Visual Cultures

The first collectors of African art and artefacts were nineteenth-century explorers. The second were modern art collectors and dealers, fascinated by an art, primarily sculpture, which was in every way opposite to academic European teaching. As fieldwork expanded the knowledge base of African art and performance, masquerades became a major research subject and vehicle for both African history and social theory. However, African visual culture encompasses not only these aesthetic practices but also the visual environment reproduced in print and electronic media. This wider array of imagery has affected indigenous aesthetics since the beginning of its availability in the early stages of European colonization, giving rise to modern African photography and painting

Art · Indigenous · Painting · Photography · Sculpture · Subject (documents) · Visual arts · Visual culture · African history and culture studies · History · Africa · Essays · Historiography