Contemporary Afro and two-sidedness: Black diaspora aesthetic practices and the art market

Abstract

This paper examines the cases of five mid-career artists with Afro origins – Ghada Amer, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare, and Kara Walker – using interviews and other data provided by the artists, dealers, curators, contemporary art historians, and a collector. Such a variety of voices follows Negri [2009. Art and Multitude: Nine Letters on Art, Followed by Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labour. Translated by E. Emery. Cambridge, MA: Polity], who suggests a two-sidedness of art as activity and commodity. Black diaspora aesthetic practices – double consciousness, associated with both Du Bois [1903. The Souls of Black Folk. http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html] and Gilroy [1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], and post-black, linked to Golden [2001. Freestyle. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem] – are addressed as part of an evolution of multiple identities. This is about how these artists negotiate the social structure they find themselves inhabiting and encountering to create meaning. These artistic phenomena, as commodities dictated by the circulation of capital, draw attention to the contemporary art market. The management of artistic relationships between artists and their dealers emphasizes what Granovetter [1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510], [1992. “Economic Institutions as Social Constructions: A Framework for Analysis.” Acta Sociologica 35: 3–11] calls social embeddedness, the interdependence of economic and non-economic actions.

Keywords:

• double consciousness
• post-black
• social embeddedness
• contemporary art
• aesthetics
• art market
• Negri

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of Sotheby's Institute of Art – London, where this research has its origins as part of the MA in Art Business, in providing continuing access to its various art market databases. The views expressed are those of the authors.

Notes

1. Douglas Camp (b. 1958 in Nigeria; see http://www.sokari.co.uk/) has lived and worked in the UK for over 25 years; her work, predominately sculpted in steel, is strongly influenced by African culture and inspired by her Kalabari heritage. The Living Memorial (2006) is a case in point. It is a sculpture in the form of a bus that toured the UK, was a monument to the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of eight leaders of the Ogoni people that were hanged by the Nigerian military regime in 1995. According to curator David Bailey (Platform 2006), Douglas Camp's sculpture radically challenges our ideas about what a ‘memorial’ means. It could not be further away from the Victorian concept of a static bronze figure. … Britain's civic spaces are still overwhelmingly dominated by centuries of conventional monuments to aristocracy, empire and colonialism.

2. Primary market dealers – or gallerist as a preferred term in Europe – represent artists. Primary market refers to the first time a work is sold. Subsequent resales of the work take place on the secondary market, which can be facilitated by the original dealer, another dealer, or at auction.

Collecting art is a leisured recreational activity – not unlike breeding racehorses, racing yachts, or stocking a wine cellar – that requires money (Moulin 1987/1967; Bourdieu 1984/1979; Becker 1982). With new bases of wealth – including from emerging economies – it is not surprising that the language of private wealth management, namely high net worth individuals (HNWIs) as a target market, has been part of the financialization of art, the treatment of art as an alternative asset class. With investable assets (excluding principal residence) of $1 million, HNWIs are considered the point of entry for private wealth management services. In many respects, this represents the ‘1%’ addressed by the so-called Occupy movement's strapline ‘We are the 99%.’ The contemporary art market has been likened, in the vein of Saatchi's comment, to a stock market with a thousand really valuable shares (that is artists).

3. It is argued that Robert Farris Thompson used the term post-black in 1991, and that the term was re-appropriated in 2001 by Golden (Boyle 2011).

4. For representative images of works by the artists, refer to the following websites:

Ghada Amer http://www.ghadaamer.com/ghada/Ghada_Amer.html;

Julie Mehretu http://whitecube.com/artists/julie_mehretu/ and http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/julie-mehretu/;

Wangechi Mutu http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_9/ and http://www.gladstonegallery.com/mutu.asp;

Yinka Shonibare http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/;

Kara Walker http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/.

5. Approximately 30% of the artists in Artfacts's top 500 are dead. For example, in August 2012, Warhol and Picasso occupy the top two places, respectively. The first living artists are Bruce Nauman (no. 3) and Gerhard Richter (no. 4).

6. ‘The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain’ (Hayward Gallery, 1989); ‘Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain 1966–1996’ (Bronx Museum of Arts, the Caribbean Center, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1998); ‘Freestyle’ (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001); ‘Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora’ (Museum of African Art, 2003–2004); ‘Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent’ (Museum Kunst Palace in Dusseldorf, Hayward Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2004–2007); ‘Flow’ (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2008); ‘Angaza Africa: African Art Now’ (October Gallery in London, 2008); and ‘Afro-Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic’ (Tate Liverpool, 2009). The Venice Biennale has been a site of engagement: in 2001 ‘Authentic/Ex-Centric: Africa In and Out of Africa’ was curated by Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe (see Hassan and Dadi 2001; Oguibe and Enwezor 1999); in 2003 Fred Wilson represented the USA and Chris Ofili represented the UK; and in 2007 works by diasporan African artists, namely Amer, Bili Bidjocka, Mounir Fatmin, Kendall Geers, Ingrid Mwangi, Olu Oguibe, Ofili, and Shonibare, were exhibited in the first African pavilion – a stark contrast to when, in 1990, only five contemporary African artists were exhibited.