The “Black Art” Renaissance:African Sculpture and Modernism Across Continents

Joshua Cohen's The “Black Art” Renaissance is a refreshing and thought-provoking study of African art in the modern world. Primarily concerned with the circulation of African art and ideas about Africa in the twentieth century, the case studies presented in this book will continue to inform our understanding of modernism for years to come. Cohen's research is found at the indistinct intersection of African and European art. From this vantage point, he indicates the concepts that have been used to distort African art by trapping it in a “methodological cul-de-sac where distinctions are out of reach because everything looks the same” (p. x). Static categories such as “primitivism” and art nègre are rightfully deconstructed and reconstructed to reveal the multivalent ways they were employed in different spaces. Next, Cohen unravels a transcontinental history of modernism to reveal complex networks of exchange between sculptural practices in Africa, the avant-garde in Europe,...