A social history of painting in Bamako, Mali, 1930s--1980s

Initially as the capital of the French colony Soudan Francais, Bamako has been an epicenter for artistic activity in Mali and an important hub in the global networks for contemporary art from West Africa. Using interviews, photographic documentation, and archival research conducted in Mali, France, and Italy between 2007 and 2009, this sociopolitical history of painting in Bamako surveys the artwork, people, artistic organizations, and institutions that contributed to the history of painting in Bamako.;This dissertation presents a predominantly linear art historical narrative divided into five chapters that approximate the changes to the political and artistic landscape in the Soudan Francais and, later, independent Mali. The period selected for this study, the 1930s to the 1980s, allows for the development of historical breadth without forfeiting specific and comprehensive studies of individual artists and their work.;Emphasizing the cultural and historical continuities between analytical dichotomies of traditional/modern art forms, colonial/post-colonial periods, and local/global cultural formations, this dissertation demonstrates how artists from Mali participated in and responded to sociopolitical transformations in Mali through painting. To do so, each chapter interjects focused examinations of artistic activities by individuals, organizations, and institutions. Using the expressive capacity of paint on canvas, Malian artists engaged in the practice of painting to articulate the political and cultural transformations in their immediate present and, in the process, infiltrated artistic spaces to which they were denied access to by the restrictive and hegemonic Western discourses of cultural authenticity.