Fall 2008

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AFST 509
Seminar in African Art

Credit:  4 hours.


Same as ARTH 510. See ARTH 510.


Section Information
CRNTypeSectionTimeDays Location  Instructor
52648  conference  DR 09:00 AM - 11:40 AM  room 114
Art and Design Bldg 
Rush, D 
REVISED DESCRIPTION: "Modern and Contemporary African Art" The first part of the seminar will explore the predicament of "modern" and "contemporary" client-driven African art from the 1960s to the present. A major rupture in artistic practice occurred in both Europe and Africa in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries, but for different reasons. In Africa, this change was not in response to a small group of artist-intellectuals, but as a result of colonization by European powers following the Berlin Conference in 1884-85. However, in the 1960s, when African independence movements began, an enormous intellectual and creative euphoria emerged and a "modern" African art was created based on its own historical contexts, but within the larger context of Western art. This coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States, which is also evidenced in the art. The second part of the seminar will explore the predicament of 21st century contemporary African, African Diaspora, and African-American art and artists. Thus, we shall discuss the inevitable issues of marginalizations; the Western perceptions of "Africanness" and "Blackness;" exhibition strategies; issues of "authenticity;" as well as charged and contested tags of "traditional," "modern," "urban," "international," "African," "Black," and "contemporary."