Empire

Lecture by Wendy Meakins, my personal notes..

This day we mainly talked about Africa indigenous technology, Black bodies in relation to empire

The starting point is the western creation, point of view that Africa is a single entity; even though it is made of 53 countries and that they are 2,000 languages spoken.

The first colonial contact with Africa was made by the Portuguese but bartering, they wanted gold so they brought other products...

The English and the French colonised in a more violent way and suck out everything they could from the countries.

We had interesting exchanges between us, about the races and the ideas we had about them.

We talked about the colonisation heritage in art and about artist who work closely to their origins and also those who push the social boundaries, to open our minds.

Josephine Baker, the author of Negrophilia played with stereotype in her association with Paul Collin who did sketches for the French magazine "Negre" he sketched Josephine baker accentuating her physical features and using prejudice that people have.

The Harlem Renaissance was also a big artistic revolution for black artist and the Jazz was its big star, being a avant-garde way of dealing with Music, very ingenious.

Here are some other artist that participated to this "breaking the European art" movement:

Nancy Cunard, who was the heiress of the Cunard Line shipping businesses, in 1928 she married Henry Crowder and Afro-American Jazz musician, she wanted to be part of the African culture and fought against racism.

Aaron Douglas, a painter who is closely linked to the Harlem Renaissance by his painting, a very explicit work is The Crisis

James Van der Zee, a photographer in Harlem he photographer Jean Michel Basquiat

Kieth Piper, an artist from the West-Indies, whose picture of the world hold by black hands express his reality,

I particularly like it because it is very explicit about our own personal representation of the world and the colonialist and "superior" attitude a lot of Westerner adopt.

Sonia Boyce, a British Afro-Caribbean artist with her work "we are English"

Yinka Shonibare 1962, African textiles

What I will remember from this lecture and the previous one is that art is closely linked with identity, and that the artist that are using their identity in their work always end up with a very touching sometime shocking outcome which provoke a reflexion to the viewer.