A Companion to Modern African Art

Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization.

• A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa
• Includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material
• Features new and complex theoretical arguments about the nature of modernity and Modernism
• Addresses a widely acknowledged gap in the literature on African Art

Monica Blackmun Visonà is Associate Professor in the School of Art and Visual Studies of the University of Kentucky, USA, where she teaches courses on African art and architecture, and art historical methods. The principle author of A History of Art in Africa (2000, 2008), she has also published Constructing African Art Histories for the Lagoons of Côte d’Ivoire (2010), and contributed articles to Art Bulletin and African Arts. She is currently researching the artists of the western Akan peoples for a museum exhibition.

Gitti Salami is Associate Professor of World Art History at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, USA. In a decade of extensive field research in south-eastern Nigeria she has published numerous articles on Yakurr culture in African Arts and Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. She has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship and a grant from the West African Research Association (WARA), and has held resident fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of East Anglia, UK. A forthcoming monograph examines contemporary Yakurr art genres from a postcolonial theoretical standpoint.