At last! Hope for the Dark Continent!

And why is there hope for the Dark Continent?

Why, because African art has finally arrived on the big stage, dontcha know!

Yup, African art don’t mean diddly till you find it going under the hammer at that “acclaimed auction house, Sothebys.”

That’s a bit rich too, ain’t it? I mean, it’s not that this claim to be “acclaimed” is untrue. It’s just that you could just as easily write “indicted auction house,” or “auction house convicted in a criminal conspiracy,” and you would be equally correct.

Some of the artists are a little dodgy by my estimation. Is a German Jew an African artist just because she lived in South Africa?

Alas, that would take away from the overall thrust of the story, which is that African art has been legitimised because Sotheby’s just had their first African art sale. Before this, African art was just a bunch of Africans with too much spare time producing folk art.

Thanks to Sotheby’s, it is now “real” art, because it’s been commodified into an investment vehicle that will hopefully appeal to rich folks who shop for artsy investments at Sotheby’s.

Looks like a few lucky Africans have made it to the Big (auction) House!..  and the colonial narrative is a lot closer to alive and well than it is to dead and buried.