

A Sidelong Glance: The Practice of African Diaspora Art History in the United States

In 80 percent of the job advertisements published by the College Art Association over the last twenty years in which the words “African diaspora” appear, they are accompanied by “and/or”: “African diaspora and/or African art history” and, in rarer instances, “African diaspora and/or African American and/or Latin American art history.”

Representing Africa in American art museums: a century of collecting and display

In recent years, the critical study of museums has emerged as a major focus of scholarly inquiry across various disciplines, bringing into greater focus the effect that museum practice has on the formation of meaning and the public perception of objects. Representing Africa in American Art Museums is the first comprehensive book to focus on the history of African art in American art museums. Chronicling more than a century of building and presenting collections of African art in thirteen American art museums, from the late 1800s to the present, the book considers the art museum as a lens for understanding the shifting visions of African art that are manifested in institutional practices of collecting and display in the United States. Thirteen essays present the institutional biographies of African art collections in a selection of American art museums: the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Hampton University Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barnes Foundation, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Indiana University Art Museum, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the University of Iowa Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Menil Collection, and the National Museum of African Art. Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Christa Clarke offer a review of the history of collecting and displaying African art in American museums and identify important issues that are raised by the essays: defining aesthetic criteria for African art and for its display; breaking free from the monolithic rubric of primitive broadening perceptions of what constitutes African art; and formulating a place for context and culture in understanding and presenting African art. Representing Africa in American Art Museums concludes with an afterword that anticipates the direction for the collecting and display of African art in the twenty-first century, including the ethics and legalities of collecting; the deconstruction of a singular and authoritative museum voice in interpreting works of art; the interests and engagement of local African American and African communities that have a stake in how collections are represented; and how, if, and where to include contemporary art from Africa in museum collections.

The trauma of conceptualism for South African art

In this article I argue that the history of South African art after apartheid depends on a conceptual armature that privileges a certain relationship, or intimacy, with the experience of othering, because of the long history of apartheid and colonialism to which the country was subjected. I discuss the ways in which these histories and epistemological terms resonate with and change the particular history of contemporary South African art. In particular, I present a case for a re-viewing of recent South African art history, in the context of the idea that much of the meaning and impact of conceptual art has been supplanted by the impact and function of terrorism in contemporary society, which affected South Africa directly in the last years of apartheid. I argue for a general case of terrorism replacing the normal function of conceptualism in art – that of aesthetic destabilisation or defamiliarisation. Further, I posit that in the case of South African art this is complicated by the country's position as a postcolony, and therefore it is in an agonistic relationship to perceived imperialist versions of art history. In particular, I question the idea of a contemporary South African postcolonial subjectivity, framed in terms of both an opposition to its position of otherness vis-à-vis the Western art-historical paradigm, and in terms of its position as part of the mythology of a newly created nation-state. My argument proceeds from a general definition of the function of the experience of trauma in modernity, if modernity is seen as a constant negotiation between the shock of the new (trauma), and the organisation and regulation endemic to industrial urban societies. Trauma is considered as a constituent condition of modernity, in that much contemporary experience is either literally traumatic, in the sense of being psychically shocking or physically violatory; or symbolically traumatic, through the senses being overloaded with largely representational input. This key element of trauma is analysed in the context of the changing response of art to its influence, especially after the institution of the so-called ‘conceptual turn’ of the early 20th century, in the predominantly European avant-garde art movements such as Surrealism, Futurism and Dada, before the argument turns to its main contention - that trauma itself, in the form of terror, has replaced the aesthetic function of conceptual art, and that such a function, of aesthetic defamiliarisation and cultural destabilisation, needs to be re-thought in terms of its function in the postcolonial art-historical discourse of post-apartheid South Africa.

Roundtable II: Contemporary African Art History and the Scholarship

This panel, convened from September 4 to October 10, 2009, is the second of a three-part series on issues in contemporary African art. The first panel, which appeared in issue 22/23 of Nka, focused on large-scale exhibitions, which have been instrumental in bringing the work of African artists to global attention, and the third will examine the politics of contemporary African art and the art museum. What concerns the panel here is the scholarship of contemporary African art: the teaching, research, and publishing in the field. The discussion considers such questions as the place of contemporary African art in art history programs and its relationship with contemporary Western art as a subfield within art history, as well as the challenges involved in training graduate students. The panel also walks on such gritty grounds as the relationship between contemporary and traditional or classical African art history.

Ancient and Recent African Art

Leo Frobenius’s essay offers special insights into the state of the arts in the early colonial period and confronts the issues of appropriation, syncretism, and colonial modernity. These are all topics of the highest general importance in the field today but which have long been ignored out of the desire to document the history of classical African art.

“Africanizing” A Modern African Art History Curriculum from the Perspectives of an Insider

Until recent, the lack of perception that dogged the early study of traitional art by members of Western culture seem to have reappeared in the study or (non study) of modern African art. Currently, modern African art is engaging the attention of western art historians’ scholarly enquiry. However, there is a need for a well educated and articulate art historical practice to develop all over Africa, if the pre-conceived neo-colonial and xenophobic attitudes of some western curators and scholars must be addressed. Besides, African terminologies and nomenclatures, words, classification and definition of terms are necessary for African situations and experiences. Some questions are tackled in this paper such as; what aspects of the existing African art history are problematic? Why is the need to Africanize African Art history? Whose insider perspective is the focus of the paper? “Africanizing” a modern African Art History Curriculum’ as used in this paper refers to the needed reformation in the current African art history practice and study in the tertiary institutions towards a progressive, developmental and Africa centred art history. It is about evolving a contemporary African art history that is historical, unbiased and factual about Africa

Masquerade Politics in Contemporary Southeastern Nigeria

December 01 2008 Masquerade Politics in Contemporary Southeastern Nigeria Eli Bentor Eli Bentor Eli Bentor teaches African art history at Appalachian State University in the United States. He has been studying masquerade performances in southeastern Nigeria since 1987. hentore@appstate.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Eli Bentor Eli Bentor teaches African art history at Appalachian State University in the United States. He has been studying masquerade performances in southeastern Nigeria since 1987. hentore@appstate.edu Online ISSN: 1937-2108 Print ISSN: 0001-9933 © 2008 by the Regents of the University of California.2008 African Arts (2008) 41 (4): 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2008.41.4.32 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Eli Bentor; Masquerade Politics in Contemporary Southeastern Nigeria. African Arts 2008; 41 (4): 32–43. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2008.41.4.32 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 ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2008 by the Regents of the University of California.2008 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Recounting Modernity: Continuity and Change: Three Generations of Ethiopian Artists

Other| May 01 2008 Recounting Modernity: Continuity and Change: Three Generations of Ethiopian Artists Andrea E. Frohne Andrea E. Frohne Andrea E. Frohne is Assistant Professor of African art history at Ohio University in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the School of Art Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Nka (2008) 2008 (22-23): 194–495. https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-22-23-1-194 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Andrea E. Frohne; Recounting Modernity: Continuity and Change: Three Generations of Ethiopian Artists. Nka 1 May 2008; 2008 (22-23): 194–495. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-22-23-1-194 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsNka Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2008 Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art2008 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Towards “Radical Contemporaneity” in African Art History

(2008). Towards “Radical Contemporaneity” in African Art History. Critical Interventions: Vol. 2, Interrogating African Modernity, pp. 78-99.

Léon de Sousberghe, S.J.: 1903–2006

June 01 2007 Léon de Sousberghe, S.J.: 1903–2006 Z.S. Strother Z.S. Strother Z.S. Strother is professor of African art history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and author of Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende (1998). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Z.S. Strother Z.S. Strother is professor of African art history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and author of Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende (1998). Online ISSN: 1937-2108 Print ISSN: 0001-9933 © 2007 by the Regents of the University of California.2007 African Arts (2007) 40 (2): 8–11. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2007.40.2.8 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Z.S. Strother; Léon de Sousberghe, S.J.: 1903–2006. African Arts 2007; 40 (2): 8–11. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2007.40.2.8 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 ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2007 by the Regents of the University of California.2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.