Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria

by Chika Okeke-Agulu

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.

Genres: Art, Art History

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2015

About the author

Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, curator, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. He is author of Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, a coauthor of Contemporary African Art since 1980, and coeditor (with Okwui Enwezor and Salah M. Hassan) of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

[Ellie]

another day another grad school book because reading is all grad school is

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a clarifying note: I came to this book because of my (semi)professional interest in decolonization in the British Empire. By discipline I am a historian and literary critic, _not_ an art critic; therefore, I can't speak to Okeke-Agulu's art criticism here except generally (since some theory and strategies in art criticism and history mirror the kind of work I specialize in).

Having said that, I think Okeke-Agulu makes some very good (albeit not mind-blowing) contributions to the discourses on postcoloniality, intellectual history, and art history in this book. Particularly his focus on how African artists appropriated and deployed European modernist avant-garde strategies to make contributions to representation and critique of politics in Nigeria seems to me to be an important contribution to various fields of knowledge. His theoretical background is sound and he does a very good job of placing pieces and artists in their historical and political contexts.

[Jonathan Hunter]

Read for class