The academic Okeke-Agulu is a professor of African and African Diaspora Art at Princeton University; he pens an introductory essay that hopes to elucidate the history of how modern and contemporary African art has been presented and written about in recent decades. The essay thus raises issues surrounding identity, representation and the place of the work of African Africans in the global art world. And Joseph L. Underwood, assistant professor of Art History at Kent State University, provides a glossary of terms, art groups and movements.
Featuring an introduction by Chika Okeke-Agulu, the new book from Phaidon will organise 316 artists from 51 countries selected by a panel of art historians, critics, curators and other specialists in the field. Covering 140 years of African art, the book charts production from the continent which has been historically under-acknowledged in the global north and its artistic institutions. The book differs from those which are on a similar subject because it aims to cover the continent in its entirety as opposed to sectioning the art of the continent off into geographical locations, such as North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
The mammoth hardback showcases artists from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities who were born or who have lived across the continent. The bigger and predicted names like El Anatsui, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, and Robin Rhode are featured alongside emerging artists from the region and other artists who the panel deem important whose names aren’t yet established outside of their countries.