UPenn and Yale African Art History jobs

As if the news about the African Art History job announcement by the Department of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League university based in Philadelphia is not big enough, Yale University's History of Art Department has just announced that it is also in the market for a "replacement"--if you could ever imagine a junior scholar replacing that monument called Robert Farris Thompson. I cannot remember the last time two Ivy League universities are searching for an African art historian at the same time. I am watching to see they hire; thankfully, there are a couple of really smart young scholars out there! 

Egyptian Surrealism Exhibition in Cairo

Palace of Arts, Cairo

The historic exhibition, When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938-1965), organized by Salah M. Hassan and Hoor Al-Qasimi at the Palace of Arts, Cairo closes in about week, and I count myself fortunate to have been able to see it. I shall write more about this exhibition, which because of the depth of research and amazing scale of it, deserves fuller comment (please, please, Salah and Hoor, make sure the accompanying book comes out soon!). But as far as exhibitions go, this is a milestone for the African continent. Congratulations Salah and Hoor, and your curatorial team at the Sharjah Art Foundation, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and the American University in Cairo. Here are a few images from the installation.

Exhibition panel

Installation view with Carlo Desidero's Satan Around the World, n. d. (left)

Photographic self-portraits by the enigmatic Van Leo

Archival documents by Art and Liberty Group

Hadi El-Ghazzar, Man and Cat, 1952

Kamal Youssef, Hoda, 1942

Installation view

"Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965"

Haus der Kunst, Munich

The unprecedented exhibition of international postwar art organized by Okwui Enwezor, Cathy Siegel and Ulrich Wilmes opened last Thursday at the Haus der Kunst, Munich. I wager that this is one of the most--actually the most--consequential exhibition of modern art during the twenty years following the end of the Second World War. It is a staggering exhibition that only Okwui could have conceived, and only the HdK could have made possible. I cannot imagine this exhibition, by the sheer scale of it, and given all the prized works from five continents it brought together, travelling to any other museum. So, if you can, and if you are really invested in modern art, you better go see this exhibition. After it, the navel-gazing and parochial histories told and defended by museums in Europe and America for years will be utterly indefensible. Unfortunately, I cannot as yet post any photos from the exhibition, as photos were not allowed. But I will post, as soon as possible, images of the works and installation shots. And by the way, the exhibition is accompanied by an 800+-page book, which I am guessing will be available soon. Congrats Okwui and the curatorial team, for this monument in scholastic and exhibition making.

Yes, there was a curatorial roundtable featuring Geeta Kapur, Cathy Siegel, Ulrich Wilmes and moi, with Okwui as moderator.

Postwar on Haus der Kunst facade with works by American Roy Liechtensten and Nigerian Collette Omogbai 

Director of Haus der Kunst, Okwui Enwezor welcoming guests to the Curatorial Roundtable on Friday

Co-curator of "Postwar" Cathy Siegel

Obiora Udechukwu and Okwui Enwezor

Salah Hassan and Obiora Udechukwu

Udechukwu and Marc-Andre Schmachtel, former director of Goethe-Institut, Lagos

On Ben Enwonwu's "Anyanwu"

Anyanwu presentation at the UN Headquarters, NY, 1966
Photo Source: Courtesy, Daily Times of Nigeria photo archives

Ben Enwonwu, Anyanwu, 1954-1955
Image courtesy: Independent.com

In 5 October 1966, a few days after the country's sixth independence anniversary, the Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations presented to Secretary-General U Thant an enigmatic sculpture. Called Anyanwu, it was by the acclaimed Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu (most sources wrongly claim that this event took place in 1961). This was a remarkable event that gave Nigeria the opportunity to affirm its position as a leading, newly independent African nation poised to take its place in the global community. And the ambassador, Chief Adebo, used the occasion to remind the world of European Modernism's debt to African art, as well as modern African artists' legitimate claims to Africa's long, rich cultural and artistic legacies.

The ambassador hoped that the presence of a work representing a sun deity by Africa's most famous artist at the United Nations Headquarters would enhance international peace. But what made Anyanwu – an edition of which is offered in Bonhams Africa Now sale in May – a potent symbol of modern, independent Africa? And why, despite being one of his earliest works, is it considered by many to be Enwonwu's finest, the summation of his vision as a self-aware African Modernist, yet equally proud of his Igbo heritage?

Anyanwu's formal significance lies in its dramatic combination of movement and stasis, realism and abstraction, anthropomorphic and vegetal forms, grace and power. Though anyanwu literally means 'the sun' in the Igbo language, this bronze is of a 6ft 10in woman dressed in the royal regalia of the Bini people: a 'chicken-beak' headdress, heavy coral necklaces and bracelets. But nothing in Bini or Igbo traditional sculpture explains Anyanwu's distinctive body. A Nefertiti-type neck – seen here in Anyanwu – is a clear indication of feminine beauty in both cultures, yet her skinny, near-emaciated limbs are reminiscent not so much of traditional representations of powerful female deities as modern-day haute-couture models.

It might be that the artist's desire for figural poetry drove not just the creation of the sculpture's lithe body, but also the decision to progressively transform her lower extremities into a thin monolithic form. Seen from the front, Anyanwu looks less of a powerful deity than a spirit that is too light to give in to gravity's pull. As if to complete the drama, Enwonwu has given this graceful, even delicate figure a menacing gaze, reminding us that this is the powerful sun deity, not a curtseying Bini princess.

Although the United Nations' Anyanwu was commissioned by the Nigerian government in the 1960s, the original version, which still stands in front of the National Museum in Lagos, was produced in 1954-1955 to mark the museum's establishment by British artist and archaeologist Kenneth Crosthwaite Murray, who was Enwonwu's first art teacher. The installation of Anyanwu brought to full circle the decades-long insistence by Enwonwu and Murray on the centrality of indigenous arts and cultures in the making of African and Nigerian modernity.

Thus, while the museum was the culmination of Murray's work towards safeguarding exemplary artistic and craft traditions of Nigeria, in Anyanwu, Enwonwu realized as never before his search for a modern artistic expression of Igbo aesthetics and metaphysics. In the 1955 Anyanwu, Enwonwu found a favorite form and theme that he would explore for many years as part of his wider interest in the feminine form, dancing figures and Igbo masked spirits.

Enwonwu, born in 1917, came from a family of artists – his father was a respected traditional sculptor in his eastern Nigerian hometown, Onitsha. The young Enwonwu was among the first students taught by Murray, who, in 1927, was the first art teacher appointed by the colonial government. While Enwonwu's claim that he was initially trained by his father, who died when he was only three, seems improbable, there is no doubt that he cherished his lineage of traditional artists. This inheritance seems to have recommended him to Murray, whose pedagogy emphasized training young boys from families of traditional artists to become new-age upholders of indigenous arts and crafts.

But Enwonwu's ambitions extended beyond – and sometimes clashed with – Murray's nativist vision for modern African art. While he wished to draw deeply from Igbo cultural heritage, he also aspired to master academic conventions and set his eyes on becoming a resolutely Modernist artist, at home both in his native Igbo culture, and on the international art scene.

In the summer of 1944, aged 27, Enwonwu sailed to England to attend the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. He graduated in 1947 with a prize for sculpture. The following year, he earned a MA in Anthropology and Ethnography, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. On returning in 1948, he was appointed the first Nigerian art adviser to the federal government.

Enwonwu's reputation at home and overseas grew quickly. Exhibitions at the respected Berkeley and Piccadilly galleries in London, Galerie Apollinaire in Milan, and at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris garnered considerable critical attention: in 1950, the sculptor Jacob Epstein acquired Enwonwu's Yoruba Girl. The noted art critic Eric Newton extolled the "lithe rhythm" and craftsmanship of his wood sculpture, and the Manchester Guardian even compared his "daring" work to that of Henry Moore. That was also the year Enwonwu made his first trip to the United States as, according to Ebony magazine, "Africa's greatest artist."

Crucial to Enwonwu's development was his encounter with Negritude, the black affirmation literary movement led in the interwar years by Paris-based francophone writers such as Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas. The political implications of Negritude were not lost on Enwonwu.

Mahmoud Mukhtar, Egypt's Renaissance, 1919-1927
Image courtesy: Wikipedia

Meta Warrick Fuller, Ethiopia Awakening, 1914
Image courtesy, ExplorePAarthistory.com

Edna Manley, Negro Aroused, 1935
Image courtesy: Wikipedia

This connection helps us appreciate another aspect of Anyanwu: it was Enwonwu's response to the very rhetoric of African cultural revival and political independence that had attracted earlier modern sculptors. For instance, works by the American Meta Warrick Fuller such as Ethiopia Awakening (1914), and the Egyptian Mahmoud Mukhtar's Egypt's Renaissance (1919-1927), imagined, respectively, this renaissance as a revived pharaonic princess and a roused sphinx; the Jamaican Edna Manley figured it in Negro Aroused (1935) as an awakened, powerfully built black man. Negritude also meant, to Enwonwu, the reclamation of his Igbo artistic and cultural heritage. It provided him with the ideological grounds for imagining his stylistically modernist work as a continuation of the Igbo sculptural traditions inherited through his father. Here lies the deep significance of Anyanwu. It simultaneously invokes the assertion by Senghor that dance is a unique African expressive form, a mark of Africanness. It also gives form to a powerful deity for which the Igbo people had no human image. In other words, it depicts an elegant African dancer (Enwonwu produced his Africa Dances series during this period). But, as her piercing gaze implies, it is the manifestation of the Igbo sun god.

* This text was published, in slightly different form, in Bonhams Magazine earlier this spring. 

Princeton's Fung Global Fellowship program: Call for Applications

The 2017-18 Princeton Fund Global Fellowship application is open. This is a fantastic one-year fellowship that has helped launch the academic careers of young scholars, including a couple of Africa-based scholars that have gone through it. The theme this year is "Politics of Resentment." About six fellows, living and working outside of the US,  are selected each year.  The application deadline is Nov. 1. Please spread the word!

About the Program

The Fung Global Fellows Program, inaugurated in the 2013-14 academic year, reflects Princeton University’s commitment to engaging with scholars from around the world and inspiring ideas that transcend borders. The program brings exceptional international early-career faculty members working in the social sciences and the humanities to Princeton for a year of research, writing, and collaboration.  It is administered by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), which serves as a site for integration and joint activity across all of the University's international and area studies programs.

Each year, the Fung Global Fellows Program selects six international scholars to be in residence at Princeton for one academic year and to engage in research and discussion around a common theme. The program includes a public seminar series where the fellows will present their work to the university community. Fellowships will be awarded through a competitive application process to scholars employed outside the United States who have demonstrated outstanding scholarly achievement, exhibit unusual intellectual promise, and are still early in their careers.

This program is supported by a gift from William Fung, group chairman of Li & Fung, a Hong Kong-based multinational group of export and retailing companies. Fung earned a BSE in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1970 and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business in 1972, and then began his career at the family firm. He joined Princeton's Board of Trustees in 2009, and has previously supported Princeton's groundbreaking financial aid program. "In this new age of globalization, Princeton should be even more involved in fostering scholarship everywhere it takes place," Fung said. "Through this gift, I hope to enable Princeton to become a stronger catalyst for developing new and exciting research and for creating international scholarly communities." 

Obiora Udechukwu Retrospective Opens in August

Obiora Udechukwu Retrospective

The Richard F. Brush 

ART GALLERY

& Permanent Collection

St. Lawrence University

OJEMBA: A Fifty-Year Retrospective: Selected Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by Obiora Udechukwu, 1966-2016

August 17 - October 12, 2016

Painting by Obiora Udechukwu

The Richard F. Brush Art Gallery is pleased to mark 2016 with an exhibition to honor the 20-year anniversary of Obiora Udechukwu at St. Lawrence University, as well as the artist’s own 70th anniversary. “Ojemba,” which means “[A] traveller to distant towns/places/countries,” is taken from the Igbo adage “Ojemba e nwe ilo,” or “A traveler to distant lands does [or should] not have enemies.” A range of paintings, prints, and drawings spanning five decades will be included in the exhibition. In addition, a full-color exhibition catalogue will include over 40 photographs and details; an interview with the artist by curator Mark Denaci, Associate Professor of Art & Art History at St. Lawrence; and statements by the artist, Gallery Director Catherine Tedford, and Vice President/Dean of Academic Affairs Val Lehr. In conjunction with the exhibition, noted Nigerian art historian and artist Chika Okeke-Agulu, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, will come to campus to give a public lecture and meet with faculty and students.

• Lecture by Chika Okeke-Agulu, Thursday, September 15, @ 7:00PM, in Griffiths 123

Obiora Udechukwu, artist, poet, and university professor, was educated at prestigious Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was Professor of Fine and Applied Arts at Nsukka for many years before he moved to St. Lawrence University, as Charles A. Dana Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts in 1997. While at Nsukka, he played a prominent role in the resuscitation of interest in Igbo arts, but especially in Uli, the abstract and elegant drawing and painting on the human body and walls by women, and Nsibidi, the ancient pictographic writing associated with elite clubs in southeastern Nigeria. Arguably, no account of contemporary Nigerian art will be complete without mentioning the contribution of the artists associated with Nsukka.

Udechukwu’s interest in Igbo studies is wide. He has researched and published on Igbo minstrelsy and epics. In 1982, he edited with Chinua Achebe an anthology of Igbo poems titled Aka Weta. A founding member of the Aka Circle of Exhibiting Artists, Udechukwu has exhibited widely in Africa, Europe, USA, Asia, and the Caribbean, and his artworks are in public collections including Nigeria’s National Gallery of Art; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Newark Museum; and Iwalewa Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Additional information about the exhibition will be posted when it is available.

Current Exhibitions | Exhibitions Archive | Events