The word negrophilia is derived from the French négrophilie that means "love of the Negro". It was a term that avant-garde artists used among themselves to describe their fetishization of Black culture. Its origins were concurrent with art movements such as surrealism and Dadaism in the late 19th century. Sources of inspiration were inanimate African art objects (l'art nègre) such as masks and wooden carvings that found their way into Paris's flea markets and galleries alike as a result of colonial looting of Africa, and which inspired artworks such as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, as well as live performances by Black people, many of whom were ex-soldiers remaining in European cities after World War I, who had no choice but to entertain as a source of income. Equally of interest to avant-garde creators were live arts such as dance, music and theatrical performances by Black artists, as evidenced by the popularity of comic artist Chocolat and the musical review Les Heureux Nègres (1902).
Factors/ideas influencing the emergence of negrophilia
What began as artistic interest grew to a society-wide, mass fetish in France in the aftermath of World War I, during which an entire generation of youth was lost. The violence and loss witnessed in Europe, in particular in France, by those who survived, challenged the belief in the superiority of Western civilization fostered during the age of Enlightenment, which also fueled questions on the exploitative effects of colonialism. French society was looking for alternative ideologies, and the exotic, "primitive" cultures of French colonies, erstwhile and current, were seen as alternatives to cold capitalism and modernity. The post-war ideological vacuum thus fed off of earlier artistic movements centered around primitivism. Simultaneously, the arrival of numerous African and African-American soldiers during the war years, their subsequent decision to return to or remain in post-war France, as well as numerous incoming artists, students, writers and professionals of color seeking accepting ground for themselves & their work, were significant contributors to the pervasiveness of Negrophilia in French society.
Significant personalities emerging from Les années folles
This fetishization of foreign cultures had already been established within France due to the regular expositions the country held to showcase the objects and people of the French colonies. The fascination with specifically black culture and the "primitivised" existence associated with it flourished in the combined aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918) and the 1931 Colonial Exposition when artists yearned for a "simpler, idyllic lifestyle to counter modern life's mechanistic violence." Yet to advertise the Colonial Exposition, the organizers relied on "racist imagery" in a children's comic book in the form of a character, Nénufar, who personified the savage with child-like curiosity, not the colonized oppressed peoples. Pictured with "steel wool hair" and practically naked except for a loincloth, cuffs and gloves on his feet, he appears to be aiming for but failing at assimilation.
Avant-garde artists recognised for their negrophilia interests include poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Paul Colin, surrealists Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, and political activist Nancy Cunard. The During 1920–1930s Paris, negrophilia was a craze to collect African art, to listen to jazz, and to dance the Charleston, the Lindy Hop or the Black Bottom, were signs of being modern and fashionable. Perhaps the most popular revue and entertainer during this time was La Revue Nègre (1925) starring Josephine Baker.