Metropolitan Fetish: African Sculpture and the Imperial French Invention of Primitive Art

by John Warne Monroe

Overview

From the 1880s to 1940, French colonial officials, businessmen and soldiers, returning from overseas postings, brought home wooden masks and figures from Africa. This imperial and cultural power-play is the jumping-off point for a story that travels from sub-Saharan Africa to Parisian art galleries; from the pages of fashion magazines, through the doors of the Louvre, to world fairs and international auction rooms; into the apartments of avant-garde critics and poets; to the streets of Harlem, and then full-circle back to colonial museums and schools in Dakar, Bamako, and Abidjan.

John Warne Monroe guides us on this journey, one that goes far beyond the world of Picasso, Matisse, and Braque, to show how the Modernist avant-garde and the European colonial project influenced each other in profound and unexpected ways. Metropolitan Fetish reveals the complex trajectory of African material culture in the West and provides a map of that passage, tracing the interaction of cultural and imperial power. A broad and far-reaching history of the French reception of African art, it brings to life an era in which the aesthetic category of "primitive art" was invented.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501736377
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Warne Monroe is Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University. He is the author of Laboratories of Faith.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: The French Paradox of Primitive Art
1. The Making of a Metropolitcan Fetish: A Fang Mask Transformed
2. Inventing Antiquity: Henri Clouzot, André Level, and the Universal History of Primitive Art
3. The Wings of Snobbery: Paul Guillaume and the Launch of Art Nègre, 1911–29
4. From Art Négre to Art Primitif: Black Deco, Ethnology, and Surrealism in the Late 1920s
5. Selling the "Arts of the Ancestors": Charles Ratton, the Art Market, and the Transatlantic Black Diaspora
6. Authenticity Wars: Primitive Art between Metropole and Colony
Conclusion: With an Archival Prophecy
Acknowledgments
List of Archival Abbreviations
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Bruno Claessens

While traditional African art continues to capture new audiences, John Monroe tells the fascinating story of how it all began. We meet the avant-garde visionaries who looked beyond the ethnographic, re-classifying African material culture as 'Art.' A book full of historical pioneers you will want to get to know. Highly recommended!

Christopher B. Steiner

This is a profoundly important book. Elegantly written and lavishly illustrated, Metropolitan Fetish will establish itself as a landmark in the history of the reception of African art in the West.

Alice L. Conklin

Metropolitan Fetish is a truly excellent book: ambitious in reach, rich in detail, and masterfully narrated. By establishing the complex commercial, colonial, and intellectual networks that made possible the revaluation of African sculpture, Monroe transforms our understanding of the French infatuation with black culture as a key marker of imperial modernity.

Editorial Reviews

John Warne Monroe's book on the reception of African art in France (1910s-1930s) comes out at a critical moment when French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to return African heritage has transformed into a polemic opposing those in favor to those against.

Journal of Modern History

This well-written study will be valuable for art scholars at all levels.

Choice - M. Miller

"Metropolitan Fetishis a truly excellent book: ambitious in reach, rich in detail, and masterfully narrated. By establishing the complex commercial, colonial, and intellectual networks that made possible the revaluation of African sculpture, Monroe transforms our understanding of the French infatuation with black culture as a key marker of imperial modernity."

Alice L. Conklin

"This is a profoundly important book. Elegantly written and lavishly illustrated,Metropolitan Fetish will establish itself as a landmark in the history of the reception of African art in the West."

Christopher B. Steiner

"While traditional African art continues to capture new audiences, John Monroe tells the fascinating story of how it all began. We meet the avant-garde visionaries who looked beyond the ethnographic, re-classifying African material culture as 'Art.' A book full of historical pioneers you will want to get to know. Highly recommended!"

Bruno Claessens