Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art | |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Location |
|
| Opened | Center for African Art and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York |
| Via |
|
| Closed | Center for the Fine Arts, Miami |
| Exhibited | About 133 works from 15 African countries in the New York presentation; approximately 130 objects in later tours; more than 70 works in the Miami presentation |
| Curator | Susan Vogel |
| Organiser | Center for African Art, New York |
| Funder |
|
| Notes | |
Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art was a travelling exhibition and accompanying exhibition catalogue devoted to twentieth-century artistic production in sub-Saharan Africa. Curated by Susan Vogel for the Center for African Art in New York, it opened in 1991 at the Center for African Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The New York presentation comprised about 133 works from 15 African countries. Vogel divided the material into five curatorial categories: Traditional Art, New Functional Art, Urban Art, International Art, and Extinct Art. The last category was identified in later touring materials as Past in the Present.
After opening in New York in May 1991, the exhibition travelled to the University Art Museum in Berkeley, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Center for the Fine Arts in Miami. The Center for African Art and Prestel published a 296-page catalogue edited by Vogel with assistance from Ima Ebong. Its contributors were Walter E. A. van Beek, Donald John Cosentino, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Thomas McEvilley, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Ebong.
The exhibition included works by academically trained artists, self-taught urban painters, photographers, sculptors, coffin makers, sign painters, ceramicists, and producers of ritual and functional objects. The artists represented included Sunday Jack Akpan, Kane Kwei, Chéri Samba, Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, Moké, Sokari Douglas Camp, Magdalena Odundo, Ouattara Watts, Trigo Piula, Iba N'Diaye, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, and Kivuthi Mbuno. Contemporary reviews and later assessments addressed the exhibition's scope and curatorial approach, including its classification of the works and the presentation of objects across different institutional settings.
Susan Vogel established the Center for African Art in 1984 and was serving as its executive director when she developed Africa Explores. [5] [6] John Picton observed that the Center had produced twelve exhibitions with related publications by 1991, a record he considered unmatched at the time by any other museum specialising in African art. In his account, some earlier Center exhibitions followed established approaches to African art scholarship, whereas later projects examined subjects such as distinctions between art and artefact, portraiture in African visual traditions, and sixteenth-century interactions between Africa and Europe. Picton distinguished Africa Explores from those projects because it surveyed a broad range of visual production in contemporary Africa rather than concentrating primarily on sculpture derived from pre-colonial traditions. [5]
Michael Brenson of The New York Times described the exhibition as a pioneering presentation across two museums and identified Vogel as its organiser. He also associated it with the Center's practice of inviting personal responses from visitors while encouraging them to examine their assumptions about African art. According to Brenson, both the institution and the exhibition concentrated on sub-Saharan Africa. [6] Picton cautioned that discussions of African art often treated Africa as a unified category, although the continent's varied regions and histories made the term "African art" difficult to apply without qualification. [7] He further argued that defining African art history primarily through local sub-Saharan traditions excluded ancient Egypt, classical North Africa, Berber and Arab cultures in the north, the Christian arts of Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, and twentieth-century developments elsewhere on the continent. [8]
Africa Explores followed several late twentieth-century exhibitions that had introduced contemporary African and other non-Western artists into European and American institutions. [6] [9] Brenson situated it after the 1989 Paris exhibition Magiciens de la terre , which presented contemporary art from several regions, and the Studio Museum in Harlem's 1990 exhibition Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition, featuring nine painters and sculptors from six countries. [6] Kay Larson similarly discussed Africa Explores in relation to those exhibitions, describing Magiciens de la terre as a search for artists in geographically distant settings and the Studio Museum exhibition as a presentation of nine Africans already participating in the international art world. [9] Brenson noted that Sunday Jack Akpan, Kane Kwei, and Chéri Samba had also been included in Magiciens de la terre, but considered their work easier to interpret within the framework of Africa Explores. [6]
During the Miami presentation, Vogel said that preparation had involved two years of viewing art and speaking with artists. [10] According to an article in Christian Science Monitor , she intended to provide greater context for little-known contemporary African works and to present art as an active component of African social life. [4] The article stated that the exhibition challenged two common ideas about twentieth-century Africa: that traditional African art represented a culture that had ceased to exist and that modern African art merely imitated Western models. [4] A preview of the Carnegie Museum of Art presentation repeated those propositions and identified Vogel as both curator and executive director of the Center for African Art, from which the travelling exhibition originated. [11] Deborah P. Work of Sun Sentinel reported that the exhibition also challenged the tendency to reduce African art to masks, carvings, and ceremonial objects. She cited Center for the Fine Arts curator Lynn Anderson's observation that African art, like art in other societies, had continued to change. [10]
The exhibition opened simultaneously at the Center for African Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art on 16 May 1991. [1] Writing in African Arts, Jack Flam gave the Center's dates as 16 May to 31 December 1991 and the New Museum's dates as 16 May to 18 August 1991. [1] Larson likewise reported 18 August as the New Museum's closing date and 31 December as the Center for African Art's. [2] The Christian Science Monitor, however, stated that the New Museum display continued until 11 August and the Center's until 31 December. [4] Wahlman listed the Center for African Art presentation as remaining open through 5 January 1992, before the exhibition began its national tour. [3]
According to Flam, the 133 objects shown in New York were distributed in approximately equal numbers between the two museums. [1] He considered this division consistent with the exhibition's examination of connections between modern and traditional African art, because comparable objects were displayed in both a contemporary-art institution and a museum associated primarily with traditional African material. [1] Brenson viewed the two installations as reflections of one another rather than simply complementary displays. He noted that each opened with Sunday Jack Akpan's realistic commemorative sculptures from Nigeria and Ghanaian artist Kane Kwei's coffins shaped as a plant, hen, onion, and Mercedes-Benz. [6] Flam also identified Kwei's coffins as some of the first objects encountered at both New York locations. [1]
Displaying related kinds of objects in the two institutions affected how some of them were perceived. [1] [9] Flam contrasted the Center for African Art's townhouse, which he described as refined and contemplative, with the New Museum's loft-like galleries, whose atmosphere he considered more active and noisy. In his account, Kwei's onion and Mercedes-Benz coffins acquired what he described as an almost classical and metaphorical character at the Center, whereas the cocoa-pod, Pan Am-clipper, and hen coffins evoked Pop art at the New Museum. He similarly found that factory-made plastic dolls used as Yoruba ibeji substitutes appeared witty and sophisticated at the New Museum but coarse in the Center's setting. [1] Larson considered the Center's small, dim, and warm townhouse an unusual environment for contemporary African art, while the New Museum's larger and less visually prescriptive galleries allowed the individual works greater independence. [9] Brenson reached a different conclusion, finding the Center installation more intelligible because its smaller rooms helped define the curatorial categories. In his view, the New Museum weakened distinctions among the works by devoting its largest space to art compatible with established Western galleries and museums. [6]
After the New York presentation ended, the part shown at the New Museum was scheduled to appear at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, California, from 2 October to 29 December 1991. [4] Wahlman likewise reported that the New Museum selection would remain in Berkeley until 29 December before rejoining the other part of the exhibition. [12] Flam stated that the New Museum objects reached the University Art Museum in October 1991 and that the two sections were subsequently reunited for the national tour. [13] Wahlman's itinerary placed the reunited exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art from 9 February to 5 April 1992; the Saint Louis Art Museum from 15 May to 5 July 1992; the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte from 8 August to 11 October 1992; the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh from 7 November 1992 to 10 January 1993; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from 6 February to 4 April 1993. [3] The Christian Science Monitor published the same sequence and dates, naming the Charlotte institution as the Mint Museum of Charlotte, North Carolina. [4]
The Carnegie Museum of Art displayed the exhibition from 7 November 1992 until 10 January 1993. A preview in the New Pittsburgh Courier reported that this presentation contained about 130 objects, most of them lent by private collections in several countries. [11] At the St. Louis Art Museum, the exhibition continued through 5 July 1992. [14] Its final Miami presentation remained at the Center for the Fine Arts through 18 July 1993. Work stated that this installation contained more than 70 paintings, ceramics, photographs, and sculptures by contemporary artists. [10]
Duffy identified the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Forbes Foundation, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, the Anne S. Richardson Fund, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as financial supporters of the exhibition. He added that Anheuser-Busch Companies partly funded the Saint Louis presentation. [14] Flam reported that the Center for African Art organised a symposium on 19 and 20 October 1991. During the two-day event, African artists and critics considered whether contemporary African art involved circumstances not fully understood by Western audiences and discussed their interest in participating in the international art world. [13] Public events associated with the Miami exhibition included an African Cultural Arts Family Festival; Robert Farris Thompson's lecture, "Face of the Gods: The Black Atlantic Visual Tradition", on 19 June; tours titled "Exploring Africa in South Florida", conducted on 1 and 8 July by the Kuumba Artists Association of Florida; and family workshops in which children viewed masks in the exhibition before making masks and headdresses. [10]
A catalogue bearing the exhibition's title was published in 1991 by the Center for African Art in New York and Prestel in Munich. [5] [3] Picton described the publication as comprising 296 pages and 400 illustrations, 228 of which were in colour. [5] Olu Oguibe likewise gave its length as 296 pages but itemised 172 black-and-white and 228 colour illustrations, along with a bibliography and index. He named teNeues as the distributor in North America. [15] Susan Vogel received the principal credit for the catalogue, with Ima Ebong identified as her assistant and Walter E. A. van Beek, Donald John Cosentino, Ima Ebong, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Thomas McEvilley, and V. Y. Mudimbe listed as contributors. [5] [13] Wahlman described the publication as visually impressive but conceptually difficult and recommended reading it before viewing the exhibition. [3] She considered Vogel's introductory comments and chapters informative because they explained the curatorial decisions behind the project. [3]
Francesco Pellizzi described the volume as visually elaborate and considered its explanations more effective than the installation in clarifying and justifying the exhibition's selections. He nevertheless argued that it should have provided full biographies and bibliographies for every artist, a checklist of reproduced works, technical information, maps, and charts showing geographical distribution. [16] Sidney Littlefield Kasfir later described Africa Explores as useful for teaching because it organised major debates thematically and incorporated specialist essays whose positions did not always correspond with the principal text. [17]
Vogel divided the exhibition and catalogue into five groupings, which she described as strains within twentieth-century African art. [1] These were Traditional Art, New Functional Art, Urban Art, International Art, and Extinct Art. [6] [3] [18] In touring documents and later local coverage, Extinct Art was also labelled past-in-the-present art. [11] [10] Pellizzi recorded the catalogue's full section headings as "Traditional Art: Elastic Continuum", "New Functional Art: Future Traditions", "Urban Art: Art of the Here and Now", "International Art: The Official Story", and "Extinct Art: Inspiration and Burden". [19]
Rather than defining "art" through a fixed Western aesthetic standard, Vogel used the term as a practical category. [20] Claudie Haxaire interpreted the project as an attempt to invert a Western viewpoint by examining how African societies adopted manufactured objects and technologies for their own purposes. [21] She wrote that Vogel applied the concept of Occidentalism to African appropriations of Western objects, paralleling the term Primitivism as applied to Western appropriations of African art. [21] Haxaire also stated that Vogel, acting on recommendations from African colleagues, placed meaning and content on at least the same level as form and aesthetic judgement. [21] Work reported Vogel's position that African artists and audiences gave primary importance to content and generally expected an artwork to convey a narrative or message. [10]
Traditional Art encompassed continuing artistic practices transmitted over time, commonly produced in villages by artists trained through apprenticeship for members of their own community or ethnic group. [18] [1] [11] Objects assigned to this division included Dogon dance masks, Guro masks, al-Barak dance headdresses, Fante cloth banners, Yoruba ibeji-related pieces, Makonde masks, Bamana chi wara headdresses, ceremonial masks, dance headdresses, and cult figures. [3] [1] [11] [14] Haxaire explained that Vogel did not treat these traditions as unchanged remnants but as continuing elements of village life. In her account, the category demonstrated movement from sacred towards secular and entertainment-related functions without severing connections with earlier practices. [21]
New Functional Art referred to objects that maintained established values while using unfamiliar forms or materials. [18] [1] [11] Examples included Kane Kwei's figurative coffins, Sunday Jack Akpan's cement figures, Ode-lay costumes and masks, cement funerary sculptures, and other commissioned objects created for funerals, rituals, Christian or syncretic observances, and communal festivals. [3] [22] [14] Haxaire characterised producers in this category as frequently being tradespeople, including carpenters and masons, who responded to emerging social aspirations by producing objects suited to them. [22] The New Pittsburgh Courier explained that New Functional works could enter the Traditional category if their production continued into the following generation. [11] Reporting on the Miami presentation, Work gave the same definition, stating that continued production by a later generation could transform New Functional art into traditional art. [10]
Urban Art encompassed commercially oriented and topical works derived from sign painting, commercial imagery, business signs, posters, photography, and popular painting. [6] [1] [18] Its practitioners included photographers, glass painters, sign painters, and urban painters such as Chéri Samba, Moké, and Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu. [3] [6] [10] Haxaire described it as an art of immediate urban experience, emerging in the workshops of self-taught sign painters and addressing daily conditions in large cities. [22] She divided it into commercial production, including signs and decoration for shops or vehicles, and objects intended primarily for visual appreciation. [23] Brenson suggested that this category might be particularly accessible to New York audiences because of its connections with signs and commercial graphics, as well as its treatment of political issues in societies where dissent could result in punishment. [6]
International Art consisted of work by artists with academic training who generally lived in cities, participated in museum or gallery exhibitions, and addressed audiences beyond immediate ritual and commercial settings. [18] [6] [1] Sokari Douglas Camp, Iba N'Diaye, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Trigo Piula, Magdalena Odundo, and Ouattara Watts were among the artists assigned to this category because of their formal education, international connections, or modernist orientation. [6] [24] [25] [26] Haxaire explained that Vogel selected "International" rather than "contemporary" because all five divisions contained contemporary objects, whereas academically trained painters and sculptors were distinguished by their intended international audience. Haxaire also noted that many artists in this group expected their work to perform social, political, or educational functions. [27]
Extinct Art encompassed older traditional forms that were no longer produced or had ceased to perform their original functions but continued through museums, national emblems, reproductions, currency, posters, tourist commodities, and public commemoration. [18] [1] [4] [28] Kota and Fang reliquary figures, Benin plaques, Grebo masks, Kongo power figures, and other widely collected examples of historical African art appeared in this section. [1] [12] [14] Haxaire interpreted the category as both a source of inspiration and a burden, particularly because objects preserved mainly in collections outside Africa continued to operate within African public life as national symbols and expressions of collective ideas. [28] Several reviewers discussed Cosentino's catalogue essay on Afrokitsch in connection with this division. [9] [29] [28]
Across the two New York venues, Africa Explores presented 133 objects representing 15 countries. [6] [1] [9] Brenson noted the range of the selection, which included photography, Magdalena Odundo's ceramics, Ouattara's paintings related to Neo-expressionism, surviving and discontinued tribal traditions, glass pictures, kinetic sculpture by Sokari Douglas Camp, paintings by Iba N'Diaye, and tableaux by Kivuthi Mbuno. [6] Larson likewise recorded the total of 133 works from fifteen countries and argued that Vogel had to address Western attitudes that located the most valued African art within the Extinct category. [9] The New Pittsburgh Courier described the Carnegie presentation as a group of about 130 objects, including a Mercedes-Benz coffin, factory-moulded dolls in red and green plastic, and a wooden carving of a laptop computer. [11] According to Work, the Miami installation contained more than 70 contemporary sculptures, paintings, photographs, and ceramics. [10]
At both New York museums, the opening displays featured Sunday Jack Akpan and Kane Kwei. [6] [1] Brenson described Akpan's full-scale painted cement images of a chief and police officer as memorial figures produced partly by casting cement inside moulds excavated in the ground. He associated their frontal presentation with earlier African sculpture and explained that their commemorative function was to preserve the presence of the dead. Their realism and detailed treatment of footwear, dress, and colour, however, distinguished them from older sculptural traditions. [6] Pellizzi recounted initially mistaking a life-sized, brightly painted uniformed figure near the entrance for an actual guard because of the gallery's low lighting. After identifying its maker as the Nigerian monument sculptor S. J. Akpan, he wrote that the catalogue discouraged interpreting the figure through Western post-Duchampian approaches to kitsch. [30]
Several reviews treated Kane Kwei's coffins as representative works within New Functional Art. [6] [1] [4] [14] Brenson listed coffins resembling a plant, hen, onion, and Mercedes-Benz, describing them as combinations of different sources without rigid separation. [6] The Christian Science Monitor reported that Kwei, working near Accra in Ghana, produced coffins whose forms referred to the occupations or aspirations of those being buried, including fish, boats, onions, cocoa pods, aeroplanes, and a Mercedes-Benz. [4] Duffy discussed smaller-scale examples in the shapes of a chicken, onion, and Mercedes-Benz, noting that their function remained funerary while their designs allowed relatives to communicate information about the deceased. [14] Haxaire observed that Western viewers often responded to such objects because of their surreal appearance, whereas within their intended settings they represented the incorporation of recognisable everyday forms into funerary rites without necessarily implying irony. [22]
Carved figures, manufactured plastic dolls, and photographs were used to illustrate Yoruba ibeji practices. [31] [4] [11] [14] The Christian Science Monitor explained that carved figures were traditionally used by Yoruba families to honour deceased twins, while later twentieth-century forms could be made from leather, fabric, pigment, metal, moulded plastic, and other materials. [4] According to the New Pittsburgh Courier, wooden Yoruba ere ibeji had in some instances been replaced by locally manufactured dolls or photographs, which received the same offerings and sacrifices previously directed to carved figures. [11] Duffy compared early twentieth-century ere ibeji incorporating leather, beads, wood, and cowrie shells with stamped plastic dolls of young girls adopted for the same ritual functions during the middle of the century. [14] Maude S. Wahlman stated that displaying plastic and wooden ibeji figures together allowed the exhibition to demonstrate changes in an artefact's form while its use continued. She considered Marilyn Houlberg's photograph of a mother carrying a child on her back and a plastic doll at the front of her dress a clearer illustration of this functional development. [12]
Works associated with continuing or historically grounded traditions included Dogon, Guro, Makonde, and Grebo masks; Bamana chi wara and al-Barak dance headdresses; Baga forms; Fante banners; Benin plaques; Kota and Fang reliquary figures; and Kongo power figures. [3] [1] [14] [32] Haxaire stated that the catalogue presented Guro and Makonde works as instances in which established forms and purposes were retained while being redirected towards new uses. By contrast, Baga Al-Barak, Mami Wata practices, and ibeji substitutions illustrated new forms continuing older functions. [32] She also wrote that the catalogue identified naturalistic representation, vivid colour, formal complexity, greater individualisation, material objects, and attention to the visible world as characteristics of twentieth-century styles. Walter van Beek's contribution examined a Dogon dama mask festival and the ways it had changed since Marcel Griaule's canonical accounts. [22] Picton summarised van Beek's conclusion as an argument that the Dogon expanded the dama by incorporating additional elements rather than eliminating the ritual. [33]
Painters associated with Zairean popular art and sign-painting practices represented the Urban Art category. [6] [27] [10] Work wrote that Moké depicted urban middle-class life in Zaire with an optimistic outlook despite corruption and poor urban conditions. Orphaned as a child, he reportedly earned money shining shoes in Kinshasa before encountering paintings sold in a public square and establishing himself as an artist. Work described Photographing a Veteran as showing relatives and villagers gathered around an elderly, decorated veteran posing for a photograph. His wife watches, while his clothing combines a Western suit jacket and medals with trousers and sandals associated with village dress. [10] Brenson interpreted some of Moké's apparently laudatory paintings of Mobutu Sese Seko as potentially conveying an opposing wish to consign the ruler to the past. [6]
Historical episodes from Zaire appeared in paintings by Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu. [6] [10] [2] The Christian Science Monitor reported that he painted the country's history, from the period before colonisation to contemporary events, on flour sacks and added written explanations of the scenes. [4] Brenson noted Tshibumba's disappearance in the early 1980s and described his images of historical subjects, including Patrice Lumumba, as direct in meaning and executed in a concise popular style. [6] Work interpreted Colonie Belge as an image of black police officers subjecting African detainees to violence and degradation. [10] She described La Mort Historique de Lumumba as an account of Patrice Lumumba's life and death intended to produce an emotional response. [10]
Reviewers gave considerable attention to Chéri Samba and his placement within Urban Art. [6] [1] [2] [26] Flam identified him as a Zairian painter whose explicit political allegories had brought him international recognition. [1] Brenson described Samba as a humorous and didactic artist whose combinations of text and image addressed AIDS, consumerism, and human behaviour through conventions associated with Kinshasa's commercial art. He distinguished Samba's use of language from Western Conceptual art, arguing that written lettering in Kinshasa could signify sophistication more strongly than pictorial imagery. Brenson interpreted Paris Is Clean as a nocturnal scene near the Eiffel Tower in which Senegalese workers remove dog waste, commenting on both affluent Parisians' lack of awareness and the labour of Senegalese people behind the city's appearance. [6] Work similarly described Samba as a teacher and moral commentator. She described La Seduction as an image of the African siren Mami Wata in which Samba portrays himself facing away from her while reading the Bible. [10]
The exhibition situated Trigo Piula between locally grounded subject matter and international reference points. [6] [14] [10] Brenson described Materna as combining the image of a white woman taken from a Dutch milk container with a sculptural image of an African mother and distressed child, surrounded by condensed-milk tins and candles. [6] Work interpreted the painting as a response to a contemporary Congolese issue and described the black nursing mother as wearing condensed-milk cans around her neck while bearing a white face and blond hair. [10] In her account, the work equated feeding an infant with canned milk with adopting the thinking of a white woman. [10] Duffy discussed Piula's Ta Tele, in which a television replaces the glass or mirror traditionally embedded in a power figure. Its several screens display the Eiffel Tower, a football match, the earth, and a kissing couple. [14] Work interpreted Ta Tele as a critique of consumerism in Congo, comparing television's introduction of aspirational images of automobiles, alcohol, and expensive food into viewers' minds with witchcraft. [10] Picton also examined Tatele, explaining that its television-bearing healing figure placed television audiences in a role comparable to that of patients seeking assistance from a healer. [33]
Several critics discussed Sokari Douglas Camp's welded-metal sculptures. [6] [24] [9] [26] Flam wrote that her kinetic sculptures occupied a prominent position in a large New Museum gallery and highlighted a ceremonial bed intended for a corpse and the moving oars of her welded-metal Festival Boat. [24] Brenson associated two of her kinetic pieces with family recollection and African funerary practice, comparing the sounds created by moving oars and striking feet with vocal chanting. [6] Larson identified Douglas Camp's metal boat, powered by unseen rowers and directed by a rotating and stamping shaman figure, as the work she found most visually arresting in the downtown display. [9] Work identified the welded-metal Church Ede as one of the comparatively few works in the exhibition made by a professional woman artist. [10]
Reviewers discussed Magdalena Odundo's ceramics as formally abstract modern works that retained references to African design. [6] [9] [26] Brenson identified Odundo as a Kenyan artist resident in London and described her finished vessels as resembling idols. [6] Larson wrote that the polished surfaces of her pottery retained an indirect trace of African design. [9] Pellizzi argued that, although the works initially appeared to be pots, Odundo had moved the idea of a container towards abstraction to the extent that they resisted simple definition. He regarded her work, together with that of Douglas Camp and Samba, as evidence that African artists were producing modern art rather than only works contemporary in date. [26]
The exhibition's modernist and International Art range also included Iba N'Diaye, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Ouattara Watts, and Kivuthi Mbuno. [6] [14] [25] [10] Brenson described N'Diaye as a Senegalese painter whose assertion that African artists should be free to adopt any artistic direction had historical significance. [6] Duffy explained that Juan de Pareja Menaced by Dogs adapted Velázquez's portrait of his assistant by introducing threatening animals as symbolic elements. [14] Work discussed Malangatana's E Onde Esta A Minha Mae, Os Meus Irmaos, E Todos Os Outros as an example of International Art addressing political and social conditions, connecting it with the effects of rebel violence during Mozambique's sixteen-year civil war. [10] Larson identified Ouattara as an Ivory Coast-born painter educated in Paris and living in New York, whose works incorporated Egyptian-influenced primitivist qualities. [25] Brenson wrote that Mbuno, a Kenyan formerly employed as a safari cook, produced tableaux populated by predatory prehistoric human figures. [6]
Both the exhibition and catalogue treated photography as an artistic medium. [3] [6] [1] Wahlman supported its inclusion and argued that African photographers had developed distinctive practices despite lacking some resources considered standard in the West. She noted Vogel's discussion of devices such as paired images and the rhythmic occupation of pictorial space. [3] Brenson described the photographic portraits as conveying the sitters' intention to have themselves recorded. [6] Flam placed photography within Urban Art alongside posters and related ephemeral material. [1]
Friedel later listed participating artists as Ajani, Sunday Jack Akpan, Kojo Anokye, Fode Camara, Sokari Douglas Camp, Dame Gueye, Kweku Kakanu, Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, Koffi Kouakou, Kane Kwei, Albert Lubaki, Gora M'Bengue, Kivuthi Mbuno, Middle Art, Moké, Mode Muntu, Iba N'Diaye, S. T. Ngui, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, Nsedu, Tshyela Ntendu, Magdalena Odundo, Ouattara Watts, Trigo Piula, S. Rufisque, Chéri Samba, Sim Simaro, and Samba Sylla. [34]
In The New York Times, Michael Brenson argued that the implications of the exhibition were more radical than its initial appearance suggested. He noted that many elements might initially seem familiar: realistic figures, objects connected with tribal practices, paintings invoking Velázquez and Jasper Johns, and small works combining text with images. Beyond those features, he regarded the exhibition as revealing and considered its catalogue a challenge to conventional understandings of African art. Brenson interpreted the title as expressing Vogel's effort to present African artists as people who investigated and appropriated rather than as passive subjects investigated and appropriated by others. He also considered the absence of any category of object excluded in principle one of the project's defining characteristics. In his conclusion, he predicted that the exhibition would alter how contemporary African art was understood in New York. [6]
Kay Larson's review in New York magazine, titled "Continental Divide", described the exhibition as disorderly but regarded the catalogue as a more substantial record. She described the book as providing Euro-American readers with a rapid accumulation of unfamiliar information and acknowledged that function as valuable. Larson argued that, apart from televised images of famine and refugees, Africa remained poorly represented in Euro-American consciousness. She situated Africa Explores across the division between indigenous and externally oriented art represented by the earlier Magiciens de la terre and Studio Museum exhibitions. [9] Larson observed that the labels revealed how many works had come from museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. She cited Akpan's chief, Kwei's coffins, Fante appliqué flags, and Zairean paintings lent from Bogumil Jewsiewicki's collection as examples of objects already authorised through Western systems of collecting. In her view, Vogel's categories provided little analytical direction beyond facilitating the curator's organisational task. Larson concluded that the exhibition had only begun the theoretical reconsideration required to place contemporary non-Western art within Western systems of connoisseurship, although she described the attempt as idealistic and courageous. [2]
The Christian Science Monitor described Africa Explores as a landmark exhibition shared by the Center for African Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Its article credited Vogel with placing little-known contemporary African work within a broader context. According to the report, the selection set aside Western judgements and academic standards of authenticity or quality in favour of objects commonly encountered in African markets and workshops. It identified New Functional objects, particularly Kwei's coffins, as among the exhibition's most visually prominent and popular works. The article also referred to a gallery label stating that Urban paintings generally sold for $1.50 to $5.00 and portraits for as much as $10.00, requiring painters to complete approximately one work each day to earn a living. It concluded that the exhibition presented African artists as developing new modes of expression rather than simply reproducing Western aesthetics. [4]
Reviewing the Saint Louis Art Museum installation for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Robert W. Duffy described the exhibition as revelatory. He noted that traditional African art had shaped Western modernism through both its imagery and its influence on artistic attitudes and aesthetic thought. In his account, Africa Explores documented a related, though not equivalent, development in which African artists moved beyond inherited ceremonial and patrimonial forms. Duffy used Kota reliquary figures and Zairean power figures to discuss Extinct Art, attributing to them qualities of authority, intensity, fear, and magical force. He considered the ere ibeji display a clear demonstration of changing form alongside continuing function. New Functionalism, which he described as colourful, humorous, and at times irreverent, was in his view the exhibition's most immediately popular section. Duffy concluded that the presentation corresponded with the scale of the project's aims, while stating that he would have preferred a larger selection. [14]
A preview in the New Pittsburgh Courier stated that the Carnegie Museum of Art presentation depicted modern African culture as a convergence of visual, historical, and intellectual elements. Although acknowledging Western contact as an important twentieth-century influence, the article argued that Western ideas and images formed only one part of a broader matrix of African philosophies and styles. It defined Traditional art as functional village production, New Functional art as work capable of becoming traditional through adoption by a later generation, and Urban art as commentary on everyday African life and political affairs. Yoruba substitutions for ere ibeji and Kane Kwei's specialised coffins were cited as examples of continuity maintained through altered materials and forms. [11]
For the Sun Sentinel, Deborah P. Work began her account of the Miami presentation by noting the presence of a carved wooden laptop computer in an exhibition of modern African art. She stated that artists from 15 countries were represented, including academically trained and self-taught practitioners from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Zaire, and Congo. Work cited Lynn Anderson's view that African art was undergoing change even though outside audiences often preferred to preserve it in an imagined primitive condition. She also reported Anderson's belief that the exhibition supported the Center for the Fine Arts' objective of representing South Florida's cultural diversity. According to Work, the works demonstrated Western influence without suggesting that European ideas had determined African production; instead, those ideas had been incorporated into African philosophies and visual practices. She quoted Vogel as describing the project as the first occasion on which multiple kinds of African art had been assembled together and as the beginning of a discussion about contemporary African art rather than a definitive statement. [10]
Maude S. Wahlman began her review in Museum Anthropology by describing her initial disappointment. Having curated a travelling exhibition of contemporary African art in 1974, she had expected Africa Explores to provide an updated account of scholarship in the field. Instead, she found a combination of traditional objects, material she classified as folk art, and only part of the range of contemporary African production. She questioned the omission of transitional artists connecting works made for religious and royal patrons with popular urban art. After consulting the catalogue, however, Wahlman concluded that the exhibition was not intended as a survey of contemporary African art but as a broader introduction to several forms of twentieth-century production. [3] She found the five categories more convincing when considered through the catalogue and praised Vogel's essays for explaining them through anthropological, art-historical, African, and Western perspectives. Wahlman regarded most of the commissioned contributions as successful and particularly approved of van Beek's discussion of Dogon mask festivals. In her account, the catalogue examined the importance of content to African artists and audiences, the growth of naturalistic representation, reduced emphasis on ethnic identity among contemporary artists, and the historical anonymity imposed on African makers. Even so, she believed that the publication raised more questions than it answered. [3]
Wahlman also praised the decision to recognise photography as art, arguing that African practitioners had reshaped the medium in a manner comparable to the transformation of quiltmaking by African-American quilters. She nevertheless questioned the selection of works and illustrations, including the use of seventeenth-century Benin art and plastic ibeji dolls on the catalogue cover. [3] She asked why Fante appliqué flags appeared without comparable Fon or Ibibio appliqué, woven cloth, or printed textiles. She also considered traditional art overrepresented, citing repeated examples of Bamana chi wara, Benin plaques, Fang and Kota reliquary figures, and Kongo power figures. In her view, the selection required stricter editing, with no more than three works by an individual artist. Wahlman found the label "Extinct" inaccurate because many objects assigned to it dated from the nineteenth century or earlier rather than the twentieth century. She also criticised the catalogue's reproductions: field photographs were often too small, works requiring colour appeared in black and white, and some images were excessively dark. One caption's derivation of an Ode-lay costume's pearl face-screen from Yoruba Egungun masks also drew her objection; she suggested that Yoruba royal beaded crowns provided a closer comparison. Wahlman noted the frequent appearance of Marilyn Houlberg's photographs of contemporary cultural material and expressed interest in Houlberg's interpretation of them. She additionally called for fuller cultural and biographical information on the more than 27 artists represented. After reading the catalogue, however, Wahlman stated that she had come to value the exhibition and assigned the publication to her students. She concluded that the project introduced unfamiliar artists, challenged prevailing ideas about contemporary African art, opened new lines of inquiry, and prompted further consideration of African diasporic arts. [12]
John Picton's Oxford Art Journal review, "Desperately Seeking Africa, New York, 1991", began by placing the Yoruba sculptor Dada Areogun alongside Pablo Picasso and Aina Onabolu, three artists born during a comparable period. Through the comparison, Picton argued that any account of art in Africa had to reject reductive assumptions and recognise the continent's multiple histories. He regarded Africa Explores as significant because of the material assembled, the institutional standing of the Center for African Art, and the controversy surrounding the project. [5] Although contemporary African art had appeared in New York before, he considered this the first exhibition through which many viewers primarily interested in so-called tribal traditions would encounter work relevant to people then living in Africa. [7] Picton traced some of the difficulties of representing Africa to gaps in knowledge that enabled the continent to be treated as a single historical and social unit. While noting that New York critics had described the exhibition's breadth as chaotic, he interpreted its density and variety as strengths because they offered partial views of twentieth-century, post-independence, and contemporary practice. He placed the exhibition within a broader sequence of Euro-American presentations involving Yinka Shonibare, Chéri Samba at the ICA, Art from South Africa, the 1990 Venice Biennale, Egyptian participation in the Biennale, and Studio Museum of Harlem exhibitions. [8] For Picton, these examples exposed a separation between Africa as constructed by dominant art institutions and the continent's contemporary conditions. [35]
Picton also identified geographical and media-related omissions. North Africa was outside the exhibition's scope, while South Africa was excluded because apartheid, in his view, required separate analysis. East Africa and one front-line state received little attention, whereas Western and Central Africa, particularly Francophone countries, dominated the selection. [36] He considered the Francophone emphasis useful because earlier accounts had often centred on Nigeria. [37] The represented media included masquerade, coffin production, photography, painting, and sculpture in several materials, but textiles appeared primarily through Fante flags and architecture was almost entirely absent. Picton acknowledged that the divisions drew attention to existing institutional contexts, including village mask production, urban signs, photography, specialist coffins, art-school-trained practice, and forms no longer produced. [18] He nevertheless found the system unstable because terms including traditional, functional, non-functional, African, European, art, and craft carried changing assumptions. [38] He objected to the description of Traditional Art as "almost always sculptures", citing rock painting, wall decoration, body painting, and textiles as evidence that two-dimensional practice could not be treated as marginal in African contexts. Textiles, he argued, had often played a greater historical role than sculpture in expressing African identities in Brooklyn, Brixton, Ghana, and Nigeria. [39]
Using the numerical distribution of works, Picton further questioned the exhibition's internal balance. He counted 30 objects in Traditional Art, 11 in New Functional Art, 42 in Urban Art, 33 in International Art, and 17 in Extinct Art. Chéri Samba appeared through eight works and Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu through six, while most other artists were represented by between one and four. Picton asked whether the prominence of Urban Art resulted from the volume of such production, Euro-American preferences for particular forms of naivety, or the continuing dominance of Fine Art values. [40] Although some African and African-American critics and artists had privately objected to displaying academically educated artists beside other makers, Picton questioned why practices existing together in African cities should be separated in museums. [41] He regarded the catalogue as a substantial visual and informational resource but believed that its organisation created a persistent discrepancy. Individual accounts of people, places, events, and objects were often informative, yet the categories repeatedly obstructed those histories. Picton identified Ebong's essay on Negritude and the École de Dakar as the publication's central and authoritative contribution. [42] He objected particularly to Extinct Art, citing the continuing local practice of Benin casting and the separation of Kongo power figures from Trigo Piula's Tatele, which in his view obscured links between historical and recent forms. [43] Picton ultimately judged Africa Explores indispensable as a resource and welcomed the debate it generated. [33] He concluded with the career of sculptor Lamidi Fakeye, whose movement across Traditional, New Functional, Urban, and International settings demonstrated the limitations of fixed categorical boundaries. [44]
In his review for African Arts , Jack Flam described the exhibition as an inquiry into continuity and departure within twentieth-century African styles and functions. He argued that the project drew attention to mental constructions of African culture and art, as well as to exchanges between industrialised and developing regions. The use of two New York sites, in his assessment, demonstrated how surroundings and institutional identity could influence aesthetic judgement. Although Flam regarded the five categories as debatable rather than definitive, he considered them useful for organising an otherwise varied collection. He objected to "Extinct Art" as an awkward label because works no longer being produced were not extinct in the manner of animals or historical European movements. [1] Flam identified the exhibition's treatment of tradition as one of its more difficult aspects. Most objects conventionally classified as traditional African art, he noted, had been produced comparatively recently, and securely dated wooden works from before the middle of the nineteenth century were uncommon. Scholars had therefore often constructed historical interpretations without chronological evidence, relying on the idea that traditional African art remained largely unchanged over extended periods. In contrast, Vogel's exhibition treated artistic traditions as more responsive to change. Flam compared this position with the Museum of Modern Art's 1984 Primitivism in 20th Century Art and the Centre Pompidou's 1989 Magiciens de la terre, characterising the former as Eurocentric and neocolonial and the latter as an effort to immerse itself in non-Western perspectives. He believed that Africa Explores implicitly rejected both approaches in favour of a less fixed account of cultural interchange. [45]
Flam also argued that Western audiences could not always approach the works on their own cultural terms because the relevant cultural codes were difficult to acquire. Reactions to Kane Kwei's coffins, he suggested, could combine genuine interest with patronising attitudes. He identified a comparable problem in responses to Chéri Samba's political social realism, which some viewers found unintentionally humorous despite its direct subject matter. For Flam, these reactions demonstrated the continuing presence of colonial assumptions that any account of cultural exchange had to acknowledge. He also linked tensions between artists working inside and outside inherited traditions to broader conflicts between national and tribal identities. Flam concluded that the exhibition contributed substantially to discussions of Africa's past, present, and future, although he expressed concern that cosmopolitan ambitions had displaced some of the spiritual force he associated with other African art. [13]
Olu Oguibe's African Arts review of the catalogue described responses to the publication as sharply divided. He objected to its oversized design, which he associated with a Vogel-UCLA-Bloomington pattern of large exhibition books. Oguibe also found the allocation of authorship unclear: Vogel was presented as principal author with Ebong assisting, yet several other contributors were prominently named. In his view, employing African writers did not resolve the question of voice because the invited insider remained subordinate to what he called the "intimate outsider". [15] Oguibe treated the title Africa Explores as evidence of the project's interpretive hierarchy, arguing that Africa reached an exclusive audience only through an intermediary who positioned herself between the continent and the viewer. [46] He challenged Vogel's statement that her conclusions had been developed despite much unknown material, asking which audience regarded that material as unknown. According to Oguibe, this formulation reinstated a division between a Western self and an African other by defining knowledge through Western recognition. He consequently interpreted the project as colonial ethnography presented as a new art history. [47] Oguibe further questioned the catalogue's use of "African", pointing to the omission of the Maghreb, white African artists, and Africans of Asian descent. [48] He rejected the durability of Vogel's divisions into traditional, new functional, international, urban, and extinct art. [49] In particular, he criticised the International African category and Vogel's opposition between Negritude and Internationalism, arguing that it misunderstood Negritude by overlooking assimilation, Senghor's concept of universal culture, and the movement's French intellectual foundations. [29]
Oguibe also criticised several individual catalogue essays. [50] He found Cosentino's discussion of Afrokitsch theoretically inadequate because it transferred a category formed within one social history into another without sufficient attention to economic and political structures. McEvilley's distinction between emic and etic viewpoints and his account of postmodernism also required reconsideration, although Oguibe credited him with acknowledging that interpretation remained conjectural. Mudimbe's essay, he wrote, began as a possible alternative art history but ultimately repeated Vogel's broader structure of classifications and values. Oguibe did not dismiss the publication entirely, given its scale and the material it contained, but argued that its underlying method belonged more to colonial ethnography than to art history. He cited the extensive representation of Chéri Samba and the omission of Ben Enwonwu as evidence of a system that marginalised artists who did not conform to it. In conclusion, he called for African art histories written from within African experience and argued that Africans should narrate themselves rather than appear as supporting figures in another person's account. [51]
Francesco Pellizzi's review appeared in the same issue of African Arts. He argued that, with the possible exception of South Africa, contemporary Black Africa occupied a neglected position within Western historical awareness. Pellizzi credited the Center for African Art with extending established approaches by displaying traditional African objects while engaging contemporary cultural conditions and participants. [52] Under Vogel's leadership, he wrote, the Center repeatedly attempted to reconsider how Western and African audiences could view African art. He regarded any effort to create a coherent—or constructively incoherent—account of artistic production across contemporary Black Africa as difficult and open to criticism concerning methodology, artist selection, and individual objects. [52] Pellizzi nevertheless questioned whether the continent-wide scope was workable. He compared it with a hypothetical Europe Explores: 20th Century European Art that would combine craft and design with sculpture and painting, arguing that such a project would be difficult to conceive. Restricting the exhibition to the twentieth century made the undertaking appear more manageable but did not eliminate superficial or arbitrary choices. He expressed the hope that an exhibition covering so much of a continent would not be repeated, while still asking whether its breadth yielded a useful perspective. [30]
Pellizzi characterised the installation as discontinuous, heterogeneous, and often unexpected. For him, the inclusion of Akpan's figure indicated that the exhibition was intended as a comparatively neutral sample of contemporary African artefact production without first determining whether every object met Western definitions of art. He traced its movement from traditional Fang figures and changing Guro masquerades through academic art, Africanist revival, and what he termed metatraditionalism in the work of Serigne N'Diaye and the Bogolan Kasobane group. [30] The effort to include nearly every kind of practice, he argued, produced confusion and weakened the exhibition's ability to explain African modernity. Rather than critically examining the existing field, he considered the project mainly descriptive. [16] Pellizzi also objected to the broad application of the word art. The Extinct Art category appeared particularly unstable to him because significant products of discontinued traditions were placed beside minor reproductions and commercial appropriations. He further argued that modern African conditions could not be isolated from Western ones because the two were connected politically, culturally, economically, and intellectually. [53] Because acts of appropriation connected many of the categories and works, Pellizzi proposed that the exhibition might more accurately have been titled "Africa Appropriates". In his interpretation, African art became modern when artists exercised appropriation with a degree of freedom associated with cultural agency. [54] He identified Chéri Samba, Magdalena Odundo, and Sokari Douglas Camp as artists who demonstrated such control over expressive forms. [26]
Claudie Haxaire approached the catalogue in Cahiers d'Études Africaines as an ethnologist rather than an aesthetic critic. She considered its principal value to be its placement of objects within social settings that made their functions understandable. In her view, the project responded to Magiciens de la terre, in which works from several societies had been displayed as though formal resemblance alone allowed them to communicate. [55] Haxaire stated that the question of whether all the included objects qualified as art under Western definitions remained unresolved, with Vogel instead treating art as a working analytical device. [20] Although the categories had practical formal uses, Haxaire argued that they continued to create problems. She questioned the restriction of analysis to visual objects in contexts such as Guro masquerade, where masks operated together with performance, dance, music, rhythm, and poetry. Jewsiewicki's discussion of Zairean painting similarly required attention to newspaper clippings, popular music, comics, and the broader social approach of ethnology. [21] Haxaire believed that the apparent boundary separating Traditional Art from New Functional Art would probably disappear rapidly because it depended more on altered form than altered purpose. [22] She described Urban Art as production developed through contact with its audience and directed largely towards economically disadvantaged urban residents. Zairean popular painting, she wrote, found a lower-middle-class market during the 1970s, while Tshibumba, Moké, and Samba prioritised direct communication over stylistic refinement. Samba's written captions, in Haxaire's account, supplied meaning while also attracting spectators to gather around the pictures. [27]
Haxaire compared Urban Art with a visual form of street rumour that reinterpreted history for varied audiences lacking a single shared visual language. She interpreted Jewsiewicki's analysis of Zairean painting as tracing a shift from attempts to explain colonial violence and unfamiliar Western behaviour towards indirect treatments of politics and sexuality under repressive or puritanical governments. [27] Haxaire also described Ebong's essay as an account of the École de Dakar and Negritude through the moral, political, and social obligations assigned to artistic practice. Laboratoire Agit-Art, she noted, joined painters with musicians, filmmakers, and writers in temporary works that reconsidered the past while developing an identity responsive to contemporary Senegal. Haxaire concluded that the catalogue exceeded Vogel's initially limited objective of surveying tendencies in African visual production because it synthesised recent scholarship and proposed ideas about philosophical continuity that could assist Africanists studying social transformation. [28]
Sidney Littlefield Kasfir addressed the reviews by Oguibe and Pellizzi in African Arts, organising her response around expertise, exclusion, and art history. She compared Vogel's categories with the style-area classifications of canonical art, arguing that both reduced the importance of chronology and made historical accounts of change difficult. Kasfir identified only two catalogue contributions as sustained twentieth-century histories: Jewsiewicki's study of Kinshasa painters and Ebong's treatment of the École de Dakar. In her view, the subtitle 20th Century African Art implied a breadth and depth of coverage that the publication did not provide. Among the omissions were many Anglophone artists working after independence and a sustained analysis of the colonial and postcolonial transformation of art into commodities. Kasfir argued that no single curator-author could provide an evenly balanced account of postcolonial artistic production across an entire continent. She observed that the principal author and all but one specialist contributor had conducted research in Francophone countries, resulting in detailed attention to Zaire and Francophone West Africa but limited or absent treatment elsewhere, particularly East Africa and Nigeria. She considered the decisions to exclude North and South Africa reasonable because each required a different framework. Despite these limitations, Kasfir regarded Africa Explores as an ambitious attempt to move the study of noncanonical art beyond isolated anecdotal description. [56] She also considered its treatment of Extinct Art and McEvilley's essay on the other's selfhood useful for classroom instruction. [17]
In a 2017 article for Contemporary And, Julia Friedel reconsidered the exhibition as an attempt to recount twentieth-century African art from a perspective located on the continent. She interpreted the placement of works by Sunday Jack Akpan and the Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop at the entrance as an indication that Vogel did not intend to confine the project to a single form of artistic production. Friedel nevertheless concluded that the exhibition did not clearly communicate Vogel's aim of presenting African artists through their own voices and settings. She reviewed objections to the categories raised by Olu Oguibe, Okwui Enwezor, and John Picton, noting that critics had described them as arbitrary, outdated, narrow, and more closely aligned with anthropological taxonomy than art history. According to Friedel, the predominance of self-taught artists and omission of North Africans revealed an insufficiently examined ethnological interest that reinforced ideas of supposedly authentic African art. She argued that Vogel's classifications arose from Western institutions rather than from the perspectives of African practitioners. The essays by Mudimbe and Ebong, in her assessment, did not resolve the problem of the curator's controlling voice. Friedel also considered the phrase "intimate outsiders" ironic because the exhibition assigned outsider status to African artists rather than to Vogel and her institutional collaborators. [34]
Despite these objections, Friedel identified Africa Explores as the first major exhibition in the United States devoted to twentieth-century artistic production in Africa and described it as influential. She stated that it increased the visibility of artists who later received wider recognition, including Chéri Samba and Seydou Keïta. Vogel, Friedel wrote, understood the project as one stage in an ongoing process intended to encourage further scholarship and exhibitions. Friedel connected its debates with later projects such as Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, which attempted to reverse what its organisers regarded as the questionable methodology of Africa Explores and contributed to the development of global art history. Her retrospective reproduced entrance and installation photographs of the New Museum display taken by Fred Scruton and credited to the New Museum. [34]
Kwame Amoah Labi examined Vogel's classificatory model in a 2014 textbook chapter on African art. He described African art as a changing field containing traditional and contemporary practices that responded to different requirements within particular communities. Labi considered the Africa Explores system a useful indication of the range of work produced across the continent and treated Traditional Art, New Functional Art, Urban Art, and International Art as partially representative of stylistic transformation. [57] He noted that Vogel did not equate traditional art exclusively with the pre-colonial era, a periodisation criticised by some African art historians and writers as Eurocentric. [58] Labi added that resistance to rigid chronological categories had grown among Africans unwilling to have their artistic histories contained within fixed periods. New approaches extending from traditional to contemporary production and including the work of the African diaspora, he argued, demonstrated African art's dynamism through formal innovation, new materials, continuing practices, and changing ideas. [59]