Overview

A fresh perspective on the influential critic, offering new ways of understanding the art of the Harlem Renaissance Critic and theorist Alain Locke (1885–1954) was a foundational figure of the Harlem Renaissance who argued that changing self-perceptions among Black artists and writers would alter America’s view of itself as a whole. Offering a new interpretation of Locke’s influential writings, Kobena Mercer focuses on the importance of cross-cultural entanglement and positions the philosopher as an advocate for an Afromodern aesthetic that drew from both formal experiments in Europe and the iconic legacy of the African past. Mercer considers Locke’s understudied 1940 picture book, The Negro in Art, a global history of the Black image, and argues for the significance of Black queer practices within the history of modernism. With this book—a deft blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and art history, enlivened with illustrations by artists including Richmond Barthé, Aaron Douglas, and Loïs Mailou Jones—Mercer demonstrates that Locke envisioned modern art as a dynamic space where images and ideas would circulate widely, generating new hybrid forms from the fluid conditions of diaspora.

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9780300247268

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Reviews

“Reflecting on works by Palmer Hayden, Malvin Gray Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, and others, Mercer demonstrates that mourning was central to Harlem Renaissance Africanism. . . . In a striking interpretation of Jones’s celebrated painting Les Fétiches (1938), which depicts an ensemble of African statuary swirling in a charged darkness, he writes that the work embodies not a straightforward reclamation of roots but the tragedy and the promise of diaspora.”—Julian Lucas, New Yorker “Mercer’s sumptuously illustrated study . . . succeeds in positioning Locke as an important philosophical voice in the ‘not yet finalized story of Afro-modern art and culture.’”—Douglas Field, Times Literary Supplement Shortlisted for the MSA Book Prize “In this brilliantly argued book, Kobena Mercer convinces us that it was the visual art of Africa and the New Negro Renaissance that fashioned the queer international modernity we love today.”—Jeffrey C. Stewart, author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, and editor of The New Negro Aesthetic: Selected Writings by Alain Locke “Kobena Mercer’s highly original work virtually defines the field of Locke’s views concerning the visual arts and will be indispensable to Locke studies in the future.”—Charles Molesworth, Queens College, CUNY “A meticulous, complex, and poignant account of the profound entanglements that condition Modernist aesthetics as we know it today. Through the key figure of Alain Locke, Mercer traces how African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance confronted, negotiated, trafficked, reimagined, and ultimately re-valued the objects of their ‘ancestral origins.’”—Anne Anlin Cheng, author of Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface “This masterful and indispensable reassessment upends Locke’s persistent caricature as a dogmatic ancestralist and synthesizes the complexities of his sprawling oeuvre and his sexuality into a fresh, compelling account of his Afromodern aesthetic philosophy.”—John Ott, James Madison University

“Reflecting on works by Palmer Hayden, Malvin Gray Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, and others, Mercer demonstrates that mourning was central to Harlem Renaissance Africanism. . . . In a striking interpretation of Jones’s celebrated painting Les Fétiches (1938), which depicts an ensemble of African statuary swirling in a charged darkness, he writes that the work embodies not a straightforward reclamation of roots but the tragedy and the promise of diaspora.”—Julian Lucas, New Yorker “Mercer’s sumptuously illustrated study . . . succeeds in positioning Locke as an important philosophical voice in the ‘not yet finalized story of Afro-modern art and culture.’”—Douglas Field, Times Literary Supplement Shortlisted for the MSA Book Prize 2023 Josephine Miles Award Winner, sponsored by PEN Oakland “In this brilliantly argued book, Kobena Mercer convinces us that it was the visual art of Africa and the New Negro Renaissance that fashioned the queer international modernity we love today.”—Jeffrey C. Stewart, author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, and editor of The New Negro Aesthetic: Selected Writings by Alain Locke “Kobena Mercer’s highly original work virtually defines the field of Locke’s views concerning the visual arts and will be indispensable to Locke studies in the future.”—Charles Molesworth, Queens College, CUNY “A meticulous, complex, and poignant account of the profound entanglements that condition Modernist aesthetics as we know it today. Through the key figure of Alain Locke, Mercer traces how African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance confronted, negotiated, trafficked, reimagined, and ultimately re-valued the objects of their ‘ancestral origins.’”—Anne Anlin Cheng, author of Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface “This masterful and indispensable reassessment upends Locke’s persistent caricature as a dogmatic ancestralist and synthesizes the complexities of his sprawling oeuvre and his sexuality into a fresh, compelling account of his Afromodern aesthetic philosophy.”—John Ott, James Madison University

Kobena Mercer's highly original work virtually defines the field of Locke's views concerning the visual arts and will be indispensable to Locke studies in the future. -Charles Molesworth, Queens College, CUNY

Author Information

Kobena Mercer is Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and Humanities at Bard College.

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