Educational Resources: A Fusion of Worlds
Ancient Egypt, African Art and Identity in Modernist Britain
A Fusion of Worlds is an exploration of the ways in which modernist artists - in particular Jacob Epstein, Edna Manley and Ronald Moody - were inspired by Ancient Egypt. The exhibition focuses on how Egyptian artefacts played a role in the production of artworks by these artists between the wars in the context of the British and African diasporic art scenes and their own personal complex explorations of identity.
Film from the 2014 Fusion of Worlds exhibition
Egypt was one of many different cultures that influenced modernist artists, particularly in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, and the reception of its material culture was fused with that of other cultures. The style of this material culture also symbolised the antiquity of African civilisation as well as a spiritual alternative for many political movements within the African diaspora.
The reception of Ancient Egypt in the Harlem Renaissance and the so-called ‘discovery’ of African Art in the modernist period is often not acknowledged. Even more forgotten within British public memory is the contribution of Black artists and cultural figures in the Interwar period - an area explored in Drawing over the Colour Line and the resulting Spaces of Black Modernism: London 1919-1939 at Tate Britain on display from September 2014 to October 2015.
This website is an online version of the 2014 exhibition A Fusion of Worlds. The research and resulting exhibition was a collaboration between Gemma Romain (UCL Equiano Centre) and Debbie Challis (Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology). Additional research was undertaken by Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski. They presented their findings at a series of meetings to members of the public who wanted to be involved in this project.
We are grateful to the group participants, who included Jacinth Martine, Robin Walker, Felicity Heywood, Maggie Ibrahim, Gina Nembard, Sandra Claggett, Ciar Boyle Gifford, Feyi Raimi-Abraham, Kandace Chimbiri, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Lauren Craig and Joy Simmons.
John J Johnstone, Caroline Bressey, Stephanie Alder, Maxine Miller, Adrian Glew, Jennifer Mason and Helen Pike shared their expertise and support. We owe thanks to Robert Eagle for shooting and directing the short video accompanying this exhibition. We are also very grateful to the various organisations which have helped us with copyright, in particular Tate, the Estate of Sir Jacob Epstein, the Edna Manley Foundation in Jamaica, ONYX and Dr David Boxer, the Ronald Moody Foundation, the David Graham Du Bois Trust, the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Val Wilmer.
A Fusion of Worlds was funded by UCL Grand Challenges: Intercultural Interaction as a joint initiative between The Equiano Centre, Geography, UCL and the Petrie Museum, UCL
Debbie Challis and Gemma Romain, Co-curators of A Fusion of Worlds, 2015.
A Fusion of Worlds - Select List of References and Further Reading
- Arrowsmith, Rupert R. Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African, and Pacific Art and the London Avant-Garde. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Ashton, Sally-Ann. 6,000 Years of African Combs. Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2013.
- Bassani, Ezio, and M.D McLeod. Jacob Epstein, Collector. Milano: Associazione Poro, 1989.
- Bernal, Martin, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation, London: Free Association Books, 1987.
- Boxer, David. Edna Manley, Sculptor. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica, 1990.
- Brown, Wayne. Edna Manley: The Private Years, 1900-1938. London: Deutsch, 1976.
- Brunton, Guy & Caton-Thompson. The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Finds near Badari. Bernard Quaritch, 1928.
- Bryant, Marsha and Mary Ann Eaverly. 'Egypto-Modernism: James Henry Breasted, H.D., and the New Past', Modernism/modernity, Volume 14, Number 3, September 2007, pp. 435-453.
- Buckle, Richard. Jacob Epstein, Sculptor. Cleveland: World Pub. Co, 1963.
- Budin, Stephanie L. Images of Woman and Child from the Bronze Age: Reconsidering Fertility, Maternity, and Gender in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Suzanne W. Churchill, with Drew Brookie , Hall Carey , Cameron Hardesty, Joel Hewett, Nakia Long, Amy Trainor , and Christian Williams, 'Youth Culture in The Crisis and Fire!!', The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, Volume 1, Number 1, 2010, pp. 64-99.
- Challis, Debbie. The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
- Chimbiri, K. N. Secrets of the Afrocomb. 6,000 Years of Art and Culture. London: Golden Destiny, 2013.
- Colla, Elliott, Conflicted Antiquities. Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity, London: Duke University Press, 2007.
- Coombes, Annie E. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
- Cork, Richard, Wild Thing. Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill, London: Royal Academy, 2009.
- Cronshaw, Jonathan Lee (2010) Carving a legacy: the identity of Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
- Drower, Margaret S. Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
- Emery, Mary L. Modernism, the Visual, and Caribbean Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Epstein, Jacob & Jaskell, Arnold L. The Sculptor Speaks. A Series of Conservations on Art, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc: 1932
- Fagg, William, intro by. The Epstein Collection of Tribal and Exotic Sculpture. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1960.
- Farebrother, Rachel 'Thinking in hieroglyphics': Representations of Egypt in the New Negro Renaissance' in Sweeney, Fionnghuala, and Kate Marsh. eds. Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem and the Avant-Garde. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
- Goeser, Caroline. Picturing the New Negro: Harlem Renaissance Print Culture and Modern Black Identity. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
- Grossman, Wendy A. 'From Ethnographic Object to Modernist Icon: Photographs of African and Oceanic Sculpture and the Rhetoric of the Image.' Visual Resources. 23.4, 2007, pp. 291-336.
- Hassan, Salah M. 'African Modernism: Beyond Alternative Modernities Discourse.' South Atlantic Quarterly 109:3, Summer 2010.
- Isaac, Benjamin, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
- Kane, Patrick, The Politics of Art in Modern Egypt: Aesthetics, Ideology and Nation Building, New Yorl: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
- Knappe, Stephanie F. 'Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist: the Exhibition, the Artist, and His Legacy.' American Studies. 49.1, 2010, pp. 121-130.
- Locke, Alain. The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1971.
- Malik, Kenan. The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, New York: New York University Press, 1996.
- McFarlane, Basil. Edna Manley: Fifty Years a Sculptor: A Short Survey of Her Work and Career. Kingston: Printed by the Herald Limited, 1972.
- Moody, Cynthia. 'Ronald Moody: A man true to his vision', Third Text, 3:8-9, 1989, pp. 5-24
- Moody, Cynthia. 'Midonz', Transition, No. 77, 1998, pp. 10-18.
- Patch, Diana Craig (ed.) Dawn of Egyptian Art, New York: Yale University Press, 2011.
- Petrie, W. M. F. The Revolutions of Civilisation. Harper & Brothers, 1911.
- Petrie, W. M. F. The Making of Egypt, London: The Sheldon Press, 1939.
- Powell, Richard J. 'Paint that Thing! Aaron Douglas's Call to Modernism', American Studies, 49:1.2, Spring/Summer 2008, pp. 107-119.
- Reid, Donald Malcolm, Whose Pharoahs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War One, London: University of California, 2002.
- Rose, June. Demons and Angels: A Life of Jacob Epstein. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002.
- Silber, Evelyn. Jacob Epstein: Sculpture and Drawings. Leeds: Maney in association with the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, 1989.
- Trope, B. Teasley, Quirke, S., Lacovara, P. Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Atlanta: Emory University, 2005.
- Walker, Robin. When We Ruled. The Ancient and Mediaeval History of Black Civilisations. London: Everyday Media, 2006.
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