Name: Black and Gold. Transmutations of Metal and Modernity
Price: 309.03 NZD
Availability: InStock
Author: W. Ian Bourland
ISBN: 9780271101293

portada Black and Gold. Transmutations of Metal and Modernity

Black and Gold. Transmutations of Metal and Modernity

Type

Physical Book

Publisher

Pennsylvania State University Press

Author

W. Ian Bourland

Collection

AFRICANAS

Year

2026

Pages

214

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

22.90 x 15.20 x 2.10 cm

ISBN13

9780271101293

Black and Gold. Transmutations of Metal and Modernity

W. Ian Bourland (Author) · Pennsylvania State University Press · Hardcover

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Synopsis "Black and Gold. Transmutations of Metal and Modernity"

For centuries, Africa has been the center of global trade in gold. Synonymous with wealth and power in African cultures, the precious metal was also central to the emergence of Europe’s colonial empires and the contemporary world made in its wake. Black and gold have thus always been conjoined, and yet long set in opposition: Blackness as negation, gold as universal standard of value. Black & Gold is a genealogy of this seeming contradiction—a global history of value told through episodes of Black creative practice. Featuring the work of acclaimed contemporary artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Theaster Gates, Wangechi Mutu, El Anatsui, Chris Ofili, and Kerry James Marshall, this book unearths a series of historical and ecological connections—the mining of gold on the continent and its relationship to the diaspora; “Black gold” as a colloquialism for oil; and Blackness as a form of cultural “gold.” By bringing early modern histories of alchemy, art, and colonial contact into the present, W. Ian Bourland tells a multifaceted story about the fetishization of gold, driven by an impulse to extract Blackness and refine people and matter into ever greater forms of abstraction with devastating consequences for the environment and humanity. In simplest terms, Black & Gold reconsiders the material and symbolic life of gold and the Black labor that has always sustained it. It will resonate with art critics and scholars, museumgoers and collectors, and anyone interested in modern and contemporary art, the Black Atlantic, and global histories of empire and culture.