{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-js","path":"/the-art-of-opposition-by-courttia-newland-reviewed/","result":{"data":{"wordpressPost":{"id":128116,"slug":"the-art-of-opposition-by-courttia-newland-reviewed","title":"‘The Art of Opposition’ by Courttia Newland, Reviewed","excerpt":"The author offers a vision of art founded not so much on the antagonism suggested by this volume’s title but on a radical generosity and openness","content":"\n

The author offers a vision of art founded not so much on the antagonism suggested by this volume’s title but on a radical generosity and openness

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Back in the late 1990s, when a twenty-three-year-old Courttia Newland was on press duty promoting his first novel, The Scholar, about inner-city teenagers at a crossroads of a life progressing by crime or by education, he recalls that‘invariably, publications wanted me to stand by graffiti or stark concrete walls’ for photographs; one photographer requested he climb inside a shopping trolley and pose clutching the bars. Needless to say, Newland declined and instead asked if he could stand by a tree, because, as he told the photographer in question, he liked them. But the rest of Britain didn’t picture young Black, British urban novelists as tree huggers. Starting from there, the essays collected in this timely and extraordinarily powerful volume chart the complex pathway involved in being true to yourself while desiring acknowledgement of your artistic achievements but resisting the easy pathways offered to those who become what mainstream culture demands: a stereotype. Much of this is about who gets to be seen, and how. While Newland begins with his own story, it’s not long before he’s firing out essays on the history of Black British literature, Black science fiction (a genre to which his recent novels belong), the neglected talents of writers Percival Everett and Rudolph Kizerman, African cinema, the genius of Black British rapper Roots Manuva and the complex etymology of certain racist insults. Every one of them delivered with a passion and erudition that means you can’t help but assemble a reading, watching and listening list of everything he’s into. In doing all this, Newman carefully unearths the roots as well as the new shoots of cultures – especially diasporic ones – that have been rendered subaltern in British artistic life, making them feel stable, dynamic and vital. Moreover, his tone makes you feel that you’re chatting with a friend who’s gently guiding you through a culture that might not be your own without dumbing it down or simplifying its complexities. Ultimately, Newman offers a vision of art founded not so much on the antagonism suggested by this volume’s title (though, as he makes clear, that antagonism is necessary), but on a radical generosity and openness: ‘Reality is all to do with seeing, hearing and ultimately feeling those we do not live among,’ he writes. ‘And so, it should follow, is art.’ 

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The Art of Opposition: On Hope, Resilience & Creative Expression Beyond the Mainstream by Courttia Newland. Faber & Faber, £16.99 (hardcover)

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From the September 2026 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.

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