Samantha A. NoËl is Assistant Professor in Art History at Wayne State University.

“From Alexander von Humboldt to Wangechi Mutu, art historian Samantha A. NoËl has tracked the allure of ‘tropical aesthetics’: landscapes, regalia, and choreographies that betray modernism's debt to the equatorial realm and its treasures. Black artists especially have had to contend with these sensibilities, responding to their appeals for diaspora camaraderie and struggling with the challenges they pose to a postfolkloric contemporaneity. This tension-along with Professor NoËl's deft, critical purview-commends this important study.” - Richard J. Powell, author of (Going There: Black Visual Satire) “Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism impressively explores how artists and performers throughout the twentieth century used visual tropes of the tropics to advance different ways of knowing and imagining modernity, modernism, primitivism, imperialism, nature, the environment, decolonization, and the ‘Black speculative.’ From the artwork of Aaron Douglas, Wifredo Lam, Wangechi Mutu, and Edouard Duval-CarriÉ to the performances of Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, and the jamette women of Trinidad Carnival, the book newly calls attention to the centrality of tropical aesthetics in the practice of Black internationalization.” - Krista Thompson, author of (Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice)

• List of Illustrations  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction. Tropicality, Modernity, and the African Diaspora  11. American Tropical Modernism: The African Diasporic Reaches of Aaron Douglas's Landscapes  232. Brazenly Avant-Garde: Wifredo Lam's Transformation of Cuba's Tropical Terrain  603. Early Twentieth-Century Trinidad Carnival: Tropicality and Strategies of Space-Making  964. Pan-African Geographies in Motion: The Tropical Performances of Maya Angelou and Josephine Baker  142Conclusion. The Black Body, Tropicality, and the Black Speculative  177Notes  195Bibliography  221Index  237

Samantha A. NoËl is Assistant Professor in Art History at Wayne State University.

“From Alexander von Humboldt to Wangechi Mutu, art historian Samantha A. NoËl has tracked the allure of ‘tropical aesthetics’: landscapes, regalia, and choreographies that betray modernism's debt to the equatorial realm and its treasures. Black artists especially have had to contend with these sensibilities, responding to their appeals for diaspora camaraderie and struggling with the challenges they pose to a postfolkloric contemporaneity. This tension-along with Professor NoËl's deft, critical purview-commends this important study.” - Richard J. Powell, author of (Going There: Black Visual Satire) “Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism impressively explores how artists and performers throughout the twentieth century used visual tropes of the tropics to advance different ways of knowing and imagining modernity, modernism, primitivism, imperialism, nature, the environment, decolonization, and the ‘Black speculative.’ From the artwork of Aaron Douglas, Wifredo Lam, Wangechi Mutu, and Edouard Duval-CarriÉ to the performances of Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, and the jamette women of Trinidad Carnival, the book newly calls attention to the centrality of tropical aesthetics in the practice of Black internationalization.” - Krista Thompson, author of (Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice)

• List of Illustrations  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction. Tropicality, Modernity, and the African Diaspora  11. American Tropical Modernism: The African Diasporic Reaches of Aaron Douglas's Landscapes  232. Brazenly Avant-Garde: Wifredo Lam's Transformation of Cuba's Tropical Terrain  603. Early Twentieth-Century Trinidad Carnival: Tropicality and Strategies of Space-Making  964. Pan-African Geographies in Motion: The Tropical Performances of Maya Angelou and Josephine Baker  142Conclusion. The Black Body, Tropicality, and the Black Speculative  177Notes  195Bibliography  221Index  237