Negrophilia : avant-garde Paris and black culture in the 1920s
"Negrophilia, from the French negrophilie, means love of black culture, and was the term used by the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s to affirm their defiant love of the negro as a provocative challenge to bourgeois values. This book explores the historical ambiguities and racial complexities of 1920s Paris and describes the short-lived craze that overtook the city when black culture became highly fashionable and a sign of being modern." "Avant-garde artists and writers courted black personalities such as Josephine Baker, Henry Crowder and Langston Hughes for their sense of 'otherness', Picasso, Brancusi, Giacometti, Leger, Man Ray, Sonia Delaunay, Bataille, Apollinaire and Nancy Cunard, among many others, enthusiastically collected African sculptures, wore tribal jewelry and clothes, and adopted black forms in their work. Their 'African' style influenced a larger audience anxious to be in vogue."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2000
Thames & Hudson, London, 2000