Modernity, Modernism, and

Africa's Place in the History

of Art of Our Age
Author: Rasheed Araeen
DOI: 10.1080/09528820500123943
Published in: Third Text, Volume 19, Issue 4 July 2005
, pages 411 - 417
Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year
Download PDF (~181 KB) View Related Articles
To cite this Article: Araeen, Rasheed 'Modernity, Modernism, and Africa's Place in the
History of Art of Our Age', Third Text, 19:4, 411 - 417
POSTCOLONIALISM AND THE DEPENDENCY
SYNDROME

It would be axiomatic to say that modernity came to Africa as part and parcel of
colonialism, but what is really interesting is the paradox that overturned the crude ambition
of colonial power. If the ambition of modernity was to turn a section of African people into
the faithful servants of colonial administration, this also, by the same token, opened the
flood gates of modern consciousness that led to the present-day independent and modern
Africa.
Africa's struggle for independence, as in other colonised parts of the world, was not only
for political self-determination but also for its people to be free from all structures of
domination and oppression. Only when people were free to use their physical and mental
capabilities to the full would they be able to improve their living conditions and develop
their own modern culture. As African nations became free, unleashing the aspirations that
had been suppressed or kept under control by the outgoing regimes, there was a sudden
upsurge of new creativity leading to the modernisation of productive forces in many parts
of Africa. But as the ideas of modernity were imported along with the means and expertise
of modernisation from the West, this, in my view, created a fundamental problem of a
philosophical nature for Africa's aspiration for its postcolonial identity, its own worldview
and modern vision.
Africa has now acquired everything necessary to be part of the modern world. It has
modern factories, aeroplanes, airlines, the latest cars, buses and lorries, radios and colour
TVs, video players, computers and mobile phones, Internet cafes and computer games,
modern hotels with all the facilities that one would find in London, Paris, or New York,
imported foodstuffs, Coca-Cola and hamburgers, etc, etc. The point is that it is not lagging
behind in acquiring what is required for a modern consumer society. It would indeed not be
a surprise if one found that the children of rich families were going around wearing clothes
imported from Paris and holding in their hands the latest mobile phones with image
transmission as standard. It seems Africa wants to have everything that the West produces
or possesses, regardless of whether this desire to have everything imported is in the
interest of Africa or not. I am not suggesting that it is wrong for Africa to desire or have all
these things, but what are the consequences of a desire which merely consumes but is
incapable of inventing and producing anything by itself?
You may well ask what all this has got to do with art and art criticism. My answer is,
everything. If we in Africa are unable to think, innovate, and produce for ourselves not
even as simple a thing as a modern beverage and instead are happy consuming the
products of others, such as Coca-Cola, then there is something wrong. This may not be a
profound example, as Coca-Cola is just a drink. This may be so, but Coca-Cola also
represents a value system. Its popularity and consumption in Africa by the masses not only
symbolise its adoption of a foreign value system but also a postcolonial state of
dependency (of its ruling classes). It betrays a perception or vision that is trapped. By
which I do not mean that this vision is therefore totally unproductive, but it cannot rise
above the limits that this dependency puts upon its subject. It cannot focus on or/and
realise its own creative potential through its own imagination, and invent something that is
its own.
Art is also about thinking, about perception, and about an ability to innovate and create. It
requires a free imagination to express its vision through a product that is original and has a
profound social meaning, not only for the individual but also for the community or society
of which the artist is a member. If the dominant sociocultural milieu of a society does not
represent its own unique values, but instead only represents something that has been
imported or imposed upon it from outside, it is hard for the artist to escape from it. The
main problem of modernism in art in Africa in general (I say in general, because there are
exceptions to which I shall turn later) seems to be that it suffers from a dependency
syndrome, with the result that the artist is in a constant struggle to catch up with whatever
is happening in the West. There are of course modern artworks that look profoundly
African, but this look is deceptive. Often, it is no more than a gloss over what has
originated from the West.
However, it has not been easy for modern African artists. First they faced the conditions of
colonialism and then, after independence, the legacy of colonialism, lack of modern
support structures or institutions within Africa, and when they migrated to the West they
faced the institution that still perceived them as 'primitives' or the 'others'. If they defied this
perception, they were ignored and written out of history. Take the example of Ernest
Mancoba from South Africa, who spent the major part of his life in Europe and was an
important member of CoBrA. Recently a major exhibition of CoBrA was held at Stedelijk
Museum Schiedam, Holland. When I e-mailed them to find out if Mancoba was included in
the show, the answer was no. This did not surprise me, as what has happened to
Mancoba is not unusual or unique. Every African, Asian, and Caribbean artist who defied
the colonial predetermination of their subjectivities and what they were expected to
produce as art had faced the same fate.
Things seem to have changed now. Until about 10 years ago, there was no artist from
Africa, Asia, the Caribbean - and to some extent even from Latin America - seen anywhere
in international exhibitions or biennales. But now no large international exhibition can take
place without the participation of artists from these regions of the world. What is behind
this sudden change? There are many explanations, both in favour and against the change,
which makes the matter complex. But we can simplify the matter by saying that it is mainly
the globalisation of capitalist economy, and along with it the expansion of the art market
and the spectacle of multiculturalism, that has created the demands for exotic artworks
from all over the world.
The point is that although Africa has successfully entered the modern world, it has done so
largely not on its own terms or in accordance with its social needs. It has been forced into it
through the global system that now determines and controls whatever Africa aspires to,
including its art production and evaluation. But the system cannot work effectively by
entirely pursuing its self-interests, without showing some altruism or concern for the
welfare of others; it must create a space in which the 'others' are given some roles - and
are rewarded. And as the art market expanded and diversified its activities, buying and
selling things from all over the world, the doors were opened for some African - as well as
for some Asian and Latin American - artists, art writers, and curators who were willing to
serve the system. As a result some artists, writers, and curators, who made themselves
available as self-styled representatives of the areas of the world they came from, have
indeed made successful careers abroad. But within Africa the situation remains
precarious, confused, and depressing. Deprived thus of the development of its own both
material and intellectual resources within Africa, it has not been able to develop sufficiently
its own modern institutions. Without these institutions it is not only extremely difficult for
scholars to carry out research work and produce ideas that would provide a framework
capable of interpreting the work of African artists and legitimising its sociohistorical
significance, but Africa also has to constantly look towards the West for the recognition
and legitimisation of whatever its artists do. How could this situation be conducive to the
development of an artistic vision which is modern and Africa's own?
Of course, this is an over-simplification that does little justice to what is an extremely
complex problem. Africa is a vast continent comprising more than 50 independent
countries, and the conditions vary from one country to another with different resources and
levels of development, and it would be wrong to put them all in one basket and
homogenise the situation. It would also be unwise not to mention, despite all the
difficulties, Africa's great achievements, particularly in modern literature, films, and music.
There is also considerable achievement in the visual arts, but one needs critical tools to
claim and celebrate this achievement. However, I know that a lot of original work is being
done in the university departments of philosophy and art history across Africa, particularly
in Nigeria and South Africa. But this scholarship has little relationship with or impact on the
production and understanding of what is happening in the visual arts today.
Let me go back to Ernest Mancoba and illustrate my point, which clearly highlights the
problem of visual arts and its associated discourses of art criticism and art history.
Mancoba represents an early modernist achievement of Africa. But how do we know it was
an achievement? Do we have a critical discourse by which we can measure the true
significance of his work? All the writing that I have read about him says that he was an
important member of the historically important movement of modernism, CoBrA, but he
was ignored and his historical achievement thus undermined. But nobody has rationalised
this ignorance in the light of the Eurocentric philosophy of modernism. If Mancoba was
ignored and excluded from history because his work was a threat to the Eurocentric
historical trajectory and genealogy of mainstream modernism, why do we expect the West
to recognise Mancoba's - and for that matter other African artists' - achievement? Is it not
logical or rational for the Western institution, given the fact that Eurocentricity is
fundamental to the West's continuing colonial vision - based on its presumed supremacy
over the others - to act as a shield to any threat to this vision?
I am not saying that the Eurocentricity of modernism should not be confronted. But can we
do this only by pointing out the problem or shouting at the West and demanding that it
should rectify the situation? This may and does help the careers of those who erect the
rhetorical fa ade of accusations and threats against the West, but behind this fa ade their
real aim is to serve its prevailing system.2 This careerism is in fact a great threat to the
development of critical ideas that can liberate modernism from its colonial legacies.
The history of modernism is not just a narrative of various movements and their main
agents, but represents a body of philosophical ideas that underpin and legitimise its
Eurocentricity. These ideas go back to the philosophy of history and its subjectivity
formulated and rationalised by European philosophers. We can expose and criticise this
philosophy and show how it served the ideology of colonialism, but this will not take us too
far. Even if we produce a scholarship by which Africa can claim the achievement of artists
like Mancoba, and use their achievement as an example to construct a modern identity for
Africa, it will not be sufficient to claim their place within the mainstream history of
modernism.
Modernity began its journey in Europe, and on its way to conquer the world it turned itself
into a tool of barbarity. But there was another side to the coin that articulated and promised
a modern world in which all human beings would be equal, and this equality would be
achieved with the rational ideas of progress. Hunger, poverty, and disease would be
universally eliminated with the progress of science and technology. But has modernity
fulfilled it promises? If the answer is no, then we must examine its failure. Is this failure due
to the ideas themselves, or because of the system that has used these ideas for its own
self-interest? If these ideas of modernity are trapped in a system of domination and
exploitation, then the need is not to condemn it as Eurocentric but to liberate its ideas from
their Western grip.
AN OPEN LETTER TO AFRICAN THINKERS,
THEORISTS AND ART HISTORIANS

Whenever and wherever one encounters the debate about Africa and its cultural
achievements, there is always the same repetitive voice: the West has done this, the West
has done that. The West has ignored and continues to ignore Africa's real and great
contribution to human civilisation. When the West does pay attention to this contribution, it
misunderstands, misrepresents, or tends to marginalise it by locating it in a moribund past.
These complaints are of course justified, given the continuing power of colonial legacies.
But why is the West expected to do what is not in its own interest, which is against its
continuing ambitions and needs to perpetuate its dominance? Why should the West do
what should and must be done by Africans themselves? Are Africans, then, not wasting
their creative resources in what has now become a facile discourse of complaints and
rhetoric against the West?
My concern here is specific to Africa's contribution to modernism in the visual arts. It is
often complained that this contribution has been ignored and excluded from the history of
modern art. True. But what is Africa's contribution to modernism besides what is
recognised as the part it played in Cubism, Surrealism, and so on? The work of many
artists, from Aina Onabolu of Nigeria to the globally successful artists of today, is cited as
an example of Africa's modern achievement. But is the mere citation of this achievement
enough, without showing what this achievement means to Africa and/or the main body of
ideas within modernism, to claim Africa's place in its mainstream history?
Modern art history is constructed and legitimised on the basis of formal innovations,
among other things, that produce successive movements from one period to another,
giving rise to the constant production of new ideas that are fundamental to the dynamic of
the system. For Africa to establish its place in modernism's history, it must show that it has
entered the mainstream and has provided a push to its central movement. It is Africa's
misfortune that while Africa has indeed achieved this, its art historians are either unaware
of or unable to grasp its historical significance.
Let us, for example, look at the work of Ernest Mancoba again. His work is well known, but
no one has bothered to look at it with the attention it deserves. No one has offered a critical
analysis or reading of his work that would recognise significantly its historical importance. It
would be naive to expect that this job should have been done by the West's own critics or
historians. How could they, without not only disturbing their perception of the other but also
demolishing the very philosophical framework of Eurocentric modern art history on which
their own power is based? The understanding of Mancoba's work is therefore fundamental
to the understanding of Africa's position within modernism.
When we look at the work that Mancoba painted in 1940, entitled Composition, what do we
find there? Is it just a mixing of African iconography and a modernist technique? Or, is
there something more? A gaze that cannot penetrate and go beyond the sensual level of
the work and reach its structural or formal level will fail to understand its true significance.
So let us look at its structure, the way the elements are arranged and put together within a
rectangular space, and the rough free brush strokes with which these elements are
treated. Do they not indicate something unusual, an extraordinary way of making a
painting in 1940? What emerges from all this is not just an ordinary encounter with
modernism, but an encounter that challenges what it encounters, producing a form whose
significance lies not just in its 'African-ness' but, more importantly, in its temporality and
historicity. When this form, with is symmetrical structure and expressionistic brush strokes,
is fully analysed and is firmly placed in the temporality that produced this form, only then
can we understand its real historical significance.
If Mancoba's Composition is a modernist work, where should it be placed? Should it not be
placed within the context of what inspired Mancoba to leave South Africa and brought him
to Europe, and what then inspired him to do this painting in Paris? Would he have done
this painting while in South Africa? For that matter, would Picasso have done Demoiselles
d'Avignon while still in Spain? The answer to both is no, because neither South Africa nor
Spain respectively would have provided them with the necessary contexts for an
experiential encounter with a kind of knowledge that would have triggered their
imaginations to produced the kind of work they did. If we recognise Picasso's significance
in his location between what was there in modernism before and what followed him as a
result of his articulation of this location, then there is no reason why we should not
approach Mancoba's work in the same way.
If Mancoba did not follow an already established movement, genre or style, and if he was
not influenced by the work of a particular artist, then we have no choice but to declare the
originality of his work. And if, then, we look into what happened some years after his work,
and we see a new kind of work emerging whose signs were already there in Mancoba's
work, then we will have to accept that Mancoba's was a precursor or forerunner of what
emerged a few years later: Abstract Expressionism in the US and Informal in Europe -
even when there is no evidence that he influenced these movements. What I am trying to
suggest is that Mancoba's work may represent a historical breakthrough within mainstream
modernism.
This short meditation on Mancoba's work cannot of course establish his historical position.
The purpose of this letter is to urge Africans to pay serious attention to Mancoba's work,
because his work indicates something much more important than what we have so far
understood. It demands not only a much more rigorous critical discourse and theoretical
underpinning, but also a challenge to the established art historical canons. This task will
have to be performed by Africans themselves, because it would be unreasonable to expect
the West to pursue something that would demolish the very foundation on which its
supremacy is based. Mancoba's work was of course also overshadowed by Apartheid in
South Africa. It was prevented from receiving the attention it deserved, for obvious reasons
that such an achievement by a black artist would have demolished all that underpinned and
justified Apartheid. Although it should now be the priority of art historians in South Africa to
look into this matter, and claim what to me is an extraordinary achievement of a 'colonised'
subject, it should concern all those - African or not - who seek truth. Mancoba's
achievement flies in the face of all the binaries that are constructed by colonialism -
White/Black, Coloniser/Colonised, Self/Other, Modern/Primitive, etc - and whose legacies
continue to undermine the freedom of the postcolonial liberated subject, by denying
him/her a place within the genealogy of mainstream modernism. Mancoba has not only
challenged but has demolished these binaries. Without continuing this challenge now,
Africa cannot claim what is in my view its unique achievement that surpasses anything
realised by the rest of the colonised world.
In conclusion I would say that it is not enough to appeal to the West that it should change
its old habits, or try to prove to the West the significance of what Africa has accomplished.
What we need instead is a body of new philosophical ideas capable of not only exposing
and confronting the inhumanity of Eurocentric vision, but which can also present a new
interpretation of modernity so that it becomes a toll for the liberation of humanity, not only
in Africa but also universally. Only then can we build a genuine future for modern art in
Africa, which is not only integrated into the social needs of its diverse societies and
cultures, but also offers a vision that is unique and is its own.
Notes

1. Presented as a paper, 'Modernity, Modernism and the Future of Art in Africa', AICA
(association internationale des critiques d'Art) SEMINAR, Dakar, Senegal, 25 June -3 July
2003.

2. Okwui Enwezor, is a case in point; see his essay 'The Black Box', Documenta
11_Platform 5: Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz Publishers, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany,
2002.

3. This letter was distributed among the public during the 6th Dakar Biennale, Dakar, May
2004.
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