FEW TIPS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY AFRICANN ART.

Contemporary African Art particularly cannot be generalized and reduced to a singular concept simply by the fact that there are many art scenes happening all over Africa and each is fuelled by its own contextual parameters. What does it mean and who is 'African', just who does one include? An indigenous African artist who lives and works on home territory is an obvious starting point, but what about those that travel between two worlds? Or even those who have never put a foot in Africa but their heritage is African and their work is inspired by and reflective of this legacy? And what about those white Africans who come from European stock one, two or even three centuries ago? Do they have as much claim to be included in the framework as their black counterparts? Afropolitanism is the voguish term for new work made by young African artists both in and outside Africa. The artists are presumably united by some shared view of Africa but this seems preposterous given that their cultures are widely varied, their geographical locations scattered, their personal stories and journeys vastly disparate. I, like Holland Cotter of the New York Times, choose to defend an artist's right not to 'wrap themselves in evidence of their origins'. Their work will demonstrate, up to that point of creativity, a personal reflection of everything that has defined them and contributed to their mode of existence. Their 'Africanness' of contemporary African art may, or may not be perceptible or relevant to the subject matter but it is inherent in their nature and therefore their work. 


- See more at: http://www.contemporary-african-art.com/contemporary-african-art.html#sthash.z0JM03JD.dpuf

African modernities were very often enclosed within resistance movements which had given birth at the same time as the infliction of colonial rule. Some of these movements such as the sign painting of Nigeria grew in force and courage revealing themes of subjugated humiliation as the decades progressed.
Colonialism introduced a whole new world of ideas and artistic disciplines to contemporary African art within Africa. Art schools and technological colleges, workshops and studios were set up by the colonial regimes introducing new artistic disciplines like easel painting and photography. Representational art took over from idealization and the traditional language of African creative and spiritual expression. This was ironically happening at the same time as Europe and the Western world were absorbing the reverberations of the dynamic shift of Picasso and his contemporaries into cubism and the liberation of line, shape, colour and form. Since 1910, art had no longer been purely visual but was now conceptual and societal as well.
Some of these African modernists like Mancoba and Sekoto escaped the confines of their imposed cultures and went to London or Paris where they were exposed to Western art and all its history including the impressionists, post-impressionists and the developing avant garde. In Paris, Enwonwu was exposed to 'Negritude', a black affirmation movement and this gave his work a sophistication way above his counterparts at home.
However, despite long sojourns away, they returned to their countries of birth to embrace new directions and the influences of political and social changes on the continent and to strive for world recognition of the existence of an African modernism within contemporary African art.


- See more at: http://www.contemporary-african-art.com/contemporary-african-art.html#sthash.z0JM03JD.dpuf