Notes
- The term “neomodernism” is generally described as a return to the certainties of formalist modernism in art and design. An early use of the word appears in Victor A. Grauer, “Modernism/Postmodernism/Neomodernism.” The Downtown Review, 3, 1–2 (1981–82). My use of neomodernism focuses on the political implications of the modernist sublime in relation to African discourses of modernity in art. For an extensive analysis of neomodernism in relation to African art history, see Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, “The Perils of Unilateral Power: Neomodernist Metaphors and the New Global Order”, in Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee, eds. Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
- Bruce Knauft, ed. Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
- Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). For a sustained analysis of Chakrabarty's theory applied to modern African art, see Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (Rochester: The University of Rochester Press, 2008), 9–12.
- The exhibitions cited are documented in Susan Vogel, ed. Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art (New York: Center for African Art, 1991); Okwui Enwezor, ed. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994 (Munich: Prestel, 2001); Simon Njami, ed. Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2007). The critical reviews cited are Olu Oguibe, “Review of Africa Explores,” African Arts 22, 1 (1993), 16–22; John Peffer, “Recalling Africa's Modernity,” Art Journal 63, 2 (2004), 94–96; and Anthony Downey, “Curating Africa: Africa Remix and the Categorial Dilemma,” Wasafiri 46(2005), 47–55.