Overview

This groundbreaking study of Moroccan modernism in the visual arts contextualizes the work in terms of postcolonial struggles and a constellation of contemporary artistic movements. In the years after independence, new art forms and practices flourished at the Casablanca École des beaux-arts, transforming the colonial relic into a wellspring of Moroccan modernism. Casablanca School artists, including Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chebaa, and Mohammed Melehi, defined the modernist movement in Morocco. Their visual arts activism was displayed at their iconic outdoor exhibition in the Djemaa al-Fna plaza in Marrakech, in their collaborations with the cultural and political journal Souffles, through their radical anticolonial pedagogy, and through their use of abstraction to expand the horizons of postcolonial national culture. In Moroccan Modernism, Holiday Powers argues that the pedagogy and transnational solidarities of this generation of artists were intrinsic to their broader artistic projects. She advances a novel reading of Moroccan modernism that is rooted in its cosmopolitan national context and in Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism, the transnational anticolonial intellectual movements that defined the era.

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Reviews

Morocco’s distinctive historical composition and its location have led to the development of its art in ways that speak to African, Amazigh, Arab, and European frameworks of modernity. Powers investigates modernism in Morocco as a national and transnational project framed by cosmopolitan experiences and Third World and Arab nationalist debates. This deeply researched and persuasively argued study will undoubtedly establish itself as a definitive reference work on the subject. -- Iftikhar Dadi, author of Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia A refreshing and remarkable addition to the discourse on modernism as a global movement rooted in local discourses. Holiday Powers situates Moroccan modernism as a process that unfolded against local art and politics in active dialogue with the rest of the world and contextualizes the celebrated artists of the Casablanca School within a framework of transnational connections and defiance at pivotal moments of postcolonial and pan-Arab solidarities. A must read! -- Nada M. Shabout, author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics

Morocco’s distinctive historical composition and its location have led to the development of its art in ways that speak to African, Amazigh, Arab, and European frameworks of modernity. Holiday Powers investigates modernism in Morocco as a national and transnational project framed by cosmopolitan experiences and Third World and Arab nationalist debates. This deeply researched and persuasively argued study will undoubtedly establish itself as a definitive reference work on the subject. -- Iftikhar Dadi, author of Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia A refreshing and remarkable addition to the discourse on modernism as a global movement rooted in local discourses. Holiday Powers situates Moroccan modernism as a process that unfolded against local art and politics in active dialogue with the rest of the world and contextualizes the celebrated artists of the Casablanca School within a framework of transnational connections and defiance at pivotal moments of postcolonial and pan-Arab solidarities. A must-read! -- Nada M. Shabout, author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics

Author Information

Holiday Powers is an assistant professor of art history at VCUarts Qatar. Her work has appeared in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, the Journal of North African Studies, and in numerous book chapters.

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