Radcliffe Bailey | Avant-Garde and Liberation: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism

Featuring Radcliffe Bailey among other case studies, this book explores how, in a complex tangle of past and present, contemporary artists engage with the legacies of non-Western 20th-century counterculture movements.

Increasingly, contemporary artists are returning to the visual traditions of the non-European avant-garde movements that opposed Western Modernism from the 1920s to the 1970s. Avantgarde & Liberation explores this phenomenon, delving into the motivations for artists to align themselves with decolonial avant-gardes in Africa, Asia and the “Black Atlantic” region, and to take a stand against current forms of racism, fundamentalism or neocolonialism. The book gathers a selection of work by 25 artists from across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas to reflect on this question of temporality, as well as the possibility of engaging with old and new liberation movements.

Kravagna, Christian.

Avant-Garde and Liberation: Contemporary Art and Decolonial Modernism.

Mumok and Verlag der Buchhandlung, 2024.