PROSPECT OF AFRICAN ART: IS AFRICAN ART REALLY PRIMITIVE?

Ufahamu a Journal of African Studies, 1976

This article examines the process by which early 20th century European modernists and African-American artists of the Harlem Renaissance negotiated the influence of traditional African sculpture. With a focus on African-American painter, Aaron Douglas, I investigate how and to what end his generation of African-American artists incorporated these influences. I additionally discuss how their methods and the conditions surrounding them compare to the aforementioned Modernists. In examining the roots of these respective trajectories, I discovered that various people and factors including: critics, cultural and political leaders, patrons, philanthropists, artistic/aesthetic movements, colonization, commercialization, racism, and social responsibility impacted the abilities of modernists and African-American artists to embrace or reject the influence of traditional African sculpture. I urge art teachers and studio art professors to be mindful of the power structures that inhibit our abilities to look inclusively at the complexities of traditional African sculptural influences and their potential, during student critiques.

African Arts, 2013

African Arts, 1987

... Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Baldwin, James (b. 1924, d. ----. Author: Weber, Michael John. PUBLISHER: Center for African Art (New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1987. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0961458747 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): 195 p. ...

2015

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 2016

Conceptual art is one of the twentieth century art movements that has gained popular attention in the contemporary artworld. It has received much scholarly prominence in the Western world, and perceived as an emergent art of European origin. What has been given little or no scholarly attention is the African essence of root of conceptual art movement. This article addresses the historical epochs of conceptual art in Africa and delves into the critical question of whether or not conceptual art is an emergent art in Africa. With the help of the images of African artworks, this article attempts to find visual answers by examining the art-historical account of the art through visual analysis in simple narrative format in telling the African side of the story. It concludes that the adoration and idolization of Marcel Duchamp as the father of conceptual art is contestable since the art was many centuries old in Africa before the twentieth century artists began to practice it in the West. Duchamp's attempt at dematerialization of art, and showing distaste to the traditional aesthetics of Western art at the time through conceptual exploration had been in practice in African art and, therefore, not an invention.

The African Studies Review, 32.2, 1989

The study of African art began in the first decade of this century. In looking back over more than 70 years of research, it is possible to discern a distinctive set of social science concerns, priorities, and modes of analysis. This social perspective depends-not so much on disciplinary affiliation as on the kinds of stands taken on the nature of art and on the relative importance of culture as an explanatory principle in understanding its meaning. This paper is concerned with aniculating the main models that have been utilized in social research on African art and with tracing their impact on the development of art studies. This historical account will also point out some of the most serious limitations of these models and will suggest studies which may lead to promising new directions.

The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2010

International Journal of Multiculturalism, 2021

Arguably Found Object genre represents the most dominant form of contemporary artistic expression with unlimited possibilities of material exploration and conceptual ideation. However, Found Object discourse institutionalized in European art history is exclusively western and dismisses those of other cultures as mimesis and time-lag. This paper aims to prove that the dominant contemporary discourse of "Recyla Art‟ which many African sculptors have been absorbed into, problematically blurs the conceptual and ideological differences in European and African exploration of discarded objects in art creation. Using a triangulation of Formalism, Iconography and Interviews as methodologies, this paper subjects the works of El Anatsui, Delumprizulike, Nnenna Okore, Bright Eke, Olu Amoda and others to formalistic and interpretative analysis to establish the postcolonial context of the found object in contemporary African art. Findings demonstrate that European and African appropriation of discarded objects in art differs according to societal context in form and content. The paper therefore concludes that found object art is culture-specific and defined by unique cultural ramifications, thus, to fully understand the dynamism of this art genre, a culture-specific or localized reading is required because the context of its emergence in Europe stands in contradiction to its conceptualism in contemporary African art-space.