Abstract: | This essay examines five propositions about current art in Africa. They are offered as a way of helping to understand something of the history of art in Africa during the 20th century and its reception in Europe and America. The propositions are: 1) At the present time in Africa many different traditions of visual practice are contemporary with each other; 2) Changes in visual practice are nothing new in Africa; 3) The art world that is dominant in the constitution of 'Africa' in Europe and America still privileges 'tribal' art; 4) Insofar as there is movement away from 'tribal' art within that dominant art world it has, for a while, privileged the so-called 'auto-didact' over the 'academic' artist, thereby constituting the acceptable face of a 'contemporary' African art; 5) The 'academic' artists are concerned to hold on to and explore their place within the traditions of practice inherited from the past, and it is they who especially use these traditions as among the resources with which to explore current concerns. The author concludes that ethnicity and ethnic identities as we have received them within the present century are proven constructions, even though drawing upon the implications and possibilities within existing practice and tradition. Bibliogr. |