REVIEWS
“Wedged between anthropology and art history, the study of African art requires a balanced assessment of the defining moments in the making of this field. What Is African Art?—the first historiography of its kind—takes on this challenge superbly, offering a major critical achievement. This book is indispensable to a sound understanding of the field and is a joy to read.”
— Ferdinand de Jong, author of Decolonizing Heritage: Time to Repair in Senegal
“What Is African Art? is a sophisticated, insightful critique of the trajectories that collectors, curators, and scholars of African art have followed since the end of the nineteenth century. As the first monographic historiography of Africanist art studies, it is sure to seed lively debate that interrogates the past and informs the future. An essential read for any and all students of African art.”
— Raymond Silverman, professor emeritus of the history of art, African studies, and museum Studies, University of Michigan
"[What Is African Art?] a deeply researched, important contribution to the study of art history, with relevance to disciplines beyond the study of African art."
— Library Journal
"This is the first book-length attempt at a historiography of African art study. Tracing the development of the field from the colonial era through to the present, Probst argues that the ways in which ‘African art’ has been discussed tell us at least as much about the speakers as the subject."
— Apollo
"This detailed study spans more than a century of African art, charting how museums, curators and scholars began documenting aspects of the genre in the late 19th century through to 'the quest for a decolonial future.' Chapters cover topics such as 'challenging representation: postcolonial critique and curation' and 'tradition and tribality in the Cold War era.'"
— The Art Newspaper
"This is the first book-length attempt at a historiography of African art study. Tracing the development of the field from the colonial era through to the present, Probst argues that the ways in which 'African art' has been discussed tell us at least as much about the speakers as the subject."
— Apollo
[What Is African Art?] is a creditable overview highlighting tensions between Western interpretations of what African art is and interpretations of African artists, scholars, and curators, who assert their own vision of narrative African art and how it should be exhibited. . . This is a much-needed introduction to the contemporary African art world. Recommended."
— Choice
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0001
[African art;art world;historiography;relationality;methodology;translation;narrativity;heritage]
Over the past hundred-plus years the study of African art has undergone radical changes. What used to be a field focusing on so-called “primitive” or “tribal” art in Sub-Sahara Africa has shifted to the study of modern and contemporary art in “Global” Africa. How does one write a history of these changes and why is such a history important? The introduction argues for a relational and translational perspective that is interested less in the specific “artness” of an object than in the social relations in which the object is entangled and that it constitutes. Following this approach allows both for an understanding of the formation of the field as well as the emergence of the continuous efforts to remake it and write it anew.
1. Forming a Field: Colonial Collecting, Racial Omissions, and National Rivalries
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0002
[colonialism;cultural extraction;ethnographic museums;colonial collecting;ornament theory;racial omissions;national rivalries;Benin;Ife;Leo Frobenius]
This chapter outlines the emergence of African art as a field of study. The focus is on the interplay of scientific and political interests that shaped the early formation of the field. At the center of the discussion stand the processes of colonial collecting and the manifold ways by which a host of actors imbued the collected objects with new meanings and values. The chapter discusses this process by focusing on the role of collections in the new ethnographic museums, the place of African artifacts in debates about the evolution of art, and the national rivalries informing colonial collection policies.
2. Celebrating Form: From Primitive to Primitivism
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0003
[primitivism;celebration of form;colonialism;art market;art theory;Harlem renaissance;Alain Locke;Carl Einstein;France;art nègre]
This chapter shifts the discussion from the world of curators and scholars to that of artists and critics. Ethnographic museums turned into contact zones where artists encountered sculptures and masks from Africa and the Pacific. The chapter discusses these encounters in terms of their different interpretations among white and black artists and critics: On the one hand, the celebration of form and the focus on sculpture as a gateway to gaining new insights into artistic creativity and representation; on the other the interest in the cultural and political significance of African sculpture in terms of its potential to fight racism and form a new Black American modernist- diasporic subjectivity that is able to blend and combine Africa, Europe, and America into something new.
3. Creating Visibility and Value: Photography and Its Effects
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0004
[photography;style;museums;valuation;visibility;purification;canon formation;Vladimir Markov;art market;Walter Evans]
This chapter investigates the complex role of photography in the art historical and economic valuation of African sculpture. Thus, the ubiquity of photographs allowed for the possibility to identify particular “tribal styles”, “style provinces”, and “style periods.” Yet, just as photography became an important tool for scholars and curators, it also became essential for dealers, gallerists, and collectors. In fact, photography made possible the commercial success of art nègre, which in turn shaped the new field of African art studies in profound ways. The chapter discusses this development in conjunction with the colonial context in which photography operated. It argues that the colonial camera worked in both ways. Just as photography purified the object from its cultural meaning and context, it also generated research that aimed to resituate or re-entangle the objects with the culture in which they originated.
4. Discovering the African Artist: Tradition and Tribality in the Cold War Era
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0005
[African artist;Cold War;Area studies;tradition;nation-building;tribality;modernization theory;Fang reliquaries;performance;tyranny of the object]
This chapter traces the development of African art studies after WW II when the center of the field shifted from Europe to the US. As the chapter shows, the end of colonialism and the gaining of independence altered hitherto established categories. “Primitive” and “tribe” became “tradition” and “artist.” The question now was: what isthe role of art and the artist in the process of postcolonial nation-building? Does tradition hinder or foster this process? The chapter discusses this question in three steps: It first, outlines the rise of area studies in the US as part of cold war politics. It then describes the rise of African art history as part of this development. Finally, it discusses the ambitions of the new art historical field to counter and critique the object-focused approach of its mother discipline in favor of a holistic, performance-driven perspective.
5. Acknowledging the Contemporary: New Forms, New Actors
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0006
[African independence;modern and contemporary African art;Negritude;Nigeria;Senegal;First World Festival of Black Arts;Aina Onabolu;Ben Enwonwu;Leopold Senghor;Dakar]
This chapter investigates how modern or contemporaryAfrican art(a distinction was not yet made)developed and won recognition and legitimacy in the Euro-American art world. Focusing on the Nigerian artists Aina Onabolu and Ben Enwonwu the discussion begins by focusing on the entanglements of colonialism and modernism which formed the conditions under which artists like Onabolu and Enwonwu made their careers. The chapter then shifts to the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists in 1956 in Paris and the First World Festival of Black Arts a decade later in Dakar as powerful demonstrations of a new transnational and transcontinental black presence. The chapter ends by looking at how Western scholars and curators responded to these developments in the form of books and journals that provided visibility, context, and acknowledgment.
6. Extending the Horizon: Africa in the Americas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0007
[Black Atlantic;Black Arts and Liberation Movement;Africanisms;AfriCOBRA;Jeff Donaldson;Robert Farris Thompson;Aesthetics of the Cool;Melville Herskovits;Shango;Yoruba]
This chapter discusses the extension of the field from Africa to the Americas. As the chapter argues, despite its initial momentum, the interest in modern/contemporary African art did not last. In the 1970s, the field shifted back to the study of so-called traditional African art, this time, however, with a new and important dimension. Informed by the Black Power movement in the U.S., research turned to the study of continuities of black beliefs andartistic traditions in the Americas. The chapter studies the development of this process in three steps. First, by examining Melville Herskovits’s concept of “Africanisms;” second by elaborating onhow African American artist groups like AfricCOBRAembraced the anthropological and art historical research ofAfrican art as part of their fight for a Black Nation; third by discussing the work of Robert Farris Thompson and the public interest in what he calledthe “Black Atlantic.”
7. Intervening the Canon: The Postmodern, the Popular, and the Authentic
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0008
[postmodernism;crisis of representation;authenticity;popular/urban art;Africa Explores;Les Magiciens de la Terre;"Primitivism" in the 20th Century;Sidney Kasfir;Susan Vogel;Olu Oguibe]
This chapter discusses the beginning of a series of changes that transformed the field from the 1980s onwards. At the center of the chapter stands the so-called postmodern turn when hitherto largely unquestioned concepts, classification, and forms of representation became the subject of rigorous critique. The result was an opening of the field that allowed for the recognition of new phenomena like urban or popular art as well as the critical evaluation of old established categories like authenticity.To discuss and exemplify these debates the chapter focuses on three major exhibitions: "Primitivism" in the 20th Century at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1984, Les Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris in 1989, and Africa Explores at the Museum for African Art and the New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York in 1991.
8. Challenging Representation: Postcolonial Critique and Curation
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0009
[postcolonial theory;curation;politics of representation;exhibitions;photography;art market;Yinka Shonibare;Okwui Enwezor;conceptual art;Dokumenta]
This chapter focuses on the period from the early 1990s onwards when the postmodern crisis of representation aligned with postcolonial theory and critique. Informed by these debates, a new generation of black artists and critics began to launch journals and establish themselves as scholars, critics, and curators. The new, now postcolonial black presence pushed African contemporary art back on the field’s agenda again. The chapter discusses this development from the early stages of creating new platforms of critique and ways of curation to the rise and recognition of photography as an artistic medium that speaks to postcolonial questions of representation until the gradual exhaustion of the initial postcolonial ambition to make the (art) world a more just and fairplace for its inhabitants.
9. Undoing the Empire: Duress, Defiance, and Decolonial Futures
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0010
[decoloniality;archives;futures;Democratic Republic of Congo;South Africa;erasure;modernism;Nigeria;Biennales;Senegal]
This chapter starts with the toppling of the Rhodes monument in 2015 at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As the chapter argues, the need and desire for more radical, action-oriented forms of critique has generated and (re)fueled a vibrant decolonial agenda that combines previous decolonizing projects with new methodological and practical forms of critique. The chapter discusses the features of this constellation in three different contexts: the rise of African-based art festivals and the invocation of new decolonial futures; the interest in archives and a surge in studies investigating the dynamics and historical specificities of modern African art and the opening of Zeitz MOCAA, the first large museum of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, which opened in Cape Town in September 2017, home and origin of the Rhodes Must Fall movement. The movement and the museum seem to be sending different messages: while the former speaks to bitter frustrations over the lack of progress on the level of everyday life, the latter is a celebration of success and achievements in the realm of art. What drives the current decolonial/decolonization agenda is in many ways rooted in the gap between the two spheres.
Epilogue
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226793290.003.0011
[repair;restitution;insubordination;translation;Senegal;Museum of Black Civilizations;futures;definition;entanglement]
Given the recent post- and decolonial turn in African art studies, the epilogue reflects on the question that has informed this book: What do we talk about when we talk about African art? Theanswers today range from demands forrestitution and the quest for repair to declarations of insubordination and visions of a decolonial future. As the epilogue concludes, the heterogeneity is hardly surprising. “African art,” let alone “Africa,” has turned into, or perhaps has always been, an inexhaustible quotation. Its multiple translations have made it subject to many forms of (re)imaginations, and (re)configurations. As such, the talk about “African art” is likely to stay.What its future will look like—where, how, and what we will be talking about when we talk about “African art”—will depend on the emancipatory power of the talk, how much it can challenge, counter, and eventually overcome the structural asymmetry among those doing the talking.
