Modern Art in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: An Introduction to Global Modernisms

“. . . .every Museum of Modern Art in the United States and Europe should be required, in the spirit of truth in advertising, to change its name to Museum of Western Modernism until it has earned the right to do otherwise.”

Holland Cotter NYTimes, 2012

Reminder: British control of India began in 1757, lasted 190 years, and ended in 1947.

Pre-Colonial Mughal Art: Portrait of Amr Singh attributed to Bishin Dasdated 1624 AD

Abanindranath Tagore (India, 1871-1951) My Mother, N/D, c.1920,12.7 x 20.3 cm. “Modernized” Moghul and Rajput styles under the British Raj

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) , “father” of Indian Modernism – poet, novelist, educator, artist, reformer, critic of colonialism, early advocate of Independence for India, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1913

Rabindrinath Tagore and Einstein, July 14, 1930

Dancing Girl, oil painting, 1910?

Poem visually composed

The Sacred Grove, site of Osun-Osogbo festival in Nigeria, a 600 year old ritual that pays homage to the Yoruba Orisha (Goddess) of the Osun River.

Suzanne Wenger (Austrian-Nigerian sculptor) in Sacred Grove, Osogbo, Nigeria

(left) God of Smallpox, clay sculpture by Wenger for the Sacred Grove

Wenger in her home

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Colonisation2.gif

Open link below to follow the geographical history of European colonialism, 1492-2008

African diaspora: “Black Atlantic”

Aina Onabolu, Barrister, 1920sWhat is “modern” about this painting?

Aina Onabolu (Nigerian, 1882-1963), Portrait of a Man, 195519 x 15”, watercolor on board

Aina Onabolu, Nude, 1910 (?) “The Nude corresponds to a drawing reproduced in the obituary by the son Dapo. 1910? I think it was from 1920.”

(Everlyn Nicodemus email 9/5/2012)

The Nude corresponds to a drawing reproduced in the obituary by the son Dapo. 1910? I think it was from 1920.

Picasso, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, 1896 Picasso is 15 years old.

What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood.…So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naiveté. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.”Picasso

Self-Portrait, 1896

Iberian stone relief showing facial structure of 1906 portraits

Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1906Detail, Gertrude Stein, 1906

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Paris, June-July 1907, oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8“The artist is 25 years old.

(left) Edgar Degas, Name Day of the Madame, 1889, monotype and pastel Compare with Les Demoiselles D’Avignon

(left) Paul Cézanne, Large Bathers, oil on canvas, 52 x 86 in.,1900-05 with Les Demoiselles

Henri Matisse, Joy of Life, 1905-06with Les Demoiselles, 1907

(left) Henri Rousseau (French Post-Impressionist Painter, 1844-1910), The Dream, 1910

Transformative influence of African tribal sculpture Picasso’s epiphany in June 1907 at the ethnographic museum in Paris

Braque: “It is as if someone had drunk kerosene to spit fire."

“My first exorcism painting…. For me the masks were not just sculptures. They were magical objects...intercessors...against everything - against unknown threatening spirits....They were weapons . . . to keep people from being ruled by spirits. To help them free themselves. . . . If we give a form to these spirits we become free."

(left) Pablo Picasso, Three Women, 1907-8, oil on canvas, 6’6” x 7’6”(right) Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963), Large Nude, 1908, oil on canvas, 55” x 39”

begun immediately after seeing Les Demoiselles and the first stage of Three Women.

Shared Primitivism: (right) Picasso in Paris studio with Caledonian figures, 1908(left) Braque in Paris studio with African masks, 1911

(left) Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) The Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) 1907, oil on canvas, 36 x 55”, Fauvism

(right) Braque, Large Nude, 1908, oil on canvas, 55” x 39”

Influence of Matisse on Braque (and Picasso). Matisse introduced Picasso to African art in the autumn of 1906.

Picasso, Maquette for Guitar, October 1912, cardboard, string and wire(right) Grebo mask owned by Picasso

(left) Braque’s only documented paper sculpture, photographed in 1914

(right) Wall arrangement in Picasso’s studio, November-December 1912. Picasso’s cardboard guitar generated the concept of the papiers collés around it

(left) Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass, charcoal and papier collé, November 1912

(right) Braque, Fruit Dish and Glass, charcoal and papier collé, September 1912

“LA BATAILLE S’EST ENGAGÉ”: “I have to admit, that after having made the papier collé I felt a great shock, and it was an even greater shock for PicassoWhen I showed it to him” Braques