Abstract: This essay narrates the history of the National War Museum, Umuahia, as a national heritage site. In 1965, political turmoil in postcolonial Nigeria resulted in a conflict between the Nigerian stat...

Abstract: The interest of Romanian modern sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) in African art grew during his participation in the New York avant-garde scene at the turn of the 20th century. Because of h...

Abstract: Do invisible gods, in effect, merely have a “double,” or are they themselves a “double”? (Rouch, 1978, p. 3)Ethnographic film provides a prototype for visual border crossings in anthropological res...

Abstract: This article uses a review of reports and debates on the history, structures and operations of art auctions in Nigeria to discuss their current impact on the development of contemporary art in the country. I examine the current euphoria surrounding the generally held point of view that Nigerian art auctions have provided ladders of professional and economic progress in the country’s visual art sector by raising the level of art appreciation/awareness in the country and energizing the local and international art markets. I, however, transcend the prevailing notions of progress by directly and indirectly examining a number of issues related to the following questions: What structures are in place to create and sustain credible art auctions as against what can be described as “elitist sale-spots” in Nigeria? What are the implications of the lack of rarity in much of the lots on offer? What is the place of art history and art criticism in the evaluation or appraisal of modern and contemporary art in Nigeria? Do we have a viable art historical and critical culture in Nigeria necessary for providing information to all players in both the primary and secondary art markets in the country? What is the future of our art auctions in the present absence of influential art historical and critical platforms? My goal is to provoke healthy debates and productive dialogues around the presence or absence of credible and sustainable art auctioneering structures in the country in a manner that helps us to critically review their low and high points. I hope that my description and analysis of key issues will provide ample basis for suggesting ways by which art auctions can truly become ladders of professional progress for Nigerian artists instead of constituting inimical weapons of commercial exploitation.

Abstract: Utopias wither in the shadows of manifestoes. Recall the cover of La Revolution Surrealiste illustrating a quote of Engels: “What these gentlemen lack is Dialectics!” Today, it is possible to say, ...

Abstract: This article discusses the role played by the sculptor Agnaldo Manoel dos Santos in the panorama of Afro-Brazilian art. Many gaps in the short history of this sculptor (1926 1962), allied to his African descent and absence of a formal artistic training, contributed to the position adopted by most art critics, curators and scholars from the 1950s until recently, that explained dos Santos production by means of ancestrality, an “atavistic feeling,” or even a “revelation of the unconscious,” expressions commonly used to refer to the “African inspirations” of the artist. Until today, there have been few attempts to deconstruct this image. In publications on the sculptor, with some exceptions, the same ideas are reproduced from author to author, without any review or criticism. This is due in part to the absence of further researches on dos Santos. The texts reproduced in exhibition catalogs and other bibliographic materials are important, and a key research source, including to the discussion presented here, but a deeper investigation would need to go beyond these references. And, actually, that is the kind of in-depth research on Agnaldo dos Santos’s artwork we would like to start here.

Abstract: Afro-Brazilian religion has been central to the development of Afro-Brazilian art. This is because before art historians, curators, and critics demonstrated interest in Afro-Brazilian art in the se...

Abstract: Recently, Jorge dos Anjos (b. 1957) completed a series of artworks he had been preparing for some time. In these artworks, rhomboid and slightly splined soapstones in shades ranging from greenish t...

Abstract: I was born in Santo Amaro da Purificacao, Bahia, in 1940, into a family of 13 children sustained by my father, a goldsmith, who carried on a craft practiced by my family for three generations. When...

Abstract: In the past few decades in Brazil, there were some attempts to define Afro-Brazilian art. There was, however, no agreement as to suitable definitions among those engaged in this arduous task. Somet...

Abstract: This article discusses the historical dimensions of six distinct Asafo company flags and two public sculptures from Winneba and Mankessim in the Central Region of Ghana. Specifically, it examines h...

Abstract: In the late 1960s, stories and pictures of the dashing, black private detective Lance Spearman crisscrossed the African continent on the action-packed pages of African Film, a South African “look-r...

Abstract: If you want to understand meCome look over my soul of Africa,In the groans of the blacks in the wharf (…)And nothing else ask meIf it you want to know me …That I am no more than a cowrie shell of m...

Abstract: Among Brazilians, issues concerning minorities and particularly blacks are always subject to controversy that arouses the most extreme passions. Art identified as “Afro-Brazilian,” whether contemporary or not, is implicated in that controversy. Their very existence is disputed and there are very few institutions of higher education that devote attention to such art. More importantly, the systematic study of art in Brazil is relatively new. The first critics emerged between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The main one, Gonzaga Duque (1863 1911), in what would be the first book devoted to art criticism in Brazil (titled Brazilian Art and published in 1888), mentions Estev~ao Silva (1844 1891) and Firmino Monteiro da Silva (1855 1888), black artists who were both excellent in their genres. Brazil has the sad reputation of being one of the last, or the very last country to abolish slavery, in 1888, and the society that Gonzaga Duque lived in was marked, as it is today, by the legacy of an institution of slavery that lasted nearly 400 years. So, the controversy surrounding the rights and cultures of Brazilians of African ancestry is also a result of a national context of racism that unfortunately has very deep roots. The noted Afro-Brazilian artist Sidney Amaral (b. 1973) emerged against this problematic background.