Negrophilia

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For the book by Petrine Archer-Straw and the jazz album it inspired, see Petrine Archer-Straw.
Josephine Baker dancing the Charleston at the Folies Bergère, Paris, in 1926

The word negrophilia is derived from the French negrophilie that literally means love of the negro. It was a term that avant-garde artists used amongst themselves to describe their passion for black culture. Negrophilia was a craze in 1920s Paris, when to collect African art, to listen to jazz and to dance the Charleston, the Lindy Hop or the Black Bottom, was a sign of being modern and fashionable.1 Sources of inspiration were inanimate African art objects (l'art negre) that found their way into Paris as a result of colonial trade with Africa as well as live performances by African-Americans many of whom were ex-soldiers remaining in European cities after the First World War who turned to entertainment for a source of income. Perhaps the most popular revue and entertainer during this time was La Revue Negre (1925) starring Josephine Baker.

This fascination with black culture and a "primitivised" existence flourished in the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), when artists yearned for a simpler, idyllic lifestyle to counter modern life's mechanistic violence.2 Avant-garde artists recognised for their negrophilia interests were poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Tzara, Man Ray, Paul Colin and surrealists George Bataille3 and Michel Leiris 4and political activist Nancy Cunard.5

References

  1. ^ A Double Edged Infatuation, The Guardian, UK, Saturday 23 September 2000
  2. ^ Jodie Blake, Le Tumulte Noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930, 1999
  3. ^ Georges Bataille (ed), Document No. 4, Paris, 1929
  4. ^ L'Afrique fantôme, Gallimard, Paris, 1988
  5. ^ JNancy Cunard, Hugh G. Ford (ed.), Negro: An Anthology, 1970
  • Petrine Archer-Straw, Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (2000)
  • Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris (1991)
  • Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (1996)