A polyphonic genealogy of the concept of contemporary African art. A history of contemporary African art? No. A performative history of this long-polemic notion! This is the subject of this anthology conceived and introduced by Cédric Vincent, a researcher in social anthropology and a specialist in pan-African festivals. It combines the reflections of founding figures (Ulli Beier, Michel Leiris, Pierre Lods, Frank McEwen), artists (Aina Onabolu, Eddie Chambers, Ben Enwonwu, Ernest Mancoba, Hassan Musa, Everlyn Nicodemus), curators (Clémentine Deliss, Okwui Enwezor, Jean-Hubert Martin, Simon Njami) and researchers (Salah M. Hassan, Sidney L. Kasfir, Kobena Mercer, Olu Oguibe), this book gives an account of the plurality of points of view, the vigour of the controversies, and the contradictory advances of a theoretical field in perpetual evolution. Highlighting the recurrent debates that the concepts of authenticity, transmission, modernity, identity and cultural colonisation have provoked, the 27 texts gathered here range from the 1920s to the Age of Independence, from the beginnings of artistic globalisation to the current globalised context, as much in Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia and Senegal as in France, the United Kingdom and the United States.