The arts of Africa, Oceania, and Native America famously inspired
twentieth-century modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri
Matisse, and Max Ernst. Was this a cross-cultural discovery to be
celebrated? Or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?
What might a "decolonized" art history look like? Over the last half-
century, scholarship emerged that gave the arts of Africa, Oceania, and
Native America dedicated attention--though often in terms associated
with tribal art connoisseurship, without acknowledgment of the colonial
contexts of Indigenous art traditions or histories of appropriation and
violence, and often stopped short of engaging with Indigenous visions or
voices. "Decolonization" refers to an event, a liberation. In one sense,
decolonization has happened: it was the moment of national independence
for formerly colonized nations across Africa, Asia, and Oceania. But
from another perspective, more prominent in current debate,
decolonization is ongoing. What work does art do now, toward
decolonization? And how can we, the audience, be active agents in
redefining these histories?
Possessions, first published in 1999, offered a dynamic and genuinely
cross-cultural art history, focused on the encounter, or the
confrontation, in Australasia between the visual cultures of European
colonization and Indigenous expressions. This new edition of
Possessions contributes to today's debates on diversity and race,
giving voice to Indigenous artists and their continued presence in
contemporary art today. A new introduction and concluding chapter frame
the book in the present day, with recent studies, catalogs, and updated
references.
