Joshua I. Cohen

Assistant Professon, The City College, New York

Joshua I. Cohen received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2014 and is Assistant Professor of African Art History at The City College of New York. His first book project tracks modernist engagements with African sculpture between Europe, the US diaspora, and Africa from 1905 to 1980. A second book-length project examines international staged productions of West African dance and masquerade.

Contributions

Southern Africa | Abstraction

Identity and Abstraction: Ernest Mancoba in London and Paris, 1938- 1940

In 1939, the South African artist Ernest Mancoba turned toward abstraction for the first time. Although this artistic development has been associated with Mancoba’s relationship to the CoBrA movement, Joshua Cohen argues that his embrace of abstraction also can be read as a turn away from the burdens of representation imposed by patrons upon a black South African artist.