Another View of Africa, By Artists From Congo
PARIS — The art practically leaps off the walls. A striking painting of President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader who was assassinated in 1961. Luscious black- andwhite photographs of 1950s night life in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa. Whimsical watercolors from the 1930s.
These are among 350 works by 41 artists in “Beauté Congo,” an electric, eye- opening survey of art from Congo from 1926-2015 at the Cartier Foundation here that offers a window into a dynamic art scene not often showcased in Western museums.
“We wanted to create a narrative that reintroduces these exceptional artists into the history of art,” said André Magnin, a boisterous Frenchman who curated the show. He has traveled to Congo for decades, cultivating relationships as well as buying work. “We wanted to show the broader public exceptional works from a continent where the television only presents dark, disastrous images of war and illness,” he added.
Although much of this show is dedicated to contemporary artists like Chéri Samba, who painted the image of world leaders, the earliest works here have rarely been shown in such numbers.
“Beauté Congo,” which runs through mid-November, begins in the 1920s, when the husband- andwife painters Albert and Antoinette Lubaki and the artist known as Djilatendo moved from decorating traditional huts to creating works on paper at the request of a Belgian colonial administrator. The Lubakis’ watercolors, often of animals or leaves, fall somewhere between realism and fantasy, while Djilatendo’s geometric patterns hover between traditionalism and modernism.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, work by the Lubakis was shown in important museums and galleries in Europe. Djilatendo was represented in an exhibition in Brussels along with Magritte. But they stopped producing and were eventually lost to history. Mr. Magnin said he learned about their work in a book he stumbled upon in 1989 in Zaire, as the country was then called. ( It is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.)
Various works in the show are dedicated to the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the 1974 boxing match in Kinshasa in which Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman, a moment of black pride in a newly liberated country.
Also on view are colorful futuristic cityscape sculptures, architectural models gone wild, by Bodys Isek Kingelez (“Phantom City,” 1996), and Rigobert Nimi (“The City of Stars,” 2006), who uses found material and castoff electronics.
“Beauté Congo” has received positive reviews in France since it opened on July 11, but there has also been some criticism.
Pascale Obolo, a filmmaker and the editor of Afrikadaa, a cultural journal, found fault with the “very neocolonial and paternalistic” attitude of Mr. Magnin and others who bring African art into European museums. Others questioned the possible commercial implications of the show, since Mr. Magnin acuquired work by some of the artists featured here in building up the holdings of a businessman.
Hervé Chandès, the director of the Cartier Foundation, said he wasn’t concerned. “If André hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have done the exhibition,” he said.
At the opening, some of the artists thanked Mr. Magnin for championing them. “He helped me a lot after he said, ‘Find your style,’ ” said J P Mika, standing by one of his paintings.
Nearby were rich color photographs from the 2011 series “A View,” by Kiripi Katembo, born in 1979. They show images of Kinshasa reflected in puddles. A world turned upside down, saturated with grit and color and love.