Contemporary African Art

by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Overview

A revised edition of this seminal title, surveying the diverse, ever-evolving field of contemporary African art from the 1950s to today, illustrated in color throughout.

Contemporary African art has grown out of the diverse histories and cultural heritage of the African continent and its diaspora. It is not characterized by one particular style, technique, or theme, but by a bricolage-like attitude toward art making, incorporating and building upon the structures from which older, pre- colonial and colonial genres were made.

In this revised and updated edition of Contemporary African Art, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir examines the major themes, developments, and accomplishments in African art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Organized thematically, the book includes new chapters on the history of African photography and the growth of the global art market, alongside significant discussions of patronage, mediation, artistic training, and national and diaspora identities.

Generously illustrated throughout, including work by artists such as El Anatsui, Yinka Shonibare, William Kentridge, and Ibrahim El-Salahi, the book draws on interviews with many contemporary artists and art world professionals. Contemporary African Art is a fascinating, comprehensive survey of art from the African continent and its global diaspora.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500293591
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	04/14/2020
Series:	World of Art
Edition description:	Second
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	675,120
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir was an Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta and Curator of African Art at Michael C. Carlos Museum, also at Emory University. She studied Physics before embarking on Fine Arts at Harvard University and then managed the Nommo Gallery in Uganda. She completed her PhD on African Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and went on to do postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford. Since 1981 she divided her time between teaching and curating in the USA and fieldwork in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. She was editor of the anthology West African Masks and Cultural Systems and is working on a study of the colonial and postcolonial transformation of Idoma and Samburu art. 

Table of Contents

Preface 6

Introduction 9

Chapter 1 New Genres: Inventing African Popular Culture 21

Chapter 2 Africans Photographed, African Photographers 50

Chapter 3 Transforming the Workshop 79

Chapter 4 Patrons and Mediators 97

Chapter 5 Art and Commodity 136

Chapter 6 The African Artist: Shifting Identities in the Postcolonial World 158

Chapter 7 The Idea of a National Culture: Decolonizing African Art 202

Chapter 8 Migration and Displacement 227

Chapter 9 The Global Contemporary Art World and Africa 251

Bibliography 280

Acknowledgments 288

List of Illustrations 289

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

While respect for modern African art has been slow to develop in the Western world, Kasfir's book is solid evidence that attitudes are changing. Formerly, contemporary African art was seen as a deterioration and degradation of the traditional arts, which had only won grudging admiration in the West under the influence of the modernists. Over the last 15 years, a growing list of books re-evaluating modern African art have appeared, and Kasfir's is among the best and most thorough. Focusing primarily on the period from the 1950s into the 1980s, Kasfir (art history, Emory Univ.) analyzes the political and social dynamics that have shaped the many directions that modern African art have taken. The introduction usefully explores how the subject has been previously handled and explains the author's innovative approach. Accompanying the text are numerous illustrations, satisfactory in quality if sometimes too small or dark to be fully useful. This important milestone in our changing view of world art is highly recommended for any library with art holdings.--Eugene C. Burt, Data Arts, Seattle Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

YA-Three excellent series titles. Contemporary African Art emphasizes the changes in the art of this continent in the last half of the 20th century. Maya Art examines the reasons behind the artwork and ways the buildings were constructed, incorporating new archaeological findings. They include recent deciphers of Mayan writing that provide understanding to the ceramics, sculpture, architecture, murals, and books. Amazingly, op art and pop art have become almost traditional. With chapters on performance art (Rauschenberg), video, digital, and virtual reality, New Media truly introduces the new wave. The paper in these compact books is of high quality, resulting in outstanding, almost platelike reproduction of the numerous color and black-and-white photos. The illustrations are fully captioned and they alone could justify purchase of these titles.-Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

School Library Journal