Book Details

Negrophilia, from the French negrophilie, was the term used by the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s to affirm their love of black culture as a provocative challenge to bourgeois values. This book explores the historical ambiguities and racial complexities of 1920s Paris and describes the craze that overtook the city when black culture became highly fashionable and a sign of being modern.

Avant-garde artists and writers courted black personalities such as Josephine Baker, Henry Crowder and Langston Hughes for their sense of "otherness." Picasso, Brancusi, Giacometti, Leger, Man Ray, Sonia Delaunay, Bataille, Apollinaire and Nancy Cunard, among many others, enthusiastically collected African sculptures, wore tribal jewelry and clothes, and adopted black forms in their work. Their African style influenced a larger audience anxious to be in vogue.

Contemporary advertisements, painting, sculpture, photography, popular music, dance, theater, literature, journalism, furniture design, fashion and objets d'art -- all provide a lively record of the period.