DOCSLIB.ORG

Third Text Publication Details, Including Instructions for Authors and Subscription Information: Published Online: 06 Feb 2007

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Third Text Publication Details, Including Instructions for Authors and Subscription Information: Published Online: 06 Feb 2007 This article was downloaded by: [Florida State University] On: 26 December 2014, At: 03:48 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Third Text Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20 Published online: 06 Feb 2007. To cite this article: (2005) , Third Text, 19:4, 419-426, DOI: 10.1080/09528820500123877 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528820500123877 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions CTTE112370.fm Page 419 Friday, July 8, 2005 3:30 AM Third Text, Vol. 19, Issue 4, July, 2005, 419–426 Forum TaylorCTTE112370.sgm10.1080/09528820500123877Third0000-0000Original2005194000000JulyRasheedAraeen12044thirdtext@kalapress.freeserve.co.uk (0)20 Greencroft Text and& Article7372 Francis (print)/0000-0000Francis 2005 0826 GardensLondonUK Group Ltd Ltd (online) to be done than simply shouting at the Europeans The True Location of about their Eurocentricity. But he ends up recom- mending that we preoccupy ourselves with pointing Ernest Mancoba’s out the inhumanity of Eurocentrism, which brings everyone back to the same thing; preoccupation with Modernism Eurocentrism. That is the problem with the contest for modernism; it is a contest for a place in Europe’s narrative of the world, a mere ‘We were there, too’. Olu Oguibe Of course we were, but then what? My own work on modernity and modernism in Africa, which Araeen helped me tremendously in clarifying, was to propose that in order properly to Rasheed Araeen has raised issues that require further locate colonial and postcolonial achievements, we and deeper thought, as well as responses, especially must begin to force a wedge between modernity and from Africans. The problem with Africa is that there modernism rather than continue to treat both as seems to be little truly great thinking on the level of synonyms. Mancoba’s achievement was not that he Fanon and Nkrumah going on at the moment, or, if was part of a modernist movement that erased him there is, some of us are certainly not aware of it. If from its history (as it was bound to), but that he my reading of the situation is correct, then obviously helped define African modernity. I illustrate that in something has to change. my paper1 by showing the turning points in his work I would make two further observations that are and tracing what I understand to be the sensibilities linked. One is that there is indeed some assessment underlying those turns: from a concern for the mere of the importance of Mancoba that does not simply liturgical within the European tradition to an inter- locate him within a supposedly important European est in the mechanics and syntax of African sculpture, movement. My assessment of Mancoba in fact pays and eventually a personal resolution of the divergent little attention to his membership or affiliation with historical trajectories that constitute a colonial or CoBrA. That affiliation has its significance, magni- postcolonial modernity, including expatriation and fied by its exorcism from the history of the move- nostalgia, Mancoba arrives at a stage of resolution ment. However, as Araeen argues, it is far from the analogous to the emergence of modern individualism most significant of Mancoba’s achievements. From in African consciousness. where I stand at the moment, it is in fact far from When we direct our energies to this kind of read- significant. So he was affiliated to CoBrA through ing and enquiry, we overcome ‘shouting’ at Europe his wife. So he associated with an avant-garde move- for its Eurocentrism, and begin to ask the right ques- Downloaded by [Florida State University] at 03:48 26 December 2014 ment in Europe. So they all stole ideas from him and tions related to Africa or Asia or wherever our then even have denied him. So what? As Araeen also concerns lie. With frames such as these, we may rightly points out, that is the norm, not an excep- begin to ask: how did Uzo Egonu’s work relate to tion. Nothing new there unless one wants to Mancoba’s? How does Emmanuel Jegede’s? How do continue preoccupying oneself with the story of Chinua Achebe’s and Ngugi wa Thio’ngo’s writing, Eurocentric erasure. It is time to move on. Araeen Frantz Fanon’s analyses, Amílcar Cabral’s polemics, makes that point, too. And that brings me to the Ousmane Sembene’s cinema all relate to that art and second observation. What is the merit of preoccupa- the project of forging an African modernity? What tion with the contest for modernism? I believe that it was apt about these activities? What was historically has its place, but we all ought to go beyond it. faulty? Where were the philosophical rifts and short- There is the irony in Araeen’s call. He uses the comings that would eventually produce the present wrong illustration and thus leads back to the very postcolonial predicament? point he wishes us to depart from in order to proceed. The contest for acknowledgment in modernist He begins by rightly pointing out that there is more narratives is a no-brainer and a no-winner. Shouting Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online © 2005 Kala Press/Black Umbrella http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09528820500123877 CTTE112370.fm Page 420 Friday, July 8, 2005 3:30 AM 420 against Eurocentrism is a been-there, done-that. discourse which begins to show appreciation of his What is required now is that we read within the seminal role. Dialogue was central in Mancoba’s frames of a larger historical moment than modern- world-view. ism ever was, namely the struggles of colonised First let me reassure those who are interested peoples to contest their predicament and forge their that a project is already under way which will allow modernity, as well as subsequent complications and us to revisit and appraise Mancoba’s legacy. I am reconfigurations of that predicament and their part of an organisation called ‘Art and Ubuntu’ meaning and implications in the postcolonial milieu. which has been established to explore the aesthetics I have been planning to iron out the ideas I have for and philosophy of Mancoba’s work and generate a a new book called The Postcolonial Predicament, discourse in South African society about it. but I do not really have the privilege of support to This process was begun by Johannesburg art devote myself to useful philosophical inquiry. historian Elza Miles whose role in bringing I think that Araeen’s call is pertinent, but it ends Mancoba and his work back to South Africa in by suggesting the wrong preoccupation. We cannot 1994, after 56 years away, laid the foundation for afford to stay with the question of Eurocentrism and any future work on his legacy. It was through her its discontents. We must return to the more pertinent book Lifeline Out of Africa and the exhibition question of where the rain began to beat us, as ‘Hand in Hand’ that South Africans came to meet Achebe suggested long ago, what some of us have Mancoba again. done to help avert it, and where we go from here. ‘Art and Ubuntu’ are picking up this baton and We must locate artists like Mancoba within this working to widen the discussion on Mancoba by larger frame and not dwell on whether or not preparing an exhibition for SANG (South Africa Europe cares about him. National Gallery) in 2006, and also a film, a book, and a series of art-making and art-educational work- shops. We will continue to explore Mancoba’s Notes aesthetics and philosophy and leading South African intellectuals and artists will contribute to this 1. See Olu Oguibe, ‘Reverse Appropriation as Nationalism in process. Elza Miles’s intimate knowledge of Early Modern African Art’, Third Text, 16:3, September 2002, Mancoba’s life and work will inform us as our work pp 243–59. unfolds, as will Wonga Mancoba, the artist’s son. Although Ernest Mancoba’s work towers inter- nationally, he is by no means well known in South Africa, so let me share some background on his South African roots as our work is intended to explore exactly this. Ernest Mancoba left South Africa for Paris in 1938. He was 34, a mature adult, and had already The African Spiritual made a huge impact on his generation as a thinker.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ernest Mancoba
    Ernest Mancoba Aicon Gallery Exhibition February 23rd – March 25th, 2017 Press Preview & V.I.P. Reception: Thursday, February 23rd 6:00pm – 8:00pm 35 Great Jones St., New York NY 10012 Aicon Gallery is proud to present the first major New York solo exhibition by renowned South African artist Ernest Mancoba. Ernest Mancoba (1904- 2002) was born and raised as a black man under the South African apartheid system. In 1938 he moved to Paris to be able to study, work, and especially, to think freely as an artist. At the end of World War Two, Mancoba moved to Denmark with his wife, artist Sonja Ferlov-Mancoba, where they would both become founding members of the COBRA avant- garde art movement. The COBRA doctrine was comprised in part by a stress on the absolute freedom of form and color with a focus on spontaneity and experiment, a reaction against the prevailing tenets of Surrealism, and inspiration drawn from children’s drawings and “primitive art.” Mancoba’s work represents a unique synthesis of modern European art and African spirit. His goal was to bring to European art his deep understanding of African culture, represented by the frequently appearing totems in his drawings and paintings that reflect the humanist Ubuntu philosophy, which developed in Southern Africa and stresses “the belief Ernest Mancoba, Untitled (1), 1985, Oil on canvas, 31.5 x 25.5 in. Image in a universal bond of sharing that connects all courtesy of the Estate of Ernest Mancoba and Galerie Mikael Andersen, humanity.” Or, as Mancoba put it: “A human is a Copenhagen.
    [Show full text]
  • Revista Fractal
    FRACTAL REVISTA CUATRIMESTRAL NÚMERO 86 En el tiempo de una obra, es la vida cotidiana la que se pone en escena. Achille Mbembe Director Ilán Semo Consejo Editorial Elsa Cross, Claudio Lomnitz, Lorenzo Meyer, Carlos Monsiváis†, Carlos Montemayor†, Ricardo Pozas Horcasitas, Tomás Segovia†, Enrique Semo Consejo de Redacción Fausto Alzati Fernández, José Luis Barrios, Jorge Fernández Granados, Antonio García de León, Carlos López Beltrán, Benjamín Mayer Foulkes, Pedro Serrano, Mauricio Tenorio, Francisco Valdés Ugalde Diseño María José Farías Edición Alan Cruz, Alejandra Labastida, Andrés Luna, Frida Robles, Dante A. Saucedo, Ilya Semo FRACTAL NÚMERO 86 Sumario EXPEDIENTE NOCTURNO AFRICANO Presentación 11 Francisco Berzunza Historiografía del arte, desde África 17 Fragmentos para una cantera de traducciones de los discursos africanos sobre el arte Kantuta Quirós y Aliocha Imhoff Modernismo africano 37 Más allá del discurso de las modernidades alternativas Salah M. Hassan Error categórico 71 Anthea Buys La vitalidad de la materia 79 Notas sobre las formas primigenias, las superficies, la intimidad y lo social Sarah Nuttall Caída y elevación: 93 en la estela de Cecil John Rhodes Tamar Garb La fotografía de Santu Mofokeng: 113 «la violencia está en el saber» Patricia Hayes «Un género dentro del género»: 145 imágenes del ser y del devenir trans de Zanele Muholi Gabeba Baderoon La fábrica como campo de batalla 175 Helena Chávez Mac Gregor Los recuerdos de Europa 197 en el arte del Sur global Andreas Huyssen De westerns, mujeres y guerra: 215 el cine y la nación en Angola Marissa Moorman Reflexiones sobre ser escritor africano 255 Sean O’Toole La muerte del autor 265 Marlene Dumas Éxodo de perros 269 Okwui Enwezor El pasto es siempre más verde del otro lado 289 Kemang Wa Lehulere LA X Y LA Y Poemas sueltos 295 Iván Palacios Ocaña LÍNEAS BREVES Michel Serres, un zurdo cojo 303 Jorge Andrés Gordillo López Portada: Kemang Wa Lehulere, One is too many, a thousand will never be enough, 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • Ernest Mancoba Born 1904, Boksburg, South Africa Died 2002, Paris, France
    CV Ernest Mancoba Born 1904, Boksburg, South Africa Died 2002, Paris, France EDUCATION 1938-1941 École Nationale Superieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selected) 2019 Ernest Mancoba: I Shall Dance In a Different Society, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France 2017 Ernest Mancoba, Aicon Art Gallery, New York, USA 2015 The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra and It’s Legacy, Blum & Poe, New York & Los Angeles, USA 2014 EWS, Stevenson gallery, Cape Town, South Africa 2013 Solo presentation at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London by Galerie Mikael Andersen, UK 2011 EWS, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen (with Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Wonga Mancoba), Denmark 1995 Hand in Hand, South African National Gallery, Cape Town (with Sonja Ferlov Mancoba), South Africa 1994 Hand in Hand, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg (with Sonja Ferlov Mancoba), South Africa 1977 Ernest Mancoba, Københavns Kunstforening (Kunstforeningen Gl Strand), Copenhagen, Denmark Ernest Mancoba, Fyns Stifts Kunstmuseum (Fyns Kunstmuseum), Odense, Denmark Ernest Mancoba, Silkeborg Kunstmuseum (Museum Jorn), Silkeborg, Denmark 1969 Ernest Mancoba, Aarhus Kunstmuseum (Aros), Århus, Denmark Ernest Mancoba, Holstebro Kunstmuseum, Holstebro, Denmark GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selected) 2019 GMA XXX AAR, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark 2018 Crossin Night / Hacer Noche, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa 2017 Documenta 14, Documenta Halle, Kassel Germany and EMST – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece 2014 Liberated Subjects, Foundation
    [Show full text]
  • Salah M. Hassan African Modernism
    Salah M. Hassan African Modernism: Beyond Alternative Modernities Discourse African Modernism and Art History’s Exclusionary Narrative On October 25, 2002, South African artist Ernest Mancoba, a pillar of modern African art, passed away in a hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris. He was ninety- eight. With a life that spanned most of the twentieth century, Mancoba had lived through the high periods of modern- ism and postmodernism. A few months before Mancoba’s passing, I was extremely fortunate to have received an extended interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, submitted for publication to Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, which I edit. The interview was eventually published in 2003 and was indeed one of the most inspiring texts that I have read in years.1 However, why should Mancoba’s life and his artistic accomplishments be instructive in exploring African modernity and modernism? To be sure, it is not the mere coincidence of his thinking about European modernism or the sig- nificance of Europe, where Mancoba lived and worked for more than fifty years. Mancoba is memorable for his remarkable life of creativity, for his intellectual vigor, for his unique and pro- South Atlantic Quarterly 109:3, Summer 2010 DOI 10.1215/00382876- 2010- 001 © 2010 Duke University Press Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/109/3/451/470354/SAQ109-03-01HassanFpp.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 452 Salah M. Hassan found body of work, and for his innovative visual vocabulary and style that have come to shape an important part of our understanding of African modernism in the visual arts.
    [Show full text]
  • PR Mancoba January 2014
    16 January – 22 February 2014 EWS – ERNEST MANCOBA, WONGA MANCOBA, SONJA FERLOV MANCOBA STEVENSON CAPE TOWN is pleased to present an exhibition in partnership with Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen and Berlin, of works from the Estates of Ernest Mancoba, his wife Sonja Ferlov and their son Wonga. When Sonja Ferlov Mancoba wrote letters from her and her family, she always signed them with the letters EWS – for Ernest, Wonga and Sonja. It is these three letters that give the exhibition its title and theme. Mancoba is arguably the most important modern artist from South Africa, and perhaps Africa, yet unlike some of his contemporaries like Gerard Sekoto, his work has not received widespread critical revaluation. The British artist and activist Rasheed Araeen, in a keynote address to the South African Visual Arts Historians in 2008, described Mancoba as one of the most important artists in any genealogy of African modernism: [H]e is Africa’s most original modern artist, but, more importantly, he enters the space of modernism formed and perpetuated by the colonial myth of white racial supremacy and superiority and demolishes it from within. Ernest Mancoba was born in 1904 in Johannesburg, and died in 2002 in Paris, France. He trained as a teacher in Pietersburg, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Fort Hare. In 1938 he left South Africa for Paris, where he studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs. The outbreak of World War II prevented him from leaving Paris and, in 1940, Ernest was interned by the Germans in St Denis where he married Danish artist Sonja Ferlov in 1942.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Publication
    LOST LOOSE AND LOVED FOREIGN ARTISTS IN PARIS 1944-1968 The exhibition Lost, Loose, and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris, 1944–1968 concludes the year 2018 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía with a broad investigation of the varied Parisian art scene in the decades after World War II. The exhibition focuses on the complex situation in France, which was striving to recuperate its cultural hegemony and recompose its national identity and influence in the newly emerging postwar geopolitical order of competing blocs. It also places a particular focus on the work of foreign artists who were drawn to the city and contributed to creating a stimulating, productive climate in which intense discussion and multiple proposals prevailed. Cultural production in a diverse, continuously transforming postwar Paris has often been crowded out by the New York art world, owing both to a skillful exercise of American propaganda that had spellbound much of the criticism, market, and institutions, as well as later to the work of canonical art history with its celebration of great names and specific moments. Dismissed as secondary, minor, or derivative, art practices in those years, such as those of the German artist Wols, the Dutch artist Bram van Velde, or the Portuguese artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, to name just a few, lacked the single cohesive image that the New York School offered with Abstract Impressionism and its standard bearer, Jackson Pollock. In contrast, in Paris there existed a multitude of artistic languages and positions coexisting
    [Show full text]
  • Third Text Reviews
    This article was downloaded by: [90.197.75.198] On: 02 December 2014, At: 12:48 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Third Text Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20 Reviews Anthony Downey , Christine Eyene , Amna Malik , Lize van Robbroeck , Theresa Avila & Alyssa Grossman Published online: 10 Feb 2009. To cite this article: Anthony Downey , Christine Eyene , Amna Malik , Lize van Robbroeck , Theresa Avila & Alyssa Grossman (2008) Reviews, Third Text, 22:6, 787-803, DOI: 10.1080/09528820802652573 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528820802652573 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
    [Show full text]
  • 1-54 Marrakech, Nouvelle Place Forte
    66 << Diptyk n°42. février-mars 2018 1-54 Marrakech nouvelle place forte de l’art contemporain africain C’est l’évènement de marché de cet hiver à Marrakech. Très attendue, la foire 1-54 établit ses quartiers dans la Ville ocre du 24 au 25 février et espère prolonger le succès qu’elle a su bâtir à Londres et New York depuis cinq ans. Son pari? Mettre en avant l’art contemporain africain, dans une foire spécialisée qui réunit 17 galeries, dont 6 issues du continent africain. Mais les enjeux dépassent le marché de l’art. Alliée au réseau culturel local, la 1-54 pourrait bien impulser un nouvel élan pour le Maroc. Ainsi portée par le hub économique africain, Marrakech compte s’inscrire parmi les destinations incontournables de l’art contemporain sur le continent. Dossier réalisé par Marie Moignard et Emmanuelle Outtier Hicham Benohoud, Sans Titre, Série Landscaping, 2018, photographie argentique, tirage C-print, 60 x 90 cm © Loft Art Gallery, Casablanca Diptyk n°42. février-mars 2018 >> 67 Cette première édition de la 1-54 en Afrique marque la volonté d’arrimer ce marché à sa terre d’origine uelle partition jouera la 1-54 Marrakech dans grandiose de l’hôtel La Mamounia une édition resserrée avec le marché de l’art africain, jusqu’ici accaparé 17 galeries, parmi lesquelles on retrouve les soutiens de la par Londres, New York, Johannesburg ou première heure comme Blain Southern (Londres-Berlin) ou Paris ? Sept ans après la dernière édition de Cécile Fakhoury (Côte d’Ivoire). Six d’entre elles sont basées Q Marrakech Art Fair et face à l’annulation en Afrique, dont trois au Maroc (Voice Gallery, L’Atelier 21 de la Biennale de Marrakech, l’enjeu est de taille : créer et Loft Art Gallery).
    [Show full text]
  • Deviant Practice
    DEVIANT PRACTICE Research Programme 2016-17 CONTENTS page 6 page 176 Off-The-Way through the gate/ an(g)archivery Deviant Practice: An Introduction susan pui san lok Nick Aikens page 210 page 20 Notes on a Dictionary: Here or There: a polemic approach Locating the Karel I Archive Charl Landvreugd Michael Karabinos page 224 page 48 Separatist Tendencies Tisna Tells... Eimear Walshe Petra Ponte page 238 page 90 Constituencies-Art-Nexus: Ernest Mancoba The Bródno Sculpture Park Case Visible Man, Invisible Work? Sebastian Cichocki, Meagan Down, Winnie Sze Kuba Szreder page 120 page 256 NO OPENING NO CLOSING Authors’ Biographies The infinite archive of René Daniëls Sara Giannini page 260 Acknowledgments page 156 Ahy-kon-uh-klas-tik page 261 Brook Andrew Colophon 4 Deviant Practice Contents 5 Off-The-Way “A museum properly understood is not a dumping place. It is not a place where we recycle history’s waste. It is first and foremost an epistemic space.” Deviant Practice: Achille Mbembe An Introduction I have turned to this quote by political theorist Achille Mbembe a number of times recently.1 In his concise proclamation he asks that museums consider what constitutes the ‘waste’ of history – to stop reproducing what should have been called into question long ago. In a Western art museum like the Van Abbemuseum, formed within the matrix of modernism and colonial- Nick Aikens ism, understanding, naming and challenging ‘history’s waste’ is a necessary and ongoing task. Mbembe’s call is also an invitation to stop regurgitating patterns and processes under different guises. Within a cultural field that often feels hard-wired to duplicate and reconsti- tute, Mbembe is asking those museums to think reflex- ively about what they put into the world and how, and demands that we claim the museum as an ‘epistemic place’ – a place of knowledge and for knowledge.
    [Show full text]
  • Primitivism, Humanism, and Ambivalence: Cobra and Post-Cobra Karen Kurczynski, University of Massachusetts - Amherst Nicola Pezolet
    University of Massachusetts Amherst From the SelectedWorks of Karen Kurczynski Spring 2011 Primitivism, Humanism, and Ambivalence: Cobra and Post-Cobra Karen Kurczynski, University of Massachusetts - Amherst Nicola Pezolet Available at: https://works.bepress.com/kkurczynski/2/ 282 RES 59/60 SPRING/AUTUMN 2011 Figure 2. Ernest Mancoba, Composition, 1940. Oil on canvas, 59 x 50 cm (23.2 x 19.7 in). Collection of Jens Olesen, Copenhagen. Primitivism, humanism, and ambivalence Cobra and Post-Cobra KAREN KURCZYNSKI and NICOLA PEZOLET Introduction the ambivalent relationship to primitivism among some of its major artists during and after the movement (when In a herringbone tweed jacket, carrying folded some of its members went on to found the Situationist glasses and a copy of the day’s London Times in his International [SI], 1957–1972): Danish artist Asger Jorn, hands, Ernest Mancoba looks more like a gentleman the Dutch artists Constant and Karel Appel, and South than a modern painter (fig. 1). A South African living in African Mancoba. Formerly a sculptor, Mancoba made Paris and a French citizen since 1961, he was visiting his first abstract, primitivist painting in 1940 in Paris Denmark to work on a set of lithographs with Peter (fig. 2). He had learned of the connections between Johansen. His sidelong glance at Swiss artist Alberto African traditions and modernism in Cape Town, when Giacometti’s bronze Spoon Woman of 1926–1927, a two European sculptors, Libby Lipschitz and Elza sculpture inspired by anthropomorphic carved wooden Dziomba, encouraged him to read the book Primitive spoons made by the Dan and Wobe peoples of the Negro Sculpture by Paul Guillaume and Thomas Munro.2 Ivory Coast, speaks volumes.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyrighted Material
    1 Modern African Art Chika Okeke * African modernism cannot be broached merely by invoking European modernism, for it is not, as some historians have claimed, simply an African manifestation of twentieth-century European art. Chika Okeke This essay by Chika Okeke establishes a conceptual and historical foundation for the texts that follow. It reverses the hegemonic Eurocentric viewpoint of art historiography and offers an authoritative history of African modern art from an African perspective. Okeke views modernism as essentially “a project of subject formation,” an idea he links to the rise of modernity on the African continent. His story of modern art begins with the colonial period and translates key value terms of Western modernism – progress, originality, artistic freedom, individualism, alienation, paradox – for application to African art. He gives us a picture of modern art in Africa as a fusion of many sources, an amalgam the author appreciates as postmodern avant la lettre . For the larger project of understanding modern art from multiple global perspectives, such local viewpoints will add up to an overall revaluation of values: a radical expansion and restructuring of modernist epistemology. Questions for reading: How does Okeke explain the debates around critical mod- ernist concepts? According to the author, what is the fundamental paradox of this history? How, when, and where does he say modernity and modernism emerged on the continent? What part did Paris and cosmopolitan expatriation play, and what three factors broughtCOPYRIGHTED African artists and intellectuals MATERIAL together, especially on the continent, during the independence decade (1955–65)? * Chika Okeke ( 2001 ) “Modern African Art.” In Okwui Enwezor (ed.) The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994 (pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Ernest Mancoba: a New African Artist by Ntongela Masilela One of The
    Untitled Document Ernest Mancoba: A New African Artist by Ntongela Masilela One of the master narratives of South African intellectual and cultural history was the formation and consolidation of the New African Movement across the first half of the twentieth century. The point of its origination and the subsequent one of its termination are contentious zones as is invariably the case with the beginnings and endings of periodizations. The beginning moment was constituted by a group of intellectuals designated as the Xhosa Intellectuals of the 1880s that included among others, Elijah Makiwane, John Tengo Jabavu, Isaac W. Wauchope, Walter Benson Rubusana, Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba, William Wellington Gqoba, John Knox Bokwe and Gwayi Tyamzashe. The inauspicious end of the Movement occurred in the late 1950s during historical moment of the Sophiatown Renaissance, a constellation that included among its adherents Ezekiel Mphahlele, Henry Nxumalo, Bessie Head, Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, Arthur Maimane, Miriam Makeba and many others. Between these two constellations there were many other intellectual and artistic formations such as: The Gandhi School (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mansukhlal Hiralal Nazar, Joseph J. Doke, Albert H. West, Henry Saloman Leon Polak, Mandan jit Vyavahark): Izwi Labantu newspaper Group (S. E. K. Mqhayi, Allan Kirkland Soga, Walter Benson Rubusana, Nathaniel Umhalla): The Zulu Intellectuals of the 1940s (H. I. E. Dhlomo, Walter M. B. Nhlapo, Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, E. A. M. Made, C. L. S. Nyembezi, Nimrod Njabulo Ndebele, Albert Luthuli, Jordan K. Ngubane, R. R. R. Dhlomo). Whereas the Xhosa Intellectuals of the 1880s came to an end as a living experience in the early 1890s through intellectual exhaustion and internal contradictions, the Sophiatown Renaissance was terminated by the apartheid state at the time of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960.
    [Show full text]