Les arts plastiques de l'Afrique contemporaine. 60 ans d'histoire à Lubumbashi, R-D Congo (review)

In many ways, the history of this book rivals that of its subject. The project goes back to a time not long after the emergence and discovery of popular painting in Katanga (the principal art form covered here). Much like the phenomenon it describes, the inquiries on which the book is based are themselves testimonies to political and economic survival and intellectual commitment under adverse circumstances. Published in a series directed by Bogumil Jewsiewicki and edited by Léon Verbeek, a Salesian missionary and historian who has lived for most of his life in the region (first in rural southern Katanga and later in Lubumbashi), Les arts plastiques de l'Afrique contemporaine covers a wide range of topics.

In his introduction, Verbeek describes how a Ph.D. project, originally conceived but not completed by the late Gaspard Mwewa Kasongo, turned into a vast enterprise of collecting the recorded life histories and works of virtually all artists who had been active in Lubumbashi and its hinterland since the 1960s. "Arts plastiques" includes the activities of colonial and postcolonial institutions (such as the famous Hangar of P. R. Desfossés and the Académie de Beaux Arts) and the vast output of popular painting; but it also includes a variety of objects ranging from wood and malachite carvings to beaten copper, ceramics, pottery, and basketry by artisans often working in large workshops. Jean-Pierre Kalembwe Longwa's sketch, "Social Life of the Lubumbashi Artist" (in chapter 1), is followed by surveys of the forms of education and apprenticeship available to both academic and nonacademic artists (by Sylvestre Cabala Kaleba) and of local the artisanal workshops (by Jean-Pierre Kalembwe Longwa). Kalembwe is also the author of an account (in the first part of chapter 4) of a succession of largely state-sponsored associations of artists; the second part, by Dominique Musonda, describes the problematic relationship between public promotion of the arts (with a focus on the provincial government's "Section de culture et des arts") and the economic interests of the artists, local markets, and dealers. In chapter 5 Léon Verbeek undertakes an analysis of recurrent themes in popular painting, based on a collection that covers about forty years and vast numbers of artists. Chapter 6, by Dominique Musonda Milundu, surveys local galleries, markets, and the worldwide circulation of art and crafts objects produced in Lubumbashi; Léon Verbeek concludes this chapter with notes on local promoters and sponsors. In chapter 7 Sylvestre Cabala Kaleba, Jean-Pierre Kaleba, and Léon Verbeek report on the results of a survey on the display of artworks in private and public spaces of the town. As an appendix, the book provides a inventory of art in public places (churches, schools, bars, hotels, and the like), covering fifty-five localities—in and outside of Lubumbashi.

From the bare outlines, this study might look like a conventional monograph if it were not for the extraordinary, indeed mind-boggling, empirical evidence it draws on. With constant intellectual and material support from Jewsiewicki (especially through his decade-long project, "Memories of Lubumbashi") and, more recently, from the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, Verbeek and his Congolese coworkers have established "data banks" consisting of sixty thousand pages of research notes, four thousand cassettes of recorded life histories, and a collection of more than seven thousand popular paintings. The back cover of the book announces that these data banks, including digital photographs of the paintings, are accessible online through a Web site maintained by the Royal Museum of Central Africa. When this is realized—at the moment the "Lubumarts" is not yet online—Les arts plastiques will be an inexhaustible source.

A huge cultural capital has accumulated in these banks; it is an understatement to say that this study hardly touched on this wealth of material. A quantitative analysis would have...