DOCSLIB.ORG

Cultura E Mobilização – Reflexões a Partir Do I Congresso Internacional De Escritores E Artistas Negros Todos Os Direitos Desta Edição Reservados À Synergia Editora

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cultura E Mobilização – Reflexões a Partir Do I Congresso Internacional De Escritores E Artistas Negros Todos Os Direitos Desta Edição Reservados À Synergia Editora CULTURA e MOBILIZAÇÃO Reflexões a partir do I Congresso Internacional de Escritores e Artistas Negros Raissa Brescia dos Reis Taciana Almeida G. Resende (Organizadoras) CULTURA e MOBILIZAÇÃO Reflexões a partir do I Congresso Internacional de Escritores e Artistas Negros Raissa Brescia dos Reis Taciana Almeida G. Resende (Organizadoras) Copyright © 2016 Cultura e Mobilização – Reflexões a partir do I Congresso Internacional de Escritores e Artistas Negros Todos os direitos desta edição reservados à Synergia Editora Editor Jorge Gama Capa Equipe Synergia Diagramação Flávio Meneghesso Revisão Lorrane Martins ________________________________ R375c Reis, Raissa Brescia Cultura e mobilização: reflexões a partir do I Congresso Internacional de de Escritores e Artistas Negros. / Raissa Brescia dos Reis, Taciana Almeida (Org.) ̶ Rio de Janeiro: Synergia Editora, 2016. 200 p. ; 21 cm Inclui Bibliografia Coedição UFMG ISBN: 978-85-68483-31-2 1. Negros na literatura 2. Identidade negra – I. Resende, Taciana Almeida G. II. Título. CDU 316.722(6) CDD 305.896 ________________________________ Livros técnicos, científicos e profissionais Tel.: (21) 3259-9374 www.synergiaeditora.com.br – [email protected] Sumário Apresentação Profª Drª Vanicléia Silva Santos......................................................................VII Introdução Raissa Brescia dos Reis e Taciana Almeida Garrido de Resende................IX 1 Présence Africaine e Intelectualidade Francófona: uma Introdução à Historiografia Raissa Brescia dos Reis e Taciana Almeida Garrido de Resende...................1 2 O I Congresso de Escritores e Artistas Negros: Antecedentes, Tensões e Consequências Maria Nazareth Soares Fonseca.......................................................................25 3 Pré-histórias da Literatura Francófona na África: Pan-africanismo, Negritude e o Primeiro Congresso dos Escritores e Artistas Negros Fernanda Murad Machado.................................................................................41 4 Projeto Cultural e Política Intelectual nas Páginas da Présence Africaine (1947-1956) Raissa Brescia dos Reis.......................................................................................71 5 Ousmane Sembène: um Cineasta Contra o Colonialismo e as Elites Africanas David Marinho de Lima Júnior......................................................................105 Frantz Fanon: Sobre a Violência e o Projeto Anticolonial para a Emancipação 6 Gustavo de Andrade Durão.............................................................................127 vi Cultura e Mobilização 7 Descolonizações Na Adversidade: a Présence Africaine Como Prisma de Constelações Culturais Charlotte Arndt.................................................................................................147 8 Lumières Noires e o Ensino De História da África na Educação Básica: uma Proposta Interdisciplinar no IFMG Gilbert Daniel da Silva, Simone Maria dos Santos e Taciana Almeida Garrido de Resende..........................................................163 Apresentação O Centro de Estudos Africanos, oficialmente criado em 2012, é o primeiro centro de estudos da UFMG criado no âmbito do projeto de ampliação da internacionalização da nossa universidade junto à África. O CEA tem como missão promover o encontro de acadêmicos especialistas no tema e divulgar as pesquisas realizadas na UFMG em outros centros de pesquisa no Brasil e no mundo, assim ajudando a consolidar os estudos africanos no país e a estabelecer a área como temática de pesquisa rele- vante no interior de nossa instituição. As parcerias com universidades e outras instituições de ensino têm como objetivo a realização de atividades conjuntas de pesquisa, o intercâmbio de material acadêmico e projetos de mobilidade acadêmica de alunos e professores. Por meio desses acordos internacionais, estudantes e pesquisadores da UFMG já puderam cursar disciplinas de sua área no exterior e alunos estrangeiros vieram à UFMG no mesmo intuito. Ao longo de sua atividade, o CEA também trouxe grandes especialistas em Estudos Africanos que realizaram conferências e seminários e ministraram disciplinas em programas de Pós-Graduação. Como um de seus objetivos principais, o CEA busca congregar pesquisadores, da UFMG e de outras Instituições de Ensino Superior, que desenvolvam pesquisas pertinentes à África. Dessa forma, incenti- vamos, por meio de editais de financiamento, a realização de congressos e colóquios que promovam um espaço para discussões e produção de conhecimento científico. Em 2015, por meio de Edital para Eventos do CEA-UFMG, foram realizados cinco eventos na FAFICH/UFMG. Um deles foi o I Congresso de Escritores e Artistas Negros: Seis décadas depois. O congresso de 1956 congregou intelectuais africanos e da diáspora e é hoje uma baliza fundamental para se pensar a experiência africana no século XX. O evento que deu origem a este livro e a própria publicação são, portanto, frutos do investimento do CEA/UFMG na consolidação do viii Cultura e Mobilização campo de estudos africanos. Acreditamos que há um público crescente e interessado em compreender melhor a história do continente africano e seus diálogos atlânticos estabelecidos com a Europa e a América. Assim, a UFMG cumpre seu papel ao promover a produção de conhecimento científico de alta qualidade e se abre para dialogar inter- nacionalmente com intelectuais africanos e outros estudiosos dedicados aos estudos da área. Profª Drª Vanicléia Silva Santos Professora de História da África – UFMG Coordenadora do Centro de Estudos Africanos - UFMG Introdução Em 1956, houve em Paris um encontro de escritores e artistas que marcaria profundamente a memória dos intelectuais que lá estiveram. Esse encontro mobilizou a atenção dos governos e, sobretudo, representou um momento fundamental na trajetória das discussões sobre a condição colonial. Contou com a presença de pensadores das colônias e ex-colônias francesas na África e na América, e com uma delegação de intelectuais estadunidenses. Fundadores e herdeiros da primeira geração do Négritude,1 esses intelectuais tinham como referência as produções da década de 1930, a proclamação e a prescrição de uma identidade coletiva informada por conceitos de cultura negro-africana. Uma “Bandung Cultural” – foi como chamou Alioune Diop o congresso de 1956, em referência à reunião realizada na Indonésia no ano anterior. Entre os princípios fundamentais defendidos pelos países do então chamado “Terceiro Mundo” em Bandung, estavam o reconhecimento da igualdade entre pessoas e nações e a autodeterminação dos povos. O ques- tionamento ao colonialismo estava dado, mas qual o papel da cultura negra diante dessa realidade? O que ela significa e como ela deve ser mobilizada pelo homem de cultura negro? A quem diz respeito e como é definida? A identidade racial compartilhada é um critério fundamental e incontor- nável de união? Intelectuais como Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1 O movimento da Négritude, desenvolvido entre estudantes antilhanos e africanos em estadia em Paris no entreguerras, tinha como principal pauta a positivação da identidade negra mobilizada por poetas, escritores e estudantes de Letras. Para muitos autores, como Lilyan Kesteloot, a literatura negro-africana francófona tem como marco fundamental os primeiros escritos deste grupo na década de 1930. Segundo a autora belga – e também para os histo- riadores franceses Bernard Mouralis e Jacques Chevrier –, o movimento da Négritude inau- gura a autenticidade em literatura negro-africana devido a sua ligação com uma estética da rebelião e sua necessária fala engajada. Ler mais em KESTELOOT, 1963. x Cultura e Mobilização Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Jacques Stéphen Alexis e o próprio Alioune Diop tentaram responder a essas e outras questões entre os dias 19 e 22 de setembro de 1956, diante de uma plateia atenta no auditório Descartes da Sorbonne. Não sem discordâncias. O I Congresso Internacional de Escritores e Artistas Negros completa 60 anos em 2016 e apresentamos aqui algumas contribuições para esse debate. O Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, a quem agredecemos muito, foi responsável pelo financiamento dessa publi- cação e também do evento que lhe deu origem. Em novembro de 2015, com o apoio do Departamento de História da Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da UFMG, a equipe organizadora do seminário I Congresso de Escritores e Artistas Negros: sessenta anos depois propôs um espaço de balanço e novas discussões a respeito desse histórico encontro. Ao professor e amigo Luiz Arnaut, que concebeu conosco a proposta do evento, um agradeci- mento especial pela parceria. Para compor o evento acadêmico, foram selecionados filmes e docu- mentários cujas temáticas versam sobre assuntos correlatos ao Congresso de 1956 ou aos seus participantes. Para debater com o público, foram apresen- tados os documentários Aimé Césaire: une voix pour l’histoire, de Euzham Palcy; Concerning Violence, do diretor Göran Hugo Olsson, e Lumières Noires, de autoria de Bob Swaim; além do longa metragem de ficçãoXala , de Ousmane Sembène. Foram três dias de debates, mesas temáticas e sessões de filmes comentadas sobre as principais questões mobilizadas pelo Congresso. As reflexões dali decorrentes estão agora reunidas neste livro. Diante da crescente relevância dos Estudos Africanos no Brasil nas últimas décadas, o evento buscou incentivar o intercâmbio entre áreas (como a da História, da Literatura e das Ciências Sociais) e
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]
  • 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.
    [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]