It seems that the notion of “Art for Art’s sake” cannot be applied to Picasso’s “Black period” or his modernist paintings. For in this instance, art is not a liminal space, removed from the historical context of the artist. One can argue that the idea of colonial/ white superiority can be found within the history of modernism where “the Other is considered to be part of the narrative of modern art yet not central enough to be considered constitutive”. Gikandi goes on to elaborate in his essay why there seems to be this anxiety to “minimize the constitutive role of Africa in the making of modernism” (458).
This anxiety is seems to be deep-rooted to colonial anxiety of the Other. Levine’s “Ruling an Empire” states that the imperial government sought to “limit marriage between local women and colonizing men in an effort to keep colonizer and colonized separate… It was colonized peoples who were expected to conform to British behaviors and values: movement in the other direction was considered contamination, not assimilation” (107). The dialectic of purity and contamination moves beyond the social landscape and into the realm of art, with the contention of the “influence” of African art on modernism. There is even contention over the use of the word “influence”, and the redefinition of African influence with the words “affinities” (by Rubin) or “connotations” (By Bois) avoids “contaminating” modernism by reducing the “influences” to mere traces. Hence, preventing a union between the Other and the Self.
According to Gikandi, modernism’s overt admiration for the Other seems to imply that the Other is a “source of new energies” (458). I would like to suggest that another possibility for the apparent anxiety could possibly be the fear of the “end” or “used-upness” of Western art, if the West had to source for new inspirations from the East- where does that leave them? Interestingly enough, African art seems to be positioned as both the “creator” and “destroyer” of modernism in the West.
This anxiety is seems to be deep-rooted to colonial anxiety of the Other. Levine’s “Ruling an Empire” states that the imperial government sought to “limit marriage between local women and colonizing men in an effort to keep colonizer and colonized separate… It was colonized peoples who were expected to conform to British behaviors and values: movement in the other direction was considered contamination, not assimilation” (107). The dialectic of purity and contamination moves beyond the social landscape and into the realm of art, with the contention of the “influence” of African art on modernism. There is even contention over the use of the word “influence”, and the redefinition of African influence with the words “affinities” (by Rubin) or “connotations” (By Bois) avoids “contaminating” modernism by reducing the “influences” to mere traces. Hence, preventing a union between the Other and the Self.
According to Gikandi, modernism’s overt admiration for the Other seems to imply that the Other is a “source of new energies” (458). I would like to suggest that another possibility for the apparent anxiety could possibly be the fear of the “end” or “used-upness” of Western art, if the West had to source for new inspirations from the East- where does that leave them? Interestingly enough, African art seems to be positioned as both the “creator” and “destroyer” of modernism in the West.
Nadia Arianna
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Good points about the sorts of compartmentalization brought about by colonialism, and linking it back to Modernism... we're going to speak more about this tomorrow. Your post title was also very funny!
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