Page 61 - Studio International - July 1966

The implications of negritude

Commentary from Dakar by Jean Clay

For a whole month in Dakar Africans reflected upon the ence of an original and indigenous African Negro aesthe-
nature and future of their art. The programme of the tic. The 512 first-class exhibits gathered from forty-seven
First World Festival of Negro Arts included a colloquium of museums and thirty-five private collections clearly
French- and English-speaking intellectuals, a hundred showed the diversity and power of Negro sculpture, the
theatre and dance productions and vast exhibitions of main characteristics of which Carl Einstein had described
classical and modern art. The festival was also the occa- as early as 1915. This brilliant asseveration of Africa's
sion of a wide-ranging general discussion on negritude, a past reminded me of the remark of a young Ouolof veter-
concept which arose during the anti-colonialist struggles inarian I met in a bush village : 'I don't know much about
and for thirty years has been the gospel of two French- art but I certainly know that we have a civilization ...'
language poets, Senghor, now president of Senegal, and The Dakar festival did not discuss past African cultures,
Césaire. long recognized by museums and cultures throughout the
This contention that Negro genius has a specifically world, but the concept of negritude and the future of Negro
African quality not found in other civilizations originated art. Although a basically religious rapport between the
well before the Second World War and has two main artist and nature had existed in the past, this has funda-
objectives: to stress that classical African art has distinc- mentally changed over the last two hundred years.
tive characteristics which do not obey the canons of other Animistic society has been ousted by colonialism, Chris-
civilizations, and to combat vigorously the scorn with tianity, Mohammedanism, technology, urbanization,
which African art has for too long been treated. Negritude education, changed methods of administration, the trans-
was to heal the cultural trauma caused by colonialism. formation of agriculture; these have made the sculptor's
To Africans it meant redeeming their souls, personalities ritual obsolete.
and cultures. 'Insulted and enslaved', Sartre wrote in Society, even in the remotest parts of Africa, is fast
1948, 'the emergent African grasps the word 'Negro', so becoming consumer-obsessed. The transistor in the hut,
often flung at him like a stone, taking pride in his very corrugated iron on the roof, the bucket made of plastic,
blackness.' the whisky on the shelf, the stupefying litany of radio
During a leisurely visit to the magnificent exhibition of advertising which proclaims the benefits of such and
classical art at Dakar it was possible to confirm the exist- such a sewing machine or refrigerator from the Casa-