When we consider the issues of change and African art in the twentieth century, we are likely to think about the influences of African art on Western Modernist art and the ways in which what was then called "primitive" art. But we should also consider the ways in which African art itself was, if not transformed then certainly changed during (and by) the twentieth century.
That artists working in Africa should have changed their styles as well as their techniques during the course of the twentieth century should not be surprising, for nearly every other aspect of African society and culture were affected during the last century, and it should be startling indeed if the art did not change to reflect those changes - including arguably the two most important changes in African society during the century, which was the end of colonization by European powers, and the onslaught of AIDS. However, this said, it should also be noted that many aspects of African art in the twentieth century did not change: Art continues to be used in African societies (for of course the continent is far from homogeneous culturally) for practical and 'sthetic as well as ritual reasons. The line between the practical and the artistic that is so strong in many European traditions is less so in African traditions, although this has become less so as the century progressed and African artists adopted (at least in some contexts) concepts about art from Western consumers.
This has produced one of the major shifts that has come about in African art during the past century: An entire industry devoted to "tourist art", as Graburn (1977) notes arose during the past century. This tourist art often resembled traditional African art forms - indeed it was attractive to tourists in large measure only to the extent to which it was convincingly like "real" African art, although as Jules-Rosette (1984) notes, tourist art was often far less finely crafted than was the art that...