Negrophilia

The word negrophilia is derived from the French negrophilie that literally means love of the negro. It was a term that avant-garde artists used amongst themselves to describe their passion for black culture. Negrophilia was a craze in 1920s Paris, when to collect African art, to listen to jazz and to dance the Charleston, the Lindy Hop or the Black Bottom, was a sign of being modern and fashionable.<ref> A Double Edged Infatuation, The Guardian, UK, Saturday 23 September 2000 ref/> Sources of inspiration were inanimate African art objects (l'art negre) that found their way into Paris as a result of colonial trade with Africa as well as live performances by African-Americans many of whom were ex-soldiers remaining in European cities after the First World War who turned to entertainment for a source of income. Perhaps the most popular revue and entertainer during this time was La Revue Negre (1925) starring Josephine Baker.

This fascination with black culture and a "primitivised" existence flourished in the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), when artists yearned for a simpler, idyllic lifestyle to counter modern life's mechanistic violence. Avant-garde artists recognised for their negrophilia interests were poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Tzara, Man Ray, Paul Colin and surrealists George Bataille and Michel Leiris and political activist Nancy Cunard.

• Petrine Archer-Straw, Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (2000)
• Michel Fabre's From Harlem to Paris (1991)
• Tyler Stovall's Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (1996)

External links

• http://www.petrinearcher.com/about-negrophilia