In Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, Samantha A. Noël investigates how Black Caribbean and American artists of the early twentieth century responded to and challenged colonial and other white-dominant regimes through tropicalist representation. With depictions of tropical scenery and landscapes situated throughout the African diaspora, performances staged in tropical settings, and bodily expressions of tropicality during Carnival, artists such as Aaron Douglas, Wifredo Lam, Josephine Baker, and Maya Angelou developed what Noël calls "tropical aesthetics"-using art to name and reclaim spaces of Black sovereignty. As a unifying element in the Caribbean modern art movement and the Harlem Renaissance, tropical aesthetics became a way for visual artists and performers to express their sense of belonging to and rootedness in a place. Tropical aesthetics, Noël contends, became central to these artists' identities and creative processes while enabling them to craft alternative Black diasporic histories. In outlining the centrality of tropical aesthetics in the artistic and cultural practices of Black modernist art, Noël recasts understandings of African diasporic art.
ISBN-13: 9781478011408
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication Date: 02-26-2021
Pages: 274
Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)
Series: Visual Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas
Samantha A. Noël is Assistant Professor in Art History at Wayne State University.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Tropicality, Modernity, and the African Diaspora 1
1. American Tropical Modernism: The African Diasporic Reaches of Aaron Douglas's Landscapes 23
2. Brazenly Avant-Garde: Wifredo Lam's Transformation of Cuba's Tropical Terrain 60
3. Early Twentieth-Century Trinidad Carnival: Tropicality and Strategies of Space-Making 96
4. Pan-African Geographies in Motion: The Tropical Performances of Maya Angelou and Josephine Baker 142
Conclusion. The Black Body, Tropicality, and the Black Speculative 177
Notes 195
Bibliography 221
Index 237
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