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South African artist Irma Stern (1894-1966) is one of the nation's most enigmatic modern figures. Stern held conservative political positions on race even as her subjects openly challenged racism and later the apartheid regime. Using paintings, archival research, and new interviews, this book explores how Stern became South Africa's most prolific painter of Black, Jewish, and Colored (mixed-race) life while maintaining controversial positions on race.
Through her art, Stern played a crucial role in both the development of modernism in South Africa and in defining modernism as a global movement. Spanning the Boer War to Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa and into the contemporary #RhodesMustFall movement, Irma Stern's work documents important 20th-century cultural and political moments. More than 50 years after her death, Stern's legacy challenges assumptions about race, gender roles, and religious identity and how they are represented in art history.
List of contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Irma Stern in a Global Context: Expressionist Influences
Chapter 2
Cape Town Blues: Painting South Africa
Chapter 3
Congo and Zanzibar
Chapter 4
Modernism Under Apartheid: Art and Social Context
Chapter 5
Irma Stern and Post-Apartheid South Africa
Conclusion
Biographical Timeline
Bibliography
Index
About the author
LaNitra M. Berger
Summary
South African artist Irma Stern (1894–1966) is one of the nation’s most enigmatic modern figures. Stern held conservative political positions on race even as her subjects openly challenged racism and later the apartheid regime. Using paintings, archival research, and new interviews, this book explores how Stern became South Africa’s most prolific painter of Black, Jewish, and Colored (mixed-race) life while maintaining controversial positions on race.
Through her art, Stern played a crucial role in both the development of modernism in South Africa and in defining modernism as a global movement. Spanning the Boer War to Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa and into the contemporary #RhodesMustFall movement, Irma Stern’s work documents important 20th-century cultural and political moments. More than 50 years after her death, Stern’s legacy challenges assumptions about race, gender roles, and religious identity and how they are represented in art history.
Foreword
Through both archives and interviews, this critical art history study explores the racial dimensions of South African modern painter Irma Stern’s life and art work.
Additional text
Strikingly original and well-researched, Irma Stern and the Racial Paradox of South African Modern Art is the work of a pioneering scholar. Employing a powerful Black feminist and decolonial perspective, LaNitra M. Berger questions received ideas about what constitutes modern African art. She shows us that the life and work of a controversial white artist like Irma Stern, whose work was predicated on racial exploitation, is important to the formation of global modernism in South Africa and beyond.
