Teaching and Cultural Domination: Re-Examining Trajectories of Traditional African Sculpture through Critique

Abstract

This article examines the process by which early twentieth-century European modernists and African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance negotiated the influence of traditional African sculpture. With a focus on African American painter Aaron Douglas, the author investigates how and to what end his generation of African American artists incorporated these influences. The author additionally discusses how their methods, and the conditions surrounding them, compare to the aforementioned modernists. In examining the roots of these respective trajectories, the author discovered that various people and factorsincluding critics, cultural and political leaders,