Negro Art in Belgian Congo (Classic Reprint)
Negro Art in Belgian Congo (Classic Reprint)

Author: Leon Kochnitzky

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-04-22

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 9780331620023

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Excerpt from Negro Art in Belgian Congo An African work of art is almost isolated from its cultural background. It has to be considered and studied without the help of little-known African history. The social, economic and religious evolution of the Dark Continent throws little light on the real meaning of such work. The only part of human knowledge to which the art historian can have recourse for information is ethnology. This is the chief reason why the study of African art has, for a whole century, been so strongly linked to this science. Ethnology and aesthetics do not make a happy marriage. The ethnologist is not concerned with the artistic significance of the objects. He examines. He cares nothing for the spirit that pervades the statue or the mask he handles; and he remains indifferent to the feeling that inspired the work. Even the technique and the style employed by the artist are of no interest to him, if they do not allow him to ascertain so'me purely material facts concerning the evolution of culture or the degree of civilization attained by the craftsman. And yet, during the whole period of discovery of Africa Tenebrosa, it was the ethnologist, and not the art scholar, who was the keeper and often the possessor of the treasures discovered by the explorer. Independent research was out of the question. The art scholar, unaware of the treasures that had perhaps been discarded, was forced to enter the museum of the ethnologist, to accept the latter's indoctrination, his classification in short, the learned man's opinion. Science is not to be blamed for this astounding state of affairs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Selling the Congo
Selling the Congo

Author: Matthew G. Stanard

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0803239882

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Belgium was a small, neutral country without a colonial tradition when King Leopold II ceded the Congo, his personal property, to the state in 1908. For the next half century Belgium not only ruled an African empire but also, through widespread, enduring, and eagerly embraced propaganda, produced an imperialist-minded citizenry. Selling the Congo is a study of European pro-empire propaganda in Belgium, with particular emphasis on the period 1908–60. Matthew G. Stanard questions the nature of Belgian imperialism in the Congo and considers the Belgian case in light of literature on the French, British, and other European overseas empires. Comparing Belgium to other imperial powers, the book finds that pro-empire propaganda was a basic part of European overseas expansion and administration during the modern period. Arguing against the long-held belief that Belgians were merely “reluctant imperialists,” Stanard demonstrates that in fact many Belgians readily embraced imperialistic propaganda. Selling the Congo contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of twentieth-century propaganda by revealing its successes and failures in the Belgian case. Many readers familiar with more-popular histories of Belgian imperialism will find in this book a deeper examination of European involvement in central Africa during the colonial era.

Congo Love Song
Congo Love Song

Author: Ira Dworkin

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1469632721

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In his 1903 hit "Congo Love Song," James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song's title may appear consistent with that narrative, it also invokes the site of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal colonial regime at a time when African Americans were playing a central role in a growing Congo reform movement. In an era when popular vaudeville music frequently trafficked in racist language and imagery, "Congo Love Song" emerges as one example of the many ways that African American activists, intellectuals, and artists called attention to colonialism in Africa. In this book, Ira Dworkin examines black Americans' long cultural and political engagement with the Congo and its people. Through studies of George Washington Williams, Booker T. Washington, Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and other figures, he brings to light a long-standing relationship that challenges familiar presumptions about African American commitments to Africa. Dworkin offers compelling new ways to understand how African American involvement in the Congo has helped shape anticolonialism, black aesthetics, and modern black nationalism.

A Companion to Modern African Art
A Companion to Modern African Art

Author: Gitti Salami

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 650

ISBN-13: 1118515056

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Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization. A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa Includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material Features new and complex theoretical arguments about the nature of modernity and Modernism Addresses a widely acknowledged gap in the literature on African Art

The New Negro
The New Negro

Author: Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2007-10-28

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9780691126524

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When African American intellectuals announced the birth of the "New Negro" around the turn of the twentieth century, they were attempting through a bold act of renaming to change the way blacks were depicted and perceived in America. By challenging stereotypes of the Old Negro, and declaring that the New Negro was capable of high achievement, black writers tried to revolutionize how whites viewed blacks--and how blacks viewed themselves. Nothing less than a strategy to re-create the public face of "the race," the New Negro became a dominant figure of racial uplift between Reconstruction and World War II, as well as a central idea of the Harlem, or New Negro, Renaissance. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Gene Andrew Jarrett, The New Negro collects more than one hundred canonical and lesser-known essays published between 1892 and 1938 that examine the issues of race and representation in African American culture. These readings--by writers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alain Locke, Carl Van Vechten, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright--discuss the trope of the New Negro, and the milieu in which this figure existed, from almost every conceivable angle. Political essays are joined by essays on African American fiction, poetry, drama, music, painting, and sculpture. More than fascinating historical documents, these essays remain essential to the way African American identity and history are still understood today.

The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art
The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art

Author: David Bindman

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9780674504394

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The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art asks how the black figure was depicted by artists from the non-Western world. Beginning with ancient Egyptâe"positioned properly as part of African historyâe"this volume focuses on the figure of the black as rendered by artists from Africa, East Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. The aesthetic traditions illustrated here are as diverse as the political and social histories of these regions. From Igbo Mbari sculptures to modern photography from Mali, from Indian miniatures to Japanese prints, African and Asian artists portrayed the black body in ways distinct from the European tradition, even as they engaged with Western art through the colonial encounter and the forces of globalization. This volume complements the vision of art patrons Dominique and Jean de Menil who, during the 1960s, founded an image archive to collect the ways that people of African descent have been represented in Western art from the ancient world to modern times. A halfâe century later, Harvard University Press and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research completed the historic publication of The Image of the Black in Western Artâe"ten books in totalâe"beginning with Egyptian antiquities and concluding with images that span the twentieth century. The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art reinvigorates the de Menil familyâe(tm)s original mission and reorients the study of the black body with a new focus on Africa and Asia.