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Crow, T. (1985). Modernism and mass culture in the visual arts. In F. Francis, (Ed.), Pollock and after: The critical debate. London: Harper and Row Publishers.

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Exploiting Public Art, Architecture and Urban Design for Political Power in Abuja: Modernism and the Use of Christian, Islamic and Ancestral Visual Icons

  AUTHORS: Nnamdi Elleh, David J. Edelman

  KEYWORDS: Abuja; African Art; Architecture and Urban Design; African Religious Symbolism; Nigerian Politics

  JOURNAL NAME: Current Urban Studies, Vol.1 No.1, March 29, 2013

  ABSTRACT: Can public art, architecture and urban design be indices of the social, economic and political struggles for hierarchies and dominance among contesting interest groups within a postcolonial society like Nigeria? In 1975, the Nigerian military proposed that building a new Federal Capital Territory at Abuja would facilitate the country’s “federal character” resolve the problem of nepotism, and ease ethnic tensions among the two hundred and fifty cultural groups which constitute the nation (Afigbo, 1986; Ajayi, 1984)1. However, a study of the architecture and the sculptures at the newly constructed National Assembly Complex suggest otherwise. In this paper, it is argued that while the ideology of a nationalist architecture and the concept of a “federal character” might have merit for a multi-ethnic society like Nigeria, at Abuja, “federal character” instead became the means with which the emergent postcolonial elite consolidated its economic and political power through the exploitation of public art, as well as Modernist architectural and urban design elements using Islamic, Christian, and Ancestral visual icons.