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movement in the first half of the twentieth century will thus be the focal point of our considerations on the global dimension of art. This will also make it possible to examine the close connections between globalisation in the arts and liberationist movements such as anti-colonialism, Pan-Africanism, anti-racism, and the US Civil Rights movement. These links constitute a key feature of transcultural modernism and therefore necessarily form part of any consideration of this subject. The ‘globalisation’ of modern
in the historical-political context of subjugation, racism, and dispossession as well as the colonised people’s efforts to (symbolically) reclaim the objects. In order to properly assess the political agenda behind the project of reviving African masks in the film by Marker and Resnais, it is important to remember that it was commissioned by the Paris-based Pan-African publishing house Présence Africaine . I will come back to the film by Marker and Resnais in the context of postwar artistic practices. The
colonised world participate in Pan-African congresses but also those from Western metropolises. The anti-colonial movement following the First World War was shaped equally by the relations of the colonised world to the Soviet Union and the Communist International and by connections between representatives of the colonised or Black world ( Chapter 1 ). 27 Similarly, Rabindranath Tagore’s World University at Santiniketan ( Chapter 2 ) is distinguished by its pan-Asian axis but also by the pursuit of a synthesis of Eastern
’ (Francis 1983: v). In my opinion, perhaps the most interesting chapter is ‘UK/USA’, which forms a transatlantic dialogue between the representation of the fight for freedom and the rights of African Americans, and that of Black British people. The photograph of a demonstration in England is juxtaposed with a quote from Kwame Nkrumah, giving life to the pan-African vision of the authors. Francis looks back on his experience of difference as a source of inspiration for this project and writes: ‘As a black person living in
Fragonard for Madame du Barry’s pavilion in Louveciennes in 1770–71. Contrary to Fragonard’s silk-clad, rosy-cheeked aristocrats, Shonibare’s figures wore Rococo costumes made of African-print fabrics. Originally produced by Dutch colonisers anticipating an Indonesian market, these fabrics were sold to customers in West African colonies and later became an emblem of African identity and pan-African nationalism. As a result, they are invested with both colonial and postcolonial connotations, which Shonibare exploits in his efforts to decolonise the minds of his audiences
as a revolutionary one. The political rhetoric of both has been directly influential on the field of art. Organised in 1991 by art historian Michele Wallace, the ground-breaking symposium “Black Popular Culture” offered an interdisciplinary comparison of questions surrounding “black nationalism, essentialism and Pan-Africanism.”13 In her presentation “Black Nationalism: the Sixties and the Nineties” Angela Davis recalled the development of her political position from identity politics to communism, showing how ideas morphed, how complex and contradictory
nineteenth century the manufacturers found a booming market for their fabrics in West Africa. Here, the exuberant textiles gradually became symbols of authentic African identity, especially in the wake of decolonisation in the 1960s and the revival of pan-African nationalism. Already in the 1950s, as independent countries emerged in Africa, entrepreneurs in West Africa were establishing their own printing mills that began to undermine the monopolies of the European factories.47 Thus, the history of the Dutch wax fabric is interlinked with Europe’s colonial history and the