Harlem and Abroad

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Molly Aitkin, Nadine Atallah, Claire Davies, Amr Kamal and Foad Torshizi for recommending readings in South Asian and Middle Eastern art history, and Leon Wainwright for his suggestion to submit this essay.

Notes

1 ‘There’s a certain artistic pattern that I follow … I used the Egyptian form, that is to say, the head was in perspective in a profile flat view, the body, shoulders down to the waist turned half way, the legs were done also from the side and the feet were also done in a broad perspective’ (Douglas 123).

2 ‘Oxford University Cosmopolitan Club. Rules.’ Alain Locke Papers 164-161-7, Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University (hereafter ALP). For the approximate date of the Club’s founding, see Locke ‘To Our Readers’. Accounts of the Cosmopolitan Club include Green 147–56; Zoeller; Harris and Molesworth 62–80; and Stewart 115–18, 131–32, 142–44, 148–57, 162–65, 171.

3 ‘Seme, Pixley’, Folder 10, Box 285, Historical Biographical Files, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Archives.

4 Bankim’s description of the statue derives from the first episode of the sixth-century Devi Mahatmya, in which the Mother awakens a sleeping Vishnu to destroy two threatening demons.

5 On the complicated question of whether or to what degree Bankim’s nationalism excluded Muslims, see Gupta, ‘Bankimchandra’ 75–76; Mukherjee and Maddern 9–11; and Lipner in Chatterji, Anandamath 72–84.

6 In an excerpt from a paper on ‘Cosmopolitanism’, Locke argued that those who value cosmopolitanism for its own sake ‘seem to be misled by a false analogy much after the fashion of the man who travels to “enlarge his horizon” … we carry our horizons with us and are unable to see through any eyes other than our own’ (‘Epilogue’ 16).

7 Farid Nameh, Hamed El Alaily and Satya V. Mukerjea to Locke, 18 May [1908?], ALP 164-160-21. On the Oriental Club see also Harris and Molesworth 79; Stewart 155.

8 ‘The Constitution of the African Union Society’, ALP 164-160-29.

9 Arthur Schomburg to John Edward Bruce, 2 June 1913, page 2, item 19, reel 1, box 1, Sc Micro R 905 MG11, John Edward Bruce Papers, Research and Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.

10 A verso inscription by the artist reads: ‘Bobin Loom, Ivory Coast, Baule’. Gagliardi (58–59 Cat. 40) attributes the object to a Senufo artist. See also Sweeney 36 Cat. 139, np Cat. 139.

11 See also G Tchernova, ‘Recherches de nouvelles voies de développement des arts plastiques et artisanaux en Afrique tropicale. IIe Congrès International des Africanistes. Communication de la délégation de l’URSS’, 1967, bi III, Archives Nationales du Sénégal; and Selby Mvusi, ‘The Social Significance of the Arts in Africa Today’, 1961, AHB 2191, MoMA Archives.