Corporeal Aesthetics – Primitivism and the Reception of African American Performing Arts around 1930
In: A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950Search for other papers by Karen Vedel in
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Abstract
This study identifies some of the contexts within which the articulation of an Africanist corporeal aesthetics took place, situating them in relation to avant-garde discourses. First I look at the flourishing interest in African sculpture prior to 1930 and its depiction of the human figure through the writing of art collectors and ethnographers Carl Kjersmeier (from Denmark) and Carl Einstein (from Germany). Continuing the dual focus on Copenhagen and Paris, I go on to examine the reception of African American musical theatre exemplified by Josephine Baker’s Danse Sauvage as well as the productions Black Birds and Miss Louisiana. The concluding notes summarise and discuss the difference in terms of the engagement with an Africanist corporeal aesthetic by the avant-gardes in Denmark and France.