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".


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