Companion to Modern African Art

Gitti Salami is Associate Professor of Art History at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, USA. In a decade of extensive field research in south-eastern Nigeria she has published numerous articles on Yakurr culture in African Arts and Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. She has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship and a grant from the West African Research Association (WARA), and has held resident fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of East Anglia, UK. Her forthcoming monograph examines contemporary Yakurr art genres from a postcolonial theoretical standpoint. Monica Blackmun Visonà is Associate Professor in the School of Art and Visual Studies of the University of Kentucky, USA, where she teaches courses on African art and architecture, and art historical methods. The principle author of A History of Art in Africa (2000, 2008), she has also published Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d’Ivoire (2010), and contributed articles to Art Bulletin and African Arts. She is currently researching the artists of the western Akan peoples for a museum exhibition.

• List of Figures xiNotes on Contributors xvAcknowledgments xxPart I Introduction 11 Writing African Modernism into Art History 3Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun VisonàPart II “Africa Has Always Been Modern” 212 Local Transformations, Global Inspirations: The Visual Histories and Cultures of Mami Wata Arts in Africa 23Henry John DrewalPart III Art in Cosmopolitan Africa: The Nineteenth Century 513 Loango Coast Ivories and the Legacies of Afro-Portuguese Arts 53Nichole N. Bridges4 Roots and Routes of African Photographic Practices: From Modern to Vernacular Photography in West and Central Africa (1850–1980) 74Christraud M. Geary5 At Home in the World: Portrait Photography and Swahili Mercantile Aesthetics 96Prita Meier6 African Reimaginations: Presence, Absence, and New Way Architecture 113Ikem Stanley OkoyePart IV Modernities and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Arts of the Early Twentieth Century 1357 “One of the Best Tools for Learning”: Rethinking the Role of ‘Abduh’s Fatwa in Egyptian Art History 137Dina A. Ramadan8 Congolese and Belgian Appropriations of the Colonial Era: The Commissioned Work of Tshelantende (Djilatendo) and Its Reception 154Kathrin Langenohl9 Warriors in Top Hats: Images of Modernity and Military Power on West African Coasts 174Monica Blackmun VisonàPart V Colonialism, Modernism, and Art in Independent Nations 19510 Algerian Painters as Pioneers of Modernism 197Mary Vogl11 Kofi Antubam, 1922–1964: A Modern Ghanaian Artist, Educator, and Writer 218Atta Kwami12 Patron and Artist in the Shaping of Zimbabwean Art 237Elizabeth Morton13 “Being Modern”: Identity Debates and Makerere’s Art School in the 1960s 255Sunanda K. Sanyal14 The École des Arts and Exhibitionary Platforms in Postindependence Senegal 276Joanna Grabski15 From Iconoclasm to Heritage: The Osogbo Art Movement and the Dynamics of Modernism in Nigeria 294Peter Probst16 Modernism and Modernity in African Art 311John Picton17 A Century of Painting in the Congo: Image, Memory, Experience, and Knowledge 330Bogumil JewsiewickiPart VI Perspectives on Arts of the African Diaspora 34718 Visual Expressivity in the Art of the Black Diaspora: Conjunctures and Disjunctures 349dele jegedePart VII Syntheses in Art of the Late Twentieth Century 36919 Art and Social Dynamics in Côte d’Ivoire: The Position of Vohou-Vohou 371Yacouba Konaté20 Contemporary Contradictions: Bronzecasting in the Edo Kingdom of Benin 389Barbara Winston Blackmun21 Puppets as Witnesses and Perpetrators in Ubu and the Truth Commission 408Peter Ukpokodu22 Moroccan Art Museums and Memories of Modernity 426Katarzyna PieprzakPart VIII Primitivism as Erasure 44523 The Enduring Power of Primitivism: Showcasing “the Other” in Twenty-First-Century France 447Sally PricePart IX Local Expression and Global Modernity: African Art of the Twenty-First Century 46724 Zwelethu Mthethwa’s “Postdocumentary” Portraiture: Views from South Africa and Abroad 469Pamela Allara25 Creative Diffusion: African Intersections in the Biennale Network 489Kinsey Katchka26 Lacuna: Uganda in a Globalizing Cultural Field 507Sidney Littlefield Kasfir27 Painted Visions under Rebel Domination: A Cultural Center and Political Imagination in Northern Côte d’Ivoire 528Till Förster28 Postindependence Architecture through North Korean Modes: Namibian Commissions of the Mansudae Overseas Project 548Meghan L. E. Kirkwood29 Concrete Aspirations: Modern Art at the Roundabout in Ugep 572Gitti SalamiIndex 593