Modern Africa: Art & Decolonization

Catalog description

Designed broadly for students of postcolonialism and global modernisms, this course explores 20th-century African arts in relation to the highly varied contexts of colonialism, decolonization, the Cold War, and capitalist imperialism. Modern African expressive forms developed as early as the 1920s and ’30s in colonial schools and among scattered independent practitioners. Following World War II, a next generation of art critics and image-makers gained visibility under the predominating yet controversial influence of the Paris-based Negritude movement. By the 1960s and ’70s, modernism flourished in some parts of the continent with support from new national governments. Many states additionally sought to modernize indigenous traditions. And a growing chorus of skeptics began sounding alarms about authoritarianism, corruption, and foreign intervention. Because classificatory orders in Africa were never so commanding as they tend to be in the West, modern art and visual culture will be examined in this course through a cross-genre and multi-media lens: one that registers how “high” and “popular” cultural elements have often merged or become blurred; and one that looks at drawing, painting, and sculpture alongside performance, photography, and film. Course readings privilege primary texts. We will additionally read scholarship in African art history, anthropology, and postcolonial studies, among other fields.