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To find out more go to Amazon.com

In My Father's House

"A wonderfully crafted collection of essays."--In My Father's House

"Appiah's book on the place of Africa in contemporary philosophy powerfully exposes the dangers of any simplistic notion of African identity in the contemporary world....Tellingly, his reflections upon the calling of philosophy and the relation between post-traditional and not-yet-modern African culture(s) offer a welcome perspective on the increasingly shrill debates over "multiculturalism" that rend the academy. The epilogue on his father's funeral alone more than justifies the whole book."--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Common Knowledge

"Interesting and thought-provoking."--Safro Kwame, Lincoln University
"Montaigne invented the modern essay;...Appiah has the brilliance to extend it."--The Village Voice

"A groundbreaking--as well as ground-clearing--analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions of race, Africa and nationalism since the 19th century....Mr. Appiah delivers what may very well be one of the handful of theoretical works on race that will help preserve our humanity and guide us gracefully into the next century."--Charles Johnson, The New York Times Book
Review

"Appiah's essays are exquisitely and painstakingly argued."--Washington Post Book World

"An exceptional work, whose contextual sweep and lucidity provide a refreshing intellectual tone away from yahoo populism. In many profound ways, Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House ushers in a new level of discourse on race and culture, placing it within a universal narrative--and where else should it belong?...Without question, a first of its kind."--Wole Soyinka, from Race and the Rout of Reason

"In My Father's House is a remarkable book that brings previously invisible cultural assumptions to the surface and obliges us to rethink our conceptions about African identity. Drawing upon a variety of elegantly analyzed historical examples and relating them to his own personal experiences of the African world, Anthony Appiah convincingly demonstrates the need to go beyond stereotyped notions of race and futile laments about past injustices. His observations about authenticity movements, the persistence of Western constructions of African realities, and the emergence of new syntheses of knowledge among African peoples represent a major breakthrough in the ongoing debate over the future of African culture."--Richard Bjornson, Ohio State University

"This is an absorbing and path-breaking book by a gifted philosopher. Appiah rescues the philosophy of culture from Herder by insisting that we drop notions like 'authentic negritude' and that 'African culture' is the name of an important project rather than of an available datum. The book's range of reference and the vigor of its argumentation are equally impressive."--Richard Rorty, University of Virginia

"Appiah's concern is, he modestly states, 'with the situation of African intellectuals.' In the growing literature on the subject, nobody has defined that situation, as it exists now, more sharply; nobody has built so many bridges to a discourse that might be shared universally. Learned yet unpretentious, serious and witty, critical and kind--this book is bound to infuse debates among African intellectuals with new vigor and to engage philosophers, literary critics, anthropologists and others everywhere. One also wishesit would be read by politicians for its lucid analyses of racism as well as its demonstration of intellectual independence tempered by colonial and post-colonial experience."--Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam


"A wonderfully crafted collection of essays."--In My Father's House
"Appiah's book on the place of Africa in contemporary philosophy powerfully exposes the dangers of any simplistic notion of African identity in the contemporary world....Tellingly, his reflections upon the calling of philosophy and the relation between post-traditional and not-yet-modern African culture(s) offer a welcome perspective on the increasingly shrill debates over "multiculturalism" that rend the academy. The epilogue on his father's funeral alone more than justifies the whole book."--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Common Knowledge

"Interesting and thought-provoking."--Safro Kwame, Lincoln University
"Montaigne invented the modern essay;...Appiah has the brilliance to extend it."--The Village Voice

"A groundbreaking--as well as ground-clearing--analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions of race, Africa and nationalism since the 19th century....Mr. Appiah delivers what may very well be one of the handful of theoretical works on race that will help preserve our humanity and guide us gracefully into the next century."--Charles Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

"Appiah's essays are exquisitely and painstakingly argued."--Washington Post Book World

"An exceptional work, whose contextual sweep and lucidity provide a refreshing intellectual tone away from yahoo populism. In many profound ways, Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House ushers in a new level of discourse on race and culture, placing it within a universal narrative--and where else should it belong?...Without question, a first of its kind."--Wole Soyinka, from Race and the Rout of Reason
"In My Father's House is a remarkable book that brings previously invisible cultural assumptions to the surface and obliges us to rethink our conceptions about African identity. Drawing upon a variety of elegantly analyzed historical examples and relating them to his own personal experiences of the African world, Anthony Appiah convincingly demonstrates the need to go beyond stereotyped notions of race and futile laments about past injustices. His observations about authenticity movements, the persistence of Western constructions of African realities, and the emergence of new syntheses of knowledge among African peoples represent a major breakthrough in the ongoing debate over the future of African culture."--Richard Bjornson, Ohio State University

"This is an absorbing and path-breaking book by a gifted philosopher. Appiah rescues the philosophy of culture from Herder by insisting that we drop notions like 'authentic negritude' and that 'African culture' is the name of an important project rather than of an available datum. The book's range of reference and the vigor of its argumentation are equally impressive."--Richard Rorty, University of Virginia "Appiah's concern is, he modestly states, 'with the situation of African intellectuals'. In the growing literature on the subject, nobody has defined that situation, as it exists now, more sharply; nobody has built so many bridges to a discourse that might be shared universally. Learned yet unpretentious, serious and witty, critical and kind--this book is bound to infuse debates among African intellectuals with new vigor and to engage philosophers, literary critics, anthropologists and others everywhere. One also wishes it would be read by politicians for its lucid analyses of racism as well as its demonstration of intellectual independence tempered by colonial and post-colonial experience."--Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam

The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America.

In this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race.

In My Father's House is especially wide-ranging, covering everything from Pan Africanism, to the works of early African-American intellectuals such as Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the ways in which African identity influences African literature. In his discussion of the latter subject, Appiah demonstrates how attempts to construct a uniquely African literature have ignored not only the inescapable influences that centuries of contact with the West have imposed, but also the multicultural nature of Africa itself. Emphasizing this last point is Appiah's eloquent title essay which offers a fitting finale to the volume. In a moving first-person account of his father's death and funeral in Ghana, Appiah offers a brilliant metaphor for the tension between Africa's aspirations to modernity and its desire to draw on its ancient cultural roots.

During the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appeared on television to make his now famous plea: "People, can we all get along?" In this beautiful, elegantly written volume, Appiah steers us along a path toward answering a question of the utmost importance to us all.

About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. His books include Assertion and Conditionals (1985), For Truth in Semantics (1986), Necessary Questions (1989), and the novel Avenging Angel (1991). He is currently editing the Oxford Book of African Literature.


For more information go to Amazon.com

The Ethics of Identity

The Ethics of Identity is wonderfully straightforward. It does just what it proposes to do. It explores the demands of 'individuality,' and rejects extreme understandings of what autonomy requires. It considers the relation of personal and group identity to morals and ethics... It moves on to the links between identity and culture... Appiah has some very wise and original things to say about the inevitability of a liberal state affecting the inner life of its citizens. He ends with a defense of rooted cosmopolitanism. Not only is the argument direct; it is untechnical, transparent, and unaggressive... Appiah concentrates on a double question: how we acquire an individual identity by acquiring a social identity, and how we find--and make--an identity that is not a straitjacket. In pursuing this question, Appiah begins to explore one of the most fascinating and difficult questions in moral philosophy, the relationship between general principles and particular attachments... He shows just how to write about the intimate, formative relations that are central to a life, most strikingly in his epilogue, but as you realize when you reach that ending, he has been doing it, as well as a great deal else, throughout The Ethics of Identity. -- Alan Ryan The New York Review of Books Suave and discerning... Appiah seeks to reorient political philosophy by returning to the example set by John Stuart Mill... For all of Appiah's philosophic precision, his writing often resembles not Mill's but that of Oscar Wilde--to my mind, the finest prose stylist of the 19th century... The superb rhetorical performance of this book offers the most persuasive evidence for his case... To read The Ethics of Identity is to enter into the world it describes; it is also to imagine what it might be like to live in so urbane and expansive a place. -- Jonathan Freedman New York Times Book Review Kwame Anthony Appiah undertakes to combine a form of liberalism that aspires to universal validity with a full recognition and substantial acceptance of the important cultural and ethical diversity that characterizes our world. -- Thomas Nagel New Republic | An impressive book... A thorough exploration of moral concepts such as authenticity, tolerance, individuality, and dignity, and how they are all connected to the task of making a life... It is hard to know what to admire most about this book: the urbane elegance of Appiah's prose, the reach of his knowledge, or the sheer philosophical sharpness of his analysis. -- Carl Elliott The American Prospect This book, with its fluid, inviting phrasing, is exceptionally well written... It is effective, insightful, and thought-provoking... Appiah clears the way for a justification of a narrative, pragmatic, particular relations-based cosmopolitanism, which is universal without the necessity of theoretical agreement. Choice This new book aims to lay the groundwork for a new version of liberal theory adequate to the challenges of our time... I find Appiah's overall conception of liberalism very congenial... If Appiah succeeds in attenuating the force of such claims by undermining the theoretical conceptualizations and arguments supporting them, and integrating the valid claims of identity into liberal theory, he will have contributed very significantly to the reconstruction of liberalism. -- Leonard J. Waks Education and Culture The conclusion Appiah eloquently affirms is spot on: the key to living a moral life is clearly not to seek to forego identity. On the contrary, it is to put identity in the service of becoming ethical human beings. -- Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Tikkun Kwame Anthony Appiah, a man of multiple cultures and languages who is able to question culture itself, leaves us better able to contemplate how to lead life well and to relate ethically to others in the process. -- E. James Lieberman PsycCritiques Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Ethics of Identity is a wonderful book. It is as rigorous as one expects the best philosophy to be, yet it is whitty, humane, and engaging in ways that academic philosophy is only rarely. It is the best account of the ethics of liberal society that we possess. -- Daniel Weinstock Ethics Appiah, ... an elegant writer, observes that we are not simply members of groups or products of culture. Individuality and autonomy, he argues, are fundamental to personhood in all social and cultural contexts. -- David Moshman Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology


The Ethics of Identity is wonderfully straightforward. It does just what it proposes to do. It explores the demands of 'individuality,' and rejects extreme understandings of what autonomy requires. It considers the relation of personal and group identity to morals and ethics. . . . It moves on to the links between identity and culture. . . . Appiah has some very wise and original things to say about the inevitability of a liberal state affecting the inner life of its citizens. He ends with a defense of rooted cosmopolitanism. Not only is the argument direct; it is untechnical, transparent, and unaggressive. . . . Appiah concentrates on a double question: how we acquire an individual identity by acquiring a social identity, and how we find--and make--an identity that is not a straitjacket. In pursuing this question, Appiah begins to explore one of the most fascinating and difficult questions in moral philosophy, the relationship between general principles and particular attachments. . . . [He] shows just how to write about the intimate, formative relations that are central to a life, most strikingly in his epilogue, but as you realize when you reach that ending, he has been doing it, as well as a great deal else, throughout The Ethics of Identity.
(Alan Ryan The New York Review of Books )

Suave and discerning. . . . Appiah seeks to reorient political philosophy by returning to the example set by John Stuart Mill. . . . For all of Appiah's philosophic precision, his writing often resembles not Mill's but that of Oscar Wilde--to my mind, the finest prose stylist of the 19th century. . . . [T]he superb rhetorical performance of this book offers the most persuasive evidence for his case. . . . To read The Ethics of Identity is to enter into the world it describes; it is also to imagine what it might be like to live in so urbane and expansive a place.
(Jonathan Freedman New York Times Book Review )

Kwame Anthony Appiah undertakes to combine a form of liberalism that aspires to universal validity with a full recognition and substantial acceptance of the important cultural and ethical diversity that characterizes our world.
(Thomas Nagel New Republic )

An impressive book. . . . a thorough exploration of moral concepts such as authenticity, tolerance, individuality, and dignity, and how they are all connected to the task of making a life. . . . It is hard to know what to admire most about this book: the urbane elegance of Appiah's prose, the reach of his knowledge, or the sheer philosophical sharpness of his analysis.
(Carl Elliott The American Prospect )

This book, with its fluid, inviting phrasing, is exceptionally well written. . . . It is effective, insightful, and thought-provoking. . . . Appiah clears the way for a justification of a narrative, pragmatic, particular relations-based cosmopolitanism, which is universal without the necessity of theoretical agreement.
(Choice )

This new book aims to lay the groundwork for a new version of liberal theory adequate to the challenges of our time. . . . I find Appiah's overall conception of liberalism very congenial. . . . If Appiah succeeds in attenuating the force of such claims by undermining the theoretical conceptualizations and arguments supporting them, and integrating the valid claims of identity into liberal theory, he will have contributed very significantly to the reconstruction of liberalism.
(Leonard J. Waks Education and Culture )

The conclusion Appiah eloquently affirms is spot on: the key to living a moral life is clearly not to seek to forego identity. On the contrary, it is to put identity in the service of becoming ethical human beings.
(Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Tikkun )

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a man of multiple cultures and languages who is able to question culture itself, leaves us better able to contemplate how to lead life well and to relate ethically to others in the process.
(E. James Lieberman PsycCritiques )

Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Ethics of Identity is a wonderful book. It is as rigorous as one expects the best philosophy to be, yet it is whitty, humane, and engaging in ways that academic philosophy is only rarely. It is the best account of the ethics of liberal society that we possess.
(Daniel Weinstock Ethics )

Appiah, . . . an elegant writer, observes that we are not simply members of groups or products of culture. Individuality and autonomy, he argues, are fundamental to personhood in all social and cultural contexts.
(David Moshman Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology )

Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read.
(Jacob Levy, University of Chicago )


Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions.

The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are.

Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the clichés and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.


"Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read."--Jacob Levy, University of Chicago


"The Ethics of Identity is a major overhaul of the vocabulary of contemporary political and critical thought--the vocabulary of identity, diversity, authenticity, cosmopolitanism, and culture. The load of hidden assumptions carried by these words had become overwhelming, and someone needed to take them to the shop and give them a thorough philosophical servicing. But Anthony Appiah has done more than that. He has returned those terms to us clarified, refreshed, and ready for use in a more sophisticated and flexible philosophy of Liberalism--and, along the way, he has provided us with a new reading of liberalism's old hero, John Stuart Mill. Appiah's writing is unparalleled in its elegance, its lucidity, and its humanity. Accept no substitutes."--Louis Menand, Harvard University

"In the debates over diversity, rights, group identities or group conflict, The Ethics of Identity, is the land of lucidity. Appiah's elegant book resists the easy alternatives of universal liberalism and multiculturalism and instead defends--and illustrates on every page--a rooted cosmopolitanism. The sparkling prose, vivid examples, and probing questions navigate the choppy waters of personal and political constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexuality. This fine and wise book invites readers to remain willing to distinguish tolerance and respect--and by engaging with both the lives people make for themselves and the communities and narratives that render them meaningful."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School and author of Identity, Politics, and the Law --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


"Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read."--Jacob Levy, University of Chicago

"The Ethics of Identity is a major overhaul of the vocabulary of contemporary political and critical thought--the vocabulary of identity, diversity, authenticity, cosmopolitanism, and culture. The load of hidden assumptions carried by these words had become overwhelming, and someone needed to take them to the shop and give them a thorough philosophical servicing. But Anthony Appiah has done more than that. He has returned those terms to us clarified, refreshed, and ready for use in a more sophisticated and flexible philosophy of Liberalism--and, along the way, he has provided us with a new reading of liberalism's old hero, John Stuart Mill. Appiah's writing is unparalleled in its elegance, its lucidity, and its humanity. Accept no substitutes."--Louis Menand, Harvard University

"In the debates over diversity, rights, group identities or group conflict, The Ethics of Identity, is the land of lucidity. Appiah's elegant book resists the easy alternatives of universal liberalism and multiculturalism and instead defends--and illustrates on every page--a rooted cosmopolitanism. The sparkling prose, vivid examples, and probing questions navigate the choppy waters of personal and political constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexuality. This fine and wise book invites readers to remain willing to distinguish tolerance and respect--and by engaging with both the lives people make for themselves and the communities and narratives that render them meaningful."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School and author of Identity, Politics, and the Law


About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His books include two monographs in the philosophy of language as well as the widely acclaimed "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture", "Cosmopolitanism" [Norton], and, with Amy Gutmann, "Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race". He has also edited or co-edited many books, including (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience". His most recent book is "Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy".


For more information see: www.amazon.com

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

In a world more interconnected than ever, the responsibilities and obligations we share remain matters of volatile debate. Weighing in on a discourse that includes both visions of "clashing civilizations" and often equally misguided cultural relativism, Ghana-born Princeton philosopher Appiah (In My Father's House) reclaims a tradition of creative exchange and imaginative engagement across lines of difference. This cosmopolitan ethic, which he traces from the Greek Cynics and through to the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, must inevitably balance universals with respect for particulars. This balance comes through "conversation," a term Appiah uses literally and metaphorically to signal the depth of encounters across national, religious and other forms of identity. At the same time, Appiah stresses conversation needn't involve consensus, since living together mostly entails just getting used to one another. Amid the good and bad of globalization, the author parses some basic cultural-philosophical beliefs—drawing frequent examples from his own far-flung multicultural family as well as from impersonal relationships of exchange and power—to focus due attention on widespread and unexamined assumptions about identity, difference and morality. A stimulating read, leavened by cheerful, fluid prose, the book will challenge fashionable theories of irreconcilable divides with a practical and pragmatic worldview that revels in difference and the adventure of a shared humanity. This is an excellent start to
Norton's new Issues of Our Time series.

(Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From The New Yorker

Appiah, a Princeton philosophy professor, articulates a precise yet flexible ethical manifesto for a world characterized by heretofore unthinkable interconnection but riven by escalating fractiousness. Drawing on his Ghanaian roots and on examples from philosophy and literature, he attempts to steer a course between the extremes of liberal universalism, with its tendency to impose our values on others, and cultural relativism, with its implicit conviction that gulfs in understanding cannot be bridged. Cosmopolitanism, in Appiah's formulation, balances our "obligations to others" with the "value not just of human life but of particular human lives"—what he calls "universality plus difference." Appiah remains skeptical of simple maxims for ethical behavior—like the Golden Rule, whose failings as a moral precept he swiftly demonstrates—and argues that cosmopolitanism is the name not "of the solution but of the challenge."

Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


"A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age."—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell

Kwame Anthony Appiah's landmark new work, featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism," a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raised in Ghana, educated in England, and now a distinguished professor in the United States, Appiah promises to create a new era in which warring factions will finally put aside their supposed ideological differences and will recognize that the fundamental values held by all human beings will usher in a new era of global understanding.

About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at Princeton University. His earlier books include The Ethics of Identity and Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. He lives in Pennington, New Jersey.

For more information see: www.amazon.com

Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography

This massive catalogue of the International Center of Photography's 2006 exhibition of contemporary African photography gives a thought-provoking introduction to how African artists have engaged with the international art world while sustaining their uniquely African points of view, whether they live at home or abroad. With artists hailing from South Africa to Morocco, the exhibit is a visceral reminder of the vastness and variety of a continent that colonial history has misunderstood and objectified, according to exhibit curator Enwezor. His introductory essay, although difficult reading for those unfamiliar with academic art-speak, provides an indispensable guide to this work, giving a context for what otherwise might overwhelm or mystify. He challenges assumptions of "Afro-pessimism" propounded by literature and the media that "focus on the exotic potentials of both man and animal," equating colonial photographer and African with hunter and game. In contrast, these artists wrench the image of Africa back from "the touristic gaze" to create a humanized, individualized iconography, while claiming their places within the international art community. From Randa Shaath's documentation of Cairo's precariously thriving rooftop community of artists to Kay Hassan's spooky portraits made from Polaroid negatives discarded by self-employed street photographers, this collection reveals an Africa looking with "fined-tuned alertness" at a rapidly changing world. (July)Correction: The author of Lost Cosmonaut (Reviews, May 22) is Daniel Kalder.


Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography gathers approximately 250 works by 30 artists from across the continent, an amazingly wide range of individual artistic responses to the unprecedented shifts taking place in Africa's economic, social and cultural spheres. In addition to introducing audiences to the multiple imaginations and voices of today's African artists, Snap Judgments explores the ways photo-based art has developed across the dialectic of traditional African aesthetic values and Western influences. Contemporary African photography has emerged in the post-World War II de-colonization movements, the quest for independent national identity, and the effects of globalization and modernity. Snap Judgments organizes the work that grew out of all that into four thematic groups--landscape; urban formations; the body and identity; and history and representation--groups that reflect the issues around which Africa's experimental artists have been articulating new styles and visual languages. Nigerian independent curator and art historian Okwui Enwezor, widely recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on contemporary African art, has included an essay by art historian Colin Richard, an appendix on recent exhibitions of African photography, biographical notes on the artists, and a general bibliography.


For more information see: www.amazon.com

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace
by Olu Oguibe Editor, Okwui Enwezor Editor
Image by Yinka Shonibare OBE

About the Author | Olu Oguibe has taught at the University of London and as the Stuart Golding Professor of African Art at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West and co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Okwui Enwezor is Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the Artistic Director of Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany, 2002, and was the Artistic Director of the 1997 Johannesburg Biennial. He is the publisher and founding editor of Nka.

Book Description
In the past decade contemporary African art has been featured in major exhibtions in museums, galleries, international biennials, and other forums. African cinema has established itself on the stage of world cinema, culminating in the Ouagadougou Film Festival. While African art and visual culture have become an integral part of the art history and cultural studies curricula in universities worldwide, critical readings and interpretations have remained difficult to obtain. This pioneering anthology collects twenty key essays in which major critical thinkers, scholars, and artists explore contemporary African visual culture, locating it within current cultural debates and within the context of the continent`s history. The sections of the book are Theory and Cultural Transaction, History, Location and Practice, and Negotiated Identities. Copublished with the Institute of International Visual Arts inIVA, London

Art After Appropriation

Art after Appropriation: Essays on Art in the 1990s
Editorial Reviews

About the Author
John C. Welchman is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of California, San Diego.


Book Description
Beginning with the first comprehensive account of the discourse of appropriation that dominated the art world in the late 1970s and 1980s, Art After Appropriation suggests a matrix of inflections and refusals around the culture of taking or citation, each chapter loosely correlated with one year of the decade between 1989 and 1999. The opening chapters discuss, among other things, how the second world culture of the USSR gave rise to new visibility for photography at the Union`s dissolution in 1989, and explore how genres of ethnography, documentary and travel are crossed with fictive performance and social improvisation in the videos of Steve Fagin.



Review by Paul from New York

I can`t say I`ve been delighted about much art-writing the last 5 or 6 years. Welchman gets 5 stars for doing the foot-work while not misplacing his head. His book looks at an interesting mix of artists, takes some risks, and cobbles together an interesting theory... and, quite frankly, much of what he says is not only correct, but has really needed to be said for some time now. It seems that much writing about art has gotten so niche-oriented or arbitrary that Welchman`s approach is welcome. By rehashing the legacy of appropriation, something that we thought the art world had already figured out, Welchman springs through the unguarded front doors of mainstream discourse in an expansive manner.

Art and Artist of the Transvangarde

Art and Artist of the Transvangarde

To be published by the October Gallery. Launch date 16th December, 2000


This book containing authoritative essays by leading artists and art critics will be an important critical introduction to the notion of a developing transvangarde, or trans-cultural avant-garde.
Contributors include: John Russell Taylor, Robert Loder, John Allen, Petrine Archer-Straw, Andrew Dempsey, Georgina Beier, Sajid Rizvi, Simon Njami, Ulli Beier, Elisabeth Lalouschek, El Anatsui, Wijdan Ali, Eddie Chambers and Gerard Houghton amongst others.

The word ‘transvangarde’ is a shorthand way of indicating artists who, coming from one particular culture ultimately belong to all, and are not to be bounded by culturally-specific labels such as ‘African sculptor’ or ‘American painter’ – they are trans-cultural artists, catalytic agents of the transvangarde. Thus, the transvangarde can perhaps best be described as an ongoing multi-cultural experiment in the visual arts that can only be understood in the context of a globally active – and consciously interactive - contemporary art scene without borders or boundaries.

Modern African Art

Editors with the Paris-based publisher Revue Noire, Fall and Pivin have put together a volume that will inspire and inform experts and neophytes alike. Including 500 color and 51 black-and-white images, this book provides a depth and breadth no other volume can boast of on the subject of contemporary African art. Breathtakingly thorough and overwhelming in its comprehensiveness, this volume contains a representative selection that covers all genres and reaches into every region of sub-Saharan Africa. The undertaking is enhanced by the penetrating insights of several distinguished writers, whose masterly essays recall history, provide context, and interpret uniquely African phenomena while also revealing the universality of selected works, presenting them as expressions of a modernity that is concretely African but has roots in the interconnectedness of all humans. The brief descriptions and histories accompanying each work are invaluable guides. Recommended for public and academic libraries and indispensable for any African studies collection.


Edward K. Owusu-Ansah, CUNY Coll. of Staten Island Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The term "Modern African Art" is not an abuse of language. The 20th century has seen, but not properly documented, the birth, development, and maturation of contemporary art in sub-Saharan Africa, an art which was not simply imported in the 1950s but which finds its sources both in colonial realities and in local cultures and civilizations. Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century does not propose to document any one African art, but rather to open up this vast but underexplored field to include a diverse theoretical, historical, geographical, and critical map of this dense and ancient region. Contributions by more than 30 international authors recount the birth of art schools in the 1930s, the development of urban design and public art, and the importance of socially-concerned art during the Independence movements. From Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Belgian Congo to Ghana, Senegal, and Angola, through the works of hundreds of artists working in every conceivable medium and context, this anthology manages the continental and unique feat of providing a thorough, expansive, diversified, and fully illustrated history of African art in the 20th century. Since 1991, Paris-based Revue Noire Editions has dedicated itself to the multidisciplinary artistic production of the African continent and the African diaspora. Publishers of the critically-acclaimed An Anthology of African Photography, a comprehensive chronicle of African photography from the mid-1800s to the present, Revue Noire also produces a self-titled magazine devoted to contemporary African art and culture.

About the Author | N'Gone Fall is the editor of "Revue Noire".
Jean Loup Pivin is the cofounder and director of publications of "Revue Noire".


For more information: www.amazon.co.uk

Nsukka Artists | Nigeria

The Nsukka artists, a loosely affiliated group associated with the University of Nigeria, demonstrate the rich and sensitive face of creativity under the rapidly changing conditions of present-day Africa. This collection is weighted toward writings by African artists and art historians and is informed by an African perspective on contemporary art. In a major addition to the literature on contemporary African art, contributors explore the questions of identity faced by African artists, in both Africa and the West; broach the topic of the sometimes conflicting theories about art and the art market; and examine the tensions between traditional and postmodern approaches to making and viewing art. The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art offers pioneering and insightful material for the emergent field of contemporary African art and aesthetics. The Nsukka experience is of broad significance, not only for Africa in general, but as one aspect of a major third world contemporary art movement embracing Native American, Australian Aboriginal, and Oceanic cultures.

About the Author | Simon Ottenberg is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Washington and curator of the exhibit, "The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group," National Museum of African Art. He is the author of New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, Seeing with Music: The Lives of Three Blind African Musicians, and The Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of African Art.


For more information see: Amazon.co.uk

SKOTO GALLERY

SKOTO GALLERY
529 West 20th Street,
5FL.
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 212-352 8058
info@skotogallery.com
www.skotogallery.com







Untitled I, 2008, mixed media on wood panel, 32cmx78cm






Faces

Aimé Mpané Recent Work


February 12th – March 21st, 2009

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Faces, an exhibition of recent mixed media work by the Congolese-born artist Aime Mpane. This will be his second solo show at the gallery. The reception is Thursday, February 12th, 6-8pm. Aime Mpane’s mixed media work consistently chronicle contemporary historical upheavals in post-colonial Africa, including the present turmoil in his homeland and forces us to confront its impact on the lives of children, the most vulnerable in society and re-imagine the innocence of youth as victim of war. Internal conflicts, ethnic strife and socioeconomic catastrophes have increased tremendously in recent years over control of the natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and consequently, children have become targets as their world is suddenly turned upside down due to invasion or forced internal displacement that often separate families, driving them onto the road as refugees or displaced person while putting their homes, schools, communities in the firing line. Also, internal conflicts are often linked to the disintegration of state structures which can create situations of such anarchy that almost all the mechanism to protect children’s rights no longer function. Harnessing a capacious imaginative energy and a ferocious will, Aime Mpane mines the themes of power and vulnerability in society and implicates our collective unconsciousness in a hidden scandal and secret shame. He creates a body of work of harrowing beauty and insightfulness that constitute a remarkable statement about children and war, simultaneously playing on the ambivalences that assert the strength and fragility of his subjects, revealing a deep tragic outcome in which trauma and the memory of trauma are central. He utilizes the extreme gesture and emotionality of his medium by slashing, chipping and chopping with the adze – a traditional wood carving tool - on wood panel, illuminating the various faces of war in their raw, awkward and blunt forms, evocative of the diverse states of the human condition from the political to the metaphysical - a fit metaphor for the violence and dire conditions that have befallen the country throughout most of its modern history. A fundamental tension is also at the heart of his work, a tension between form and meaning, figure and background as well as fragmentation and wholeness. However, despite the fact that Aime Mpane’s work never avoided the significance of content, they still manage to tell stories of love and courage, of compassion and resilience that speak to the triumph of the human spirit. He is truly a warrior-artist whose work embodies the pain and grace of human conflict. Aime Mpane was born 1968 into a family of artists in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and graduated in Sculpture from the Academie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa in 1990.and Ecole National Superieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre, Bruxelles, Belgium in 2000. He presently teaches Sculpture at the Academie International d'Ete de Wallonie, Libramont, Belgium and as a Visiting Professor at the Academie des Beaux-Art in Kinshasa. Exhibitions include L’homme est un Mystere3, Musee d’art et d’histoire, St. Brieuc, France 2008/2009, Le Congo en Marche, Le Botanique, Bruxelles, 2007; Three One-Man Exhibition, Station Museum, Houston (with James Little and George Smith) 2007; Havana Biennial 2003; Africa for Africa, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles 2003, Musee de Katanga, Lubumbashi, Congo 2002, Africa Sana, Quai Antoine Ier, Monaco and Centre Cultural Français, Kinshasa in 1991. Awards include Prix de la Fondation Jean-Paul Blachère Dak’Art Bienniale, Dakar, Senegal 2006. Related Exhibition: Artists in Dialogue: Antonio Ole (Angola) and Aimé Mpané (DR Congo)February 4th – August 2nd, 2009National Museum of African ArtSmithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Johannesburg to New York @ MoCADA.org

South African Artist | Samson Mnisi






Johannesburg to New York - Curated by Kimberli E. Gant
January 29 – May 17, 2009

Johannesburg to New York is the first retrospective of the collaborative work between South African artist Samson Mnisi and New York artist Cannon Hersey. Combining their various perspectives on the changing cultural dynamics of South Africa and its emergence onto the world stage, these artists have created mixed media imagery that is socially conscious while also being visually stimulating. Mnisi incorporates ancient Zulu symbolism and rituals with Hersey's captivating photography to give viewers insider and outsider perspectives on contemporary South African societies.

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, JANUARY 29, 2009 7-9pm

Please join us for the first viewing of Johannesburg to New York with featured artists Cannon Hersey and Samson Mnisi. The reception will include live music by DJ Eddie Ed, South African cuisine from Brooklyn's own Madiba restaurant and a selection of South African wines. Come and enjoy a bit of South Africa in your own neighborhood.



American Artist | Cannon Hershey









ARTIST TALK
Thursday, FEBRUARY 5, 2009 6:30-8pm

Suggested donation of $4 Both Sampson Mnisi and Cannon Hersey will lead a tour and discussion about their historical collaboration to visitors to give an in-depth understanding of the work. The artists will present examples of previous work and how they created the light boxes. Curator, Kimberli Gant, will also discuss the work’s thematic principles and how she organized the exhibition together.

PANEL DISCUSSION – THE EVOLUTION OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN ART
Saturday, FEBRUARY 14, 2009 2-3:30pm National Black Fine Art Show 7 West 34th Street (34th St & 5th Ave) RSVP: pb@mocada.org

Bringing together some of the foremost academics/collectors/artists throughout New York City to discuss the current state of contemporary art in South Africa. This is an opportunity for audiences to broaden their understanding of what contemporary art means in both a Western and non-Western context. This event will coincide with the National Black Fine Art Show (NBFAS). Celebrating 13 years, it is the largest art fair in New York dedicated to the African Diaspora, and draws 1,000+ individuals each year.

Panelists include: Lisa Binder - Curator, Museum of African Art Canon Hersey – MoCADA Exhibiting Artist Samson Mnisi – MoCADA Exhibiting Artist Dr. Gary Van Wyck - Founder & Director, Axis Gallery

SOUTH AFRICAN FREEDOM DAY FESTIVAL

Saturday, MAY 2, 2009 1-6pm Cuyler Gore Park, Brooklyn, NY (one block from MoCADA) In an effort to celebrate the 15th anniversary South Africa’s first Black president and coinciding with the United States’ first election of a Black president, MoCADA will partner with the Museum of African Art to host Brooklyn’s first South African Freedom Day celebration. Held the first weekend of May 2009, the event will feature live music, dance performances, art vendors, and the film Come Back, Africa, featuring the late, iconic performer, Mariam Makeba. Come join us for the incredible event!


For more information contact: MoCADA | www.mocada.org

Bonhams | Africa Now: Contemporary African Art

Africa Now: Contemporary African Art
Wednesday 8 April 2009
New Bond Street

Entries now invited for our auction of Africa Now: Contemporary African Art


Georges Lilanga di Nyama | Tanzania



Georges Lilanga di Nyama (Tanzanian, 1934-2005) Huyu bwana ame bebwa a napelewa osptali, acrylic on canvas (detail)



Estimate: £3,000 - 5,000



William Kentridge | South African






William Joseph Kentridge (South African, born 1955) Refuge in the library, oil on canvas


Estimate: £100,000 - 150,000


To arrange a free and confidential auction valuation or for further advice on buying or selling at auction, please contact:

Hannah O'Leary
travel@bonhams.com
+44 (0) 20 7468 8213

We are currently consigning works for our April 2009 auction. The sale will include the very best of post-war and contemporary art from across the African continent in various media including painting, sculpture, and drawing. Of particular interest are works by artists including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, George Afedzi Hughes, Jimoh Buraimoh, William Kentridge, Romauld Hazoumé, Ben Enwonwu, Georges Lilanga, Dumile Feni and Bruce Onobrakepeya, among many others.

Africa Now: Contemporary African Art | Bonhams, London

Gold Diggers | George Afedzi Hughes

Title: Gold Digger
Artist: George Afedzi Hughes
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 30inches x 24inches
Date: 2009

Gold Digger | No Guts, No Glory
Author: Joe Pollitt

On a cold late January afternoon I became, once again, inspired by contemporary African art and by the same artist that always inspires me, George Kwesi Afedzi Hughes. We had been furiously exchanging passionate words on issues of humanity and the rights of passage and then George drops a bombshell. I opened my email and gasped, “Gold Digger” – This will be the painting that changes everything. The simple tongue-in-cheek look at the hypocritical international art market; this painting drives a wedge straight through the heart of the Establishment. The British Art World – The marketplace of people, ideas and paint; where powerful expressions from the souls of individuals are exchanged for notes of paper. A perverse place in the world were names like Hirst, Herring, Basquiat and Warhol are bought and sold like slaves but their success is envied when it should be despised. When thinking on this subject I cast my mind back to the comments made in the bi-centenary of the abolition of slavery a few years ago. The words were uttered by a marginal proportion of the disengaged youth of Nigeria, Ghana and along the West Coast of Africa. I watched, as a reporter frowned in disbelief, when a few kids spoke out and begged the question, “Why couldn’t you have taken us? We, your brothers and sisters, you left us here! Here in this most brutal of lands of plenty with no chances but for the lucky few. Where cholera, malaria and tropical diseases are rampant; why did you not take us?”

The innocence of youth, call it what you like but know only this, be careful what you wish for. The grass is not always greener on the other side.

George places the focus once again on the authentic use of paint and drives audiences back into a pleasant yet often uncomfortable relationship with art and the artist. As an individual George is best described as infectious, his enthusiasm for his subject is unsurpassed, rarely have I met an artist so dedicated to his craft. His passion for the palette and knowledge of oils and his creation of movement is staggering. On close examination the work could be read as a triptych. The top third of the work has that drunken frustration of Francis Bacon with the strange unorthodox use of the palette, mixing white, red, grey and blue to make pinks, light greys and purples. Seemingly careless rather than carefree, George applies the mixed oils to the canvas creating upside down shadows, dark corridors of sinister loss and deceit around the eyes and brown stained rotten decaying teeth. The head is shaped as a claw-like creature, reminiscent of a sickly JCB reeking of death and grasping at everything it sees and touches. The work resonates. There is no misunderstanding, no confusion of what George’s motivations are when he painted this work: to attack those exploiting his fellow Ghanaians whether internal or external. The Ashanti Goldmines were created and the Government of Ghana were the majority share holders. Recently, they decided to sell 25 % of their share. This was the largest floatation ever organised by any gold mining company. The coordinating and advisory team alone numbered over 200 people. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and Ghana Exchange making a few greedy men filthy rich and a country still singing for its supper. These are the ironies of life and Capitalism working at its worst. The rich get richer and the poor stay put. The concern of many inside and outside of Ghana is the new found oil reserves just off the coastline. It is reported to be the largest exploration find in modern history. Is this the shape of things to come? Do the people of Ghana have to drink from this poisoned chalice? Greater value must be placed on the life of an African in Africa and abroad and the continent must begin to recognise that the wealth of Africa is not in its gold, oil and cocoa but more in those like George and their use of oil. Their Art is priceless!

Then onto the second part of this triptych and moving into the area of symbolism and the prominent red coat of the British Army. It is within this section that George mirrors the sentiments of many in Ghana. The tragic situation in which post colonial Britain and their partners are still eking out a grand living from Ghana. Where is their Independence? The country that was first to be liberated from colonialism: the first Independent country of Africa – a country that had Kwame Nkrumah as the first black President of Africa over 50 years ago. Kwame Nkrumah was educated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania gained power in Ghana in 1957, he was known as “Osaygefa”, “Redeemer”, in the Twi language. One cannot help but to make a comparison in this extraordinary time of change seen around the world with the inauguration of the first black President of the United States. Will Barrack Obama’s fate parallel that of Kwame’s over five decades earlier? Similar to the complicated issues of politics this painting is basic yet complex, multi-layered and there are many concerns being raised within the work; that of the functionality of contemporary African art; art as politics or political art in a time of such interest in politics? What should a work of an artist be? An artist by sheer nature is initially an observer but most importantly a humanitarian, ceasing every chance to make their mark and say their piece; tackling injustice with the brush, rather than the hard-butt of a gun.

The last phase of the triptych is a reflection of the land itself. Coloured orange, brown, green with hints of blue. Scratched into the multi-coloured land are the names of the towns, cities and tribes that are affected by this strange desire for Africa’s riches with greed and treachery coming from all sides. As we are all acutely aware the world is experiencing a financial crisis with its fashionable sound-bite phrase that has been echoing around the world for the past 3 months, “the credit crunch” – this catchphrase could have been created by a copywriter for Mars or Cadburys, the Chocolate Companies with child poverty behind their sweetness. Like so many delicious things in our world where there is pleasure there is pain. The crop is harvested by the sold children of the poorer nations of the region. Those of Mali, Burkina Faso and the Republic of Togo – families who are forced into selling their children to the highest bidder thinking their child will soon send money home from their labour. More often than not they never receive a penny and the cocoa farmer profits, while the multinationals turn a blind eye and this we call Free Trade. Where there is money to be made there is wall-to-wall exploitation. Let us not forget African leaders are the facilitators of this exploitation and are as guilty as those exploiting, one can not work without the other. George has made his position clear in this work by signing his name on the ground. Not amongst the names of those affected, nor in the symbolic military redcoat and nor in the corpse head of the beast within; he places his name on the lower right part of the canvas where the land meet the sky. There you’ll find the word, “Hughes” positioned quietly in black.

There are many ways to interpret this dynamic painting. One can read it as a musical score or the deep sounds that are made from an Ashanti war drum, made of human skin, with the top notes in the air mimicking the sickly colours omnipresent and the base notes hammering the surface of the ground with the reds, oranges and greens. The work vibrates like a large black Ghanaian funeral drum. Held by 3 to 4 men and played with thick batons by men of extreme power and muscle. The use of colour in this work, red juxtaposed by the poisonous purple behind, reads like a majestic drum played solely for Nanas and Kings - a final call to action. This work is brave, ambitious and pulls no punches. It raises important debate about the function of art and the role of the artist.

Something extraordinary and groundbreaking is happening; a great leap of faith, a step in the right direction, away from the norm. This shift in thought and thinking can only serve for the greater good. Regrettably, this change, my cause a chink in the Establishment’s armour but any movement in that direction should be welcomed. Modification of any kind has its victims. In a bold and brave move on the part of the auctioneer, Giles Peppiatt, the long Established London Auction House of Bonhams has generously agreed to celebrate and honour the artists of Africa. The sale is entitled Africa Now! This work, “Gold Digger” by George Kwesi Afedzi Hughes is amongst numerous works of art that can be seen, spoken and written about but most importantly, appreciated, in April Sale 2009 – Africa Now!


Sources:
*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6764549.stm
*http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/background.html
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Goldfields_Corporation
*http://www.bonhams.com



For those interested about Africa Now! please contact: Giles Peppiatt MRICS
Director, Bonhams | giles.peppiatt@bonhams.com