Congo Style

From Belgian Art Nouveau to African Independence
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-472-05631-6
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: African Perspectives

Congo Style presents a postcolonial approach to discussing the visual culture of two now-notorious regimes: King Leopold II’s Congo Colony and the state sites of Mobutu Sese Seko’s totalitarian ZaÏre. Readers are brought into the living remains of sites once made up of ambitious modernist architecture and art in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the total artworks of Art Nouveau to the aggrandizing sites of post-independence Kinshasa, Congo Style investigates the experiential qualities of man-made environments intended to entertain, delight, seduce and impress.

In her study of visual culture, Ruth Sacks sets out to reinstate the compelling wonder of nationalist architecture from Kinshasa’s post-independence era, such as the Tower of the Exchange (1974), GÉcomines Tower (1977), and the artworks and exhibitions that accompanied them. While exploring post-independence nation-building, this book examines how the underlying ideology of Belgian Art Nouveau, a celebrated movement in Belgium, led to the dominating early colonial settler buildings of the ABC Hotels (circa 1908-13). Congo Style combines Sacks’s practice as a visual artist and her academic scholarship to provide an original study of early colonial and independence-era modernist sites in their African context.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 19. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Images
Preface
Map of Kinshasa
Introduction: Entangled Histories
Chapter One: Behind Congo Style: Navigating Research
PART I: STYLE CONGO
Chapter Two: Looking for the Congo in Style Congo: Art Nouveau and the African Colony
Chapter Three: Style Congo in the Congo: Colonial Modernism Takes Root
PART II: CONGO STYLE
Chapter Four: Modernism, Congo Style: Authenticity and Tradition
Chapter Five: Kinshasa’s Congo Style: Sites of Postcolonial Identity
Conclusion: From Total Artwork to Totalitarianism
Map of Kinshasa
Bibliography
Appendix