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  • In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995
  • Ginette Curry
Elisabeth Harney . In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960–1995. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004. 316 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $26.95. Paper.

Elizabeth Harney's In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960–1995 provides a historical survey of intellectual and artistic accomplishments in postindependence Senegal. It is a detailed and innovative study of the period that spans two presidencies: that of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of postindependence Senegal from 1960 until 1980, and that of Abdou Diouf, who succeeded him from 1981 until 2000. Harney analyzes the profound impact Senghor's patronage and philosophy of négritude had on Senegalese arts. While the creation of the Ecole de Dakar represented Senghor's aesthetic of Africanness, the author explains how it has been characterized as a derivative of European primitivism. She also highlights the downsides of such a patronage system and eventually how it ended.

In the first chapter, "Rhythm as the Architecture of Being: Reflections on Une Ame Nègre," Harney retraces the birth of the négritude movement in the early 1930s in Paris, locating its origin in the pan-Africanism that took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century with W.E.B. Du Bois. At the same time, she expands her analysis of the movement by examining how Paris became the center of a fascination with primitive art. Although Harney acknowledges Senghor's contribution to the blossoming of arts in Senegal, she also notes that his patronage policies were criticized by prominent figures such as Wole Soyinka.

The second chapter, "The Ecole de Dakar: Pan-Africanism in Paint and Textile," surveys the work of a range of Senegalese artists, including painters, muralists, sculptors, and performance-based groups, who worked during the period at the height of Senghor's patronage system. With the 1966 Premier World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, the Ecole de Dakar gained the status of an art-culture system and spearheaded the first debates on the role of art in postindependence Senegal. Despite its accomplishments, Harney points out that many critics deplored the lack of creativity that characterized the négritude artists of that period.

In the following chapter, "Les laboratoires of Avant-Gardism," Harney highlights the establishment of artistic laboratories in the 1970s, starting with the Laboratoire Agit-Art, whose aim was to question the tenets of négritude and to encourage artists to find new approaches toward their work. This marked a change from the artistic trend of the Ecole de Dakar, since the members of the Laboratoire Agit-Art sought to produce art outside the boundaries of government control. For example, artists' use of recycling reflected an approach characterized by a mix of foreign and local forms. Harney surveys their education, practices, and works. She also [End Page 198] assesses modes of display and interpretation of Senegalese art in Dakar and abroad.

Finally, in the last two chapters, "After the Avant-Garde" and "Passport to the Global Art World," Harney explores the complex interactions among cultural nationalism, postcolonial identity, and emergent Senegalese artistic modernism. Highlighting the distinctive cultural history that shaped Senegalese modernism, Harney reveals its innovations, diversity, and dynamism. She also features artists who graduated from the Art School in the early 1990s. Interestingly, the author's assessment of the increasing transnational nature of Dakar's art world leads to a reflection on the marketing of international art.

Though it covers thirty-five years of Senegalese art history, this study would have been more up-to-date if the author had continued her analysis of Senegalese artistic trends until the present.

Ginette Curry
Florida International University
Miami, Florida
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