ISBN 978-1-4443-3837-9 A Companion to Modern African Art WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY These invigorating reference volumes chart the influence of key ideas, discourses, and theories on art, and the way that it is taught, thought of, and talked about throughout the English-speaking world. Each volume brings together a team of respected international scholars to debate the state of research within traditional subfields of art history as well as in more innovative, thematic configurations. Representing the best of the scholarship governing the field and pointing toward future trends and across disciplines, the Blackwell Companions to Art History series provides a magisterial, state-of-the-art synthesis of art history. 1 A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 edited by Amelia Jones 2 A Companion to Medieval Art edited by Conrad Rudolph 3 A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton 4 A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art edited by Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow 5 A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present edited by Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett 6 A Companion to Modern African Art edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà A Companion to Modern African Art Edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà This edition first published 2013 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. 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Reproduced by kind permission of the artist. Cover design by Richard Boxall Design Associates Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India 1 2013 To Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie Contents List of Figures xi Notes on Contributors xv Acknowledgments xx Part I Introduction 1 1 Writing African Modernism into Art History 3 Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà Part II “Africa Has Always Been Modern” 21 2 Local Transformations, Global Inspirations: The Visual Histories and Cultures of Mami Wata Arts in Africa 23 Henry John Drewal Part III Art in Cosmopolitan Africa: The Nineteenth Century 51 3 Loango Coast Ivories and the Legacies of Afro-Portuguese Arts 53 Nichole N. Bridges 4 Roots and Routes of African Photographic Practices: From Modern to Vernacular Photography in West and Central Africa (1850–1980) 74 Christraud M. Geary 5 At Home in the World: Portrait Photography and Swahili Mercantile Aesthetics 96 Prita Meier viii CONTENTS 6 African Reimaginations: Presence, Absence, and New Way Architecture 113 Ikem Stanley Okoye Part IV Modernities and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Arts of the Early Twentieth Century 135 7 “One of the Best Tools for Learning”: Rethinking the Role of ‘Abduh’s Fatwa in Egyptian Art History 137 Dina A. Ramadan 8 Congolese and Belgian Appropriations of the Colonial Era: The Commissioned Work of Tshelantende (Djilatendo) and Its Reception 154 Kathrin Langenohl 9 Warriors in Top Hats: Images of Modernity and Military Power on West African Coasts 174 Monica Blackmun Visonà Part V Colonialism, Modernism, and Art in Independent Nations 195 10 Algerian Painters as Pioneers of Modernism 197 Mary Vogl 11 Kofi Antubam, 1922–1964: A Modern Ghanaian Artist, Educator, and Writer 218 Atta Kwami 12 Patron and Artist in the Shaping of Zimbabwean Art 237 Elizabeth Morton 13 “Being Modern”: Identity Debates and Makerere’s Art School in the 1960s 255 Sunanda K. Sanyal 14 The École des Arts and Exhibitionary Platforms in Postindependence Senegal 276 Joanna Grabski 15 From Iconoclasm to Heritage: The Osogbo Art Movement and the Dynamics of Modernism in Nigeria 294 Peter Probst 16 Modernism and Modernity in African Art 311 John Picton CONTENTS ix 17 A Century of Painting in the Congo: Image, Memory, Experience, and Knowledge 330 Bogumil Jewsiewicki Part VI Perspectives on Arts of the African Diaspora 347 18 Visual Expressivity in the Art of the Black Diaspora: Conjunctures and Disjunctures 349 dele jegede Part VII Syntheses in Art of the Late Twentieth Century 369 19 Art and Social Dynamics in Côte d’Ivoire: The Position of Vohou-Vohou 371 Yacouba Konaté 20 Contemporary Contradictions: Bronzecasting in the Edo Kingdom of Benin 389 Barbara Winston Blackmun 21 Puppets as Witnesses and Perpetrators in Ubu and the Truth Commission 408 Peter Ukpokodu 22 Moroccan Art Museums and Memories of Modernity 426 Katarzyna Pieprzak Part VIII Primitivism as Erasure 445 23 The Enduring Power of Primitivism: Showcasing “the Other” in Twenty-First-Century France 447 Sally Price Part IX Local Expression and Global Modernity: African Art of the Twenty-First Century 467 24 Zwelethu Mthethwa’s “Postdocumentary” Portraiture: Views from South Africa and Abroad 469 Pamela Allara 25 Creative Diffusion: African Intersections in the Biennale Network 489 Kinsey Katchka 26 Lacuna: Uganda in a Globalizing Cultural Field 507 Sidney Littlefield Kasfir 27 Painted Visions under Rebel Domination: A Cultural Center and Political Imagination in Northern Côte d’Ivoire 528 Till Förster x CONTENTS 28 Postindependence Architecture through North Korean Modes: Namibian Commissions of the Mansudae Overseas Project 548 Meghan L. E. Kirkwood 29 Concrete Aspirations: Modern Art at the Roundabout in Ugep 572 Gitti Salami Index 593 List of Figures 1.1 Map of the African continent. 5 1.2 West Africa, detail from the map of the African continent. 6 2.1 Attributed to Annang Ibibio artist. Mami Wata shrine figure, 1950s–1960s. Wood, pigment, metal, sacrificial materials, 87.6 cm. 25 2.2 Attributed to Sapi artist. Saltcellar, Sierra Leone, late fifteenth century. Ivory, 16 cm. 28 2.3 Joseph Kossivi Ahiator (b. 1956, Aflao, Ghana). Indian King of Mami Wata, 2005. Pigment on cloth, 225 × 267 cm. 36 3.1 Attributed to Sapi artist. Lidded saltcellar, fifteenth–sixteenth century. 54 3.2 Attributed to Loango (Vili) artist. Detail from a carved elephant’s tusk, nineteenth century. 57 4.1 Jonathan Adagogo Green. Chief of Benin (a king from the Warri area in the Niger Delta, Nigeria), circa 1895. Postcard, printed circa 1907. 78 4.2 Lutterodt Bros. & Cousin. Untitled [portrait of two young men], circa 1900. Carte de visite. 81 4.3 El Hadj Ousmanou. Portrait of two young men, circa 1968. Gelatin silver print. 88 5.1 Unknown photographer. Interior view of a stone mansion in Zanzibar, circa 1880s. 107 6.1 Jinadu Elegbede. Interior “courtyard” at the Ijora Palace, Lagos, Nigeria, 1922. Undated photograph. 117 6.2 Joas Baptista da Costa. Shitta Bey Mosque, front façade, Lagos, Nigeria, 1892. Undated photograph. 117 8.1 Tshela tendu of Ibashe (signature). Untitled, 1931. Watercolor on off-white paper, 32 × 50.3 cm. 157 8.2 Tshelantende (signature). Untitled (Docteur, le rat d’ . , Infermi ). Watercolor on paper, mended with needle and thread, 72.5 × 102 cm. 158 9.1 Unknown photographer. Un grand féticheur (war captain of an Akye age-set), 1910–1940. Postcard published by Lescuyer for [La Société des] Missions Africaines, Lyon. 177 xii LIST OF FIGURES 9.2 Attributed to a Bidjogo artist. Orebok (iran), object from a shrine. Bissagos Islands, late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. 180 9.3 War captain (chef guerrier or sabohin) of an Akye age-set during an initiation ceremony, 1981. Memni, Côte d’Ivoire. 185 10.1 Houria Niati. Painting from the installation No to Torture, After Delacroix’ Women of Algiers, 1834, 1982. Mixed media on canvas, 188 × 270 cm. 198 10.2 Baya. Untitled, 1947–1950. Paint on paper, 74 × 99 cm. 205 10.3 Mohammed Khadda. Calm Noon, 1983. Oil on canvas, 66 × 53 cm. 210 11.1 Alex Amofa.