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Mediating Modernisms

Indigenous Artists, Modernist Mediators, Global Networks

Cover of Mediating Modernisms features a thin black line at the top, with a tan block below it. The bottom 3/4 of the book is orange. An untitled abstract multicolor painting by Jacques Zigoma is central to the cover.

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Book

Pages: 408

Illustrations: 85 illustrations

Published: October 2025

Editors: Ruth B. Phillips, Norman Vorano

Contributors: Peter Brunt, Roberto Conduru, Elizabeth Harney, Hanna Horsberg Hansen, Jyotindra Jain, Sandra Klopper, Ian McLean, Anitra Nettleton, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Una Rey, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Nicholas Thomas, Mark Andrew White

Mediating Modernisms explores the fertile exchanges between Indigenous artists living in colonial societies and the mid-twentieth century mediators who carried ideas of aesthetic modernism and modernist primitivism into these worlds. Spanning South Africa, North America, Australia, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Brazil, Nigeria, and India, the case studies examine the mediators who played the role of mentors, friends, and patrons to Indigenous artists. Their relationships constituted complex mutual exchanges of aesthetic ideas and practices that inspired artists to create new fusions of modernism with Indigenous art traditions and that reflected their negotiations between affiliation with tradition and embrace of technology, newness, and metropolitan patronage. Challenging current understandings of modernist primitivism and elucidating the creation of the “global contemporary” art world, this volume reveals broader historical patterns, shared ideological and aesthetic dynamics, and the structural parallels that link mediators and Indigenous artists to globally circulating artistic ideas and geopolitical forces.

Contributors. Peter Brunt, Roberto Conduru, Hanna Horsberg Hansen, Elizabeth Harney, Jyotindra Jain, Sandra Klopper, Ian McLean, Anitra Nettleton, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Ruth B. Phillips, Una Rey, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Nicholas Thomas, Norman Vorano, Mark Andrew White

Praise

“With a wide and deep scope, this collection examines the role of mediators in the two-way street between modernizations made by Indigenous artists and those that constitute non-Indigenous artistic modernism in the twentieth century. Mediating Modernisms is a welcome realization of a long and carefully conducted research project on a key topic within the history of art, conducted by exemplary scholars and on a world-wide scale matched by few others of its kind.” - Terry Smith, author of Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art

“Mediating Modernisms is a groundbreaking project that substantially adds to our understanding of the emergence of artists practicing Indigenous modernisms by looking closely at the role intermediaries played in their training and exposure to metropolitan currents of modernism, as well as providing access to institutions, patrons, and markets for modernist Indigenous artists. This extraordinary volume offers a fundamental reorientation of and challenge to prevailing conceptions in studies of modernist art practices.” - Iftikhar Dadi, author of Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Ruth B. Phillips is Professor Emerita of Art History at Carleton University.

Norman Vorano is Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Art and Visual Culture at Queen’s University.

Table Of Contents

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List of Illustrations  vii
General Editors’ Foreword / Ruth B. Phillips and Nicholas Thomas  xi
Preface / Ruth B. Phillips and Norman Vorano  xiii
Introduction. Indigenizing Modernism, Modernizing Primitivism: Mediators and Artists in Twentieth-Century Global Art Worlds / Ruth B. Phillips and Norman Vorano  1
Archival Exploration One. A Poet and Painter Imagine Black Modernism in Dakar / Elizabeth Harney  31
Part I. Teachers/Mentors  49
1. Ulli Beier and the Problem of Postcolonial Modernism / Chika Okeke-Agulu  55
2. Chains of Mentorship: The Amadlozi Effect in Johannesburg in the 1960s and 1970s / Anitra Nettleton  73
3. Adapting Modernism: Oscar Howe, Siouan Traditions, and the Promise of Unlimited Creative Exploration / Mark Andrew White  97
4. Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi: The Quiet Revolution; Māori Modernism, Gordon Tovey, Pineamine Taiapa, and Other Motivators of Change / Megan Tamati-Quennell  120
Archival Exploration Two. “The First Contemporary Pictures in New Guinea”: Georgina Beier and Melanesian Modernism / Nicholas Thomas  143
Part II. Friends/Collaborators  161
5. Modern Friendship and Collaboration in Sápmi and Denmark: Johan Turi and Emilie Demant Hatt / Hanna Horsberg Hansen  167
6. The Art of Laughter: The Independent Creativity of Alson Zuma and David Fox / Sandra Klopper  191
7. The Painter, the Photographer, and the Tattooist: Friendship and Decolonization in Aotearoa New Zealand / Peter Brunt  214
8. Djon Mundine and The Aboriginal Memorial / Ian McLean  238
Archival Exploration Three. Norval Morrisseau and Selwyn Dewdney: Inventing Modern Anishinaabe Painting / Ruth B. Phillips  259
Part III. Patrons/Marketers  277
9. From the Iconic to the Narrative: Mediatory Processes in the Work of Ganga Devi / Jyotindra Jain  281
10. Carving Primitivism: Agnaldo Manuel dos Santos and the Brazilian Art World in the Mid-Twentieth-Century / Roberto Conduru  303
11. Bardon’s Legacy: Paintings, Stories, and Indigenous Australian Art / Una Rey  327
Archival Exploration Four. Advertiser and Adviser: James Houston and Inuit Art / Norman Vorano  351
Contributors  367
Index  373

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3236-6 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-2900-7 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6121-2 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478061212