This document provides an overview of a seminar on Modern African Art. It will be taught on Tuesdays from 3-6pm in Room 014 Hayden Hall. The instructor is Dr. Onoyom Ukpong and their office hours are Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30-3:30pm. The seminar will examine crucial questions around the evolution, proliferation, legitimacy and status of modern African art through assigned readings and discussions. It will be structured in three parts - retrospective analysis, active critical writing, and scheduled oral presentations. Students will be graded based on attendance, an oral presentation, and a final seminar paper.

1. Modern Africa Art
ARTH 441/540
Instructor: Dr. Onoyom Ukpong
Meeting: Tuesdays, 3 – 6.00 pm., Room 014 Hayden Hall
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 1:30-3:30:00 noon, Faculty Commons
E-mail Enquiries: onoyom_ukpong@subr.edu

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Introduction
Certain crucial questions arise about modern African art, its evolution,
proliferation, legitimacy and status quo. From the left come skepticisms about
the presence of modern properties in African art almost as frequently as
questions arise about the absence of “essential properties” from art of the
continent. Still, answers to these questions remain far-fetched, in the most
part. We are not certain of what the answers are—not because we have not
asked but because we have not relied on recent answers that would lead to
finding out about the very nostalgia for the past that influences creation of
modern African art. The African peoples’ quest for retention of aspects of their
ancestral traditions has nurtured modern African art from its birth to
adolescence. Along this evolutionary track have ancient characteristics of
premodern African art found home in most of the continent’s modern art. The
consciousness of this cultural continuity distinguishes the modern African art
from its Western genres of the same art-historical period.
Despite the William Fagg declaration of the West African region as culturally
diverse and resourceful in global cultural studies, Africa’s modern traditions
remain largely understudied, worsened by the preconceived alien notion of
validating these traditions solely from the Western perspective of interpretation
of a visual art, rather than from the African viewpoint of artistic consciousness.
This calls to question what visual art is to do for the people whom it is created
to work for. Consequently, most of Western researchers and philosophers study
modern African art aiming to validate it on the basis of how it should look like
rather than what it is created to look like and the purpose it is meant to serve.
Others are oblivious of the cross-cultural exchange factor that brought about
the emergence of modern African art and thus hold inaccurate knowledge of its
stylistic legitimacy, maturity and autonomy.
While Janson, Arnason, Adams, Benton and diYanni characterize specific
modern African art traditions as having evolved too slowly compared to
Western art traditions in corresponding art-historical period, the question of
authenticity and reception of modern African art in the Western World becomes
a subject of immense controversy. Thus, the philosophical ground of its
rejection rests questionably on purported “absence of essential properties” from
within what is typically modern African art. If the reassurance of our want of
an answer to the question of absence of these properties from modern African
art is desirable, then we can rely on literary work by the following institutional
heavyweights on African art: William Fagg, Beier, Willett, and Kasfir. But there
are others in their company: Ottenberg, Mazrui, Visona, Ekpo Eyo, Sieber,
Adepegba, Nzegwu, Okoye, and Ukpong.

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Format
The seminar is structured in three sets of reading: the retroactive [analytic
study of traditions in the weekly assigned readings], the active [critical writing
about art issues in the readings], and the passive [the scheduled oral
presentation].
The first set of readings guides seminar participants through a geographic
survey of and historical facts about Africa; to its ethnographic and political
histories; and to its peoples and their artistic consciousness from in the 1800s
to the 1950s. It introduces works of art resulting from art practices in the post-
missionary and post-colonial Africa. As we read the readings, we will attempt
to: 1) identify art patrons and interest groups that influenced art creation, 2)
develop a series of working assumptions of post-colonial African art styles in
their hybridity, 3) study scenes and events that brought about stylistic shifts,
particularly events that forced and nurtured the default notion of cultural
civilization by Westernization.
In the second set of readings we will: 1) study, in tableaux, post-World War II
traditions in Africa and their stylistic diffusion into postmodern traditions from
the continent, 2) assess these traditions in the context of the places of their
creation and use, and 3) determine whether or not the upsurge of social and
structural adjustment programs in post-independent African nations caused
new traditions of art to flourish in the 1970s, especially in Nigeria. In the
foregoing respects, we will be reading the assigned readings guided by the
question of how truly influential these national social and structural programs
were on art practice exposition seen in the period.
The third set of readings is adjunct to the first and the second and is meant for
seminar participants to read and gain knowledge of art institutionalization in
select West African nations: Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, Cote D’iVoir,
Senegal, Mali, and parts of Cameroon. Participants will then choose to pursue
their individual research topics, developing these into finished papers for oral
presentations and submission on the last day of seminar: December 2, 2008.
Grading
Attendance and participation: 20%
Seminar formal oral presentation: 20%
Seminar paper: 60%

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Schedule
Week 1: Introduction
8/16 Introduction to seminar scope and format, and to the weekly
assigned readings and expectations. Although some materials in
the first set of readings are selected from major historical and
anthropological scholarships, they are art-related and resourceful
for participants to use in challenging the subject and to connect
the dots between African art and its purpose, and between the
work of art and the scenes and event that influenced their
creation.
Week 2: Trans-Saharan Connections
08/26 Seminar Meeting: Scheduled discussion on the following assigned
readings.
Readings: 1) Visona, 19-23, 32-39
2) Akak, Eyo. The Palestine Origin of the Efik. Calabar: Akak and
Sons, 1986.
3] Sieber, Roy and R. Walker. African Art in the Cycle of Life.
Washington DC: National Museum of African Art, 1987. p. 24-25,
46-51, 128-131.
Week 3: Art, and the Political Institution
09/02 No Meeting, Labor Day:
Readings: 1) Blier, S. The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Forms. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall
Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
2) Ukpong, O. Contemporary Southern Nigeria Art in Comparative
Perspective: Reassessment and Analysis 1935-2002. Binghamton:
2006, 251-257.
Week 4: Art, Mythology, and Cosmology
09/09 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) Visona, 130-144
2) Richards, Polly. “Masques Dogon in a Changing World.” African
Arts 38, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 46-53, +93.
Week 5. Art, Representation, and Religion
09/16 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.

5. Ukpong/Modern African Art/Fall 2008 Page 4 of 6
Readings: 1) Hackett, Rosalind. Art and Religion in Africa. London: Cassell,
1996.
2) Adepegba, C. Nigerian Art: Its Traditions and Modern Tendencies.
Ibadan: Jodad Publishers, 1995.
Week 6. Sunjata and Keita: Bridging the Contemporary and the Traditional
09/23 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) Conde, Djanka, ed. Sunjata. A West African Epic of the Mande
Peoples. Trans. David C. Conrad. Hackett Publishing Co, 2004.
[Textbook. Not on electronic reserve]
2) Gugler, Josef. African Film. Re-Imagining a Continent.
Bloomington: Indiana Univiversity Press, 2003. p. 36-42.*
3) Sieber, Roy and Roslyn Walker. African Art in the Circle of Life.
Washington D.C: National Museum of Art, 1989, 116-126.
Week 7. Bridging the Contemporary and the Traditional continued
09/30 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) Brown, Evelyn. Africa’s Contemporary Art and Artists. New York:
Harmon Foundation Inc., 1996.
2) Brooks, Dorothy. “The Influence of African Art on Contemporary
European Art.” African Affairs: Journal of the Royal African Society
55 (1956): 51-59.
Week 8. Art, Marking, and Sculptural Installation
10/07 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. Contemporary African Art. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1999. p. 155-165.
2) Nzegwu, N. Issues in Contemporary African Art. Binghamton:
ISSA, 1998, 19-46
3) Ukpong, O. Contemporary Southern Nigeria Art in Comparative
Perspective: Reassessment and Analysis 1935-2002.Binghamton:
2006, 100-140
Week 9. Art, Marking, and Sculptural Installation continued
10/14 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) McClusky, Pamela. Art from Africa. Long Steps Never Broke a Back.
Seattle Art Museum, 2002. p. 79-113.
2) Nzegwu, N. (1998), 67-68.
3) Ukpong, O. (2006): 201-207.

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Week 10. Conceptual Art
10/21 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Readings: 1) Ottenberg, S. New Traditions from Nigeria. With a foreword by
Isidore OKpewho.Washington: The Smithsonian Institute Press,
1997.
2) Hopkins, David, After Modern Art: 1945-2000.
Questions to guide discussion: In what ways are styles of works
featured in Ottenberg (1997) similar to ancient art styles? Can themes of
works in this Ottenberg text be distinguished from themes of works
produced in the western world? How opaque are the visual elements of
the works?
Week 11. Conceptual Art continued
10/28 Seminar Meeting: Discuss the following assigned readings.
Reading: 1) Ottenberg, S. New Traditions from Nigeria. With a foreword by
Isidore Okpewho. Washington: The Smithsonian Institute Press,
1997.
Questions to guide discussion: Given conceptual works seen in
Ottenberg (1997), how true is it to say that there is acute stylistic
departure from premodern to modern; and how consistent is this
departure with the post-World War II reconstruction of art styles? Are
these works comparable to those produced in other West-African
countries, how and how not?
Week 12. Research Projects Begin
11/04
Students pursuing individual projects begin choosing topics and
compiling a working bibliography; those working on the collaborative
project will make an initial trip to a museum or art gallery and take
notes, map out their research plans, define scope of research, divide into
research groups and assign tasks.
Week 13.
11/11 No Meeting

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Week 14. Status Reports
11/18 Seminar Meeting: Students working on individual research
projects will have completed an outline of their scope of work. Students
working on the collaborative project will inform me of the status of the
work they have done so far.
Week 15. Individual and Collaborative Research
11/25 No Meeting, Thanksgiving Day Week: Students will continue
on their research projects
Week 16. Deadline for Submission of Seminar Paper
12/02 Research Paper Due
Additional resource.
There is no required textbook for this seminar. However, the following
texts are recommended:
Hopkins, David, After Modern Art: 1945-2000
Taylor, Brandon, Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970.
Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing about Art [7th ed]. London:
Longman, 2003.
Goldblatt, D., and Lee Brown. Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the
Arts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2005.
Identify books and essays on sub-Saharan art (general and specific kinds) in
the university library catalog, SAGE. Focus your search for data and research
on artists rather than on art of your choosing. In either case, looking at their
social life, customs, and culture of the artists will be beneficial to you finding
out about the forces driving artistic consciousness in modern Africa and to
your discovery of the materials of engagement. Search the following fields using
a Subject search and the subdivisions as well (if available).
The following are some of the useful subject search guides:
Akan African People Art, African – Catalogs
Art African Art, Ghanaian
Art African 20th Century Art, Lobi
Art African Catalogs Art, Nigerian, Exhibitions
Art African Exhibitions Ashanti — Ghana
Art African History Ashanti (African people)
Art Black Zaire [Congo] Ashanti (African people) Social life
Art Nigerian, Nigeria Nsukka Bambara [African People]
Art Senufo Baule [African People]
Art Yoruba Congo (Republic) -- Social life and customs