Surface Tensions: Empire, Parisian Modernism and "Authenticity" in African Sculpture (original) (raw)
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This article examines the historical framing of "primitive art" through the lens of interwar Parisian modernism and colonial dynamics, analyzing the constructed authenticity of African sculpture. It argues that the perception of authenticity has evolved alongside Eurocentric narratives, impacting both aesthetic appreciation and cultural identity. The article also highlights the ambivalence surrounding these developments, particularly in relation to the ongoing cultural implications in contemporary art and the critique of colonial legacies.
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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.
Overview This seminar will explore the anthropology and history of aesthetic objects, as they travel from people and places conventionally considered "primitive" or exotic (principally from Native North America, Africa, and Oceania), to others deemed "civilized" or Western. First, we will consider twentiethcentury anthropological attempts to develop ways of appreciating and understanding objects from other cultures and in the process to reconsider the meaning of such terms as "art" and "aesthetics." Then we will discuss several topics in the history of empire and exoticism, including: the colonial appropriation of indigenous objects via theft or purchase, whether as curios, artifacts, or art; the politics of display and the rise of museums and world fairs; the processes by which locallyproduced art objects are transformed into commodities traded in international art markets; the effects of "exotic" art on such aesthetic movements as primitivism, surrealism, dada etc.; the appropriation of indigenous aesthetic styles by "Western" artists; the appropriation of "Western" styles by indigenous artists; the place of indigenous arts in national and postcolonial identity. Finally, we will consider attempts by formerly colonized
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