Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, curator, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. He is a coauthor of Contemporary African Art since 1980 and coeditor (with Okwui Enwezor and Salah M. Hassan) of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, also published by Duke University Press.

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction. Postcolonial Modernism 1

1. Colonialism and the Educated Africans 21

2. Indirect Rule and Colonial Modernism 39

3. The Academy and the Avant-Garde 71

4. Transacting the Modern: Ulli Beier, Black Orpheus, and the Mbari International 131

5. After Zaria 183

6. Contesting the Modern: Artists' Societies and Debates on Art 227

7. Crisis in the Postcolony 259

Notes 291

Bibliography 313

Index 327