Black Visual Artists Are Important to the History of Art

Visual Arts

Adrienne Childs

• LAST REVIEWED: 12 Jan 2017
• LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2019
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0027

Introduction

The study of African American art, or art past African Americans, is a field of research that has grown over the course of the 20th century, along with the discipline matter. The focus is the written report of blackness artists and their works of art in media such as painting, sculpture, arts and crafts, printmaking, video, mixed media, and performance art. The field is driven by the analysis of the meanings and contexts of the works of fine art, also as the lives and experiences of the artists. Works vary in terms of content and style and the relationship to bug of blackness, African American history, and identity. There has been argue as to whether black artists whose work does non engage issues of blackness in America tin be considered "African American" artists. This issue has largely been discredited in favor of an understanding that any piece of work of art by an African American, no matter the content, is a reflection of the lived experiences and multidimensional concerns of black artists in America. Critics have challenged the idea of this categorization by challenge that information technology creates an artificial segregation of artists and their work based on an ill-defined construct of race in America. They contend that individual artists create within the framework of multiple homo identities. In spite of varying viewpoints and challenges to the delineation of the field along racial lines, the written report of African American art has remained a viable fashion of research, in large part because of a lack of attention to black artist from mainstream histories of art. A few African Americans entered the globe of professional art in the 19th century. In the early on 20th century, a critical mass of blackness artists began to coalesce around the state. Many developed visual languages that spoke to the particular social, cultural, and spiritual aspects of black life in America. Black artists gained bookish training and began to enter into the mainstream professional person art globe, admitting marginalized past racial strictures. During the black consciousness movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the study and analysis of the fine art of black Americans emerged equally a cohesive field. Early literature was focused on recovering the artwork and biographies of artists lost to the indifference of the mainstream art world. Postcolonial criticism influenced the modes of assay regarding study of the art of African Americans and the field gained new scholarly attention. The literature on this subject has grown since the last quarter of the 20th century. The sources cited in this commodity focus on broader thematic treatments of the field and less on the work of individual artists.

Survey Texts

The survey text has been an of import tool for gathering and documenting the histories of African American fine art and artists lost, invalidated, and underappreciated. These treatments of African American art typically begin with the few colonial artists and artisans, blackness artists of annotation in antebellum America, and the ascension of the black creative person in the early on 20th century through the era of global identities in the 21st century. James A. Porter is considered the father of African American art history and offered the kickoff wide wait at the "Negro" artist in America (see Porter 1992, starting time published in 1943). The overview approach employed in Lewis 2003 and Bearden and Henderson 1993 reveals a broad swath of black artists, many unknown. Later on, Patton 1998 and Powell 2003 apply a social contextual arroyo to the discussion of the work, demonstrating how black artists and their works chronicled and interpreted the histories of race in America. Farrington 2017 emphasizes the social, biographical, and contextual in a comprehensive and useful survey. Bindman and Gates 2014 expands upon the canon established by Porter, Patton, and Powell, and casts the history of art past blacks, largely in America, in terms of its human relationship to the history of representing blacks and blackness in the W.

• Bearden, Romare, and Harry Henderson. A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Nowadays. New York: Pantheon, 1993.

  Structured around a serial of long biographical essays on private artists that date to the 1980s. A contextual chapter introduces each section. This is a comprehensive view of the canon of African American artists established by Porter and Driskell (see Porter 1992 and Driskell 1976, the latter cited under Exhibition Catalogue Surveys). While more than authentic and in-depth research on the individual artists has been conducted in the years since its publication, information technology remains a useful resource for undergraduates seeking more than information on private artists in the field.

• Bernier, Celeste-Marie. African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present. Chapel Hill: Academy of North Carolina Press, 2008.

  Bernier's approach resides at the intersection of biography and critical assay. This volume is divided into six chapters that accept on full general topics such equally the Harlem Renaissance and abstraction. Subsections are devoted to individual artists. Her discussion is framed by informed critical assay of the artists' works and their relationships to problems of race and representation. With express illustrations, this text is most appropriate for upper-level students or graduate students who are familiar with the material.

• Bindman, David, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. The Prototype of the Blackness in Western Art. Vol. 5, The Twentieth Century, Part 2: The Ascent of Black Artists. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

  Concentrates largely on art by African Americans and covers major trends in the 20th and early 21st centuries in vii lengthy, well-illustrated essays. Although self-representation and identity formation is important bounden material among the various essays, the volume treats an array of lesser-known and approved artists who have multiple relationships to the politics of race. This book can be used as a stand-solitary text on African American art for an undergraduate survey or for a more than in-depth graduate written report.

• Farrington, Lisa East. Creating Their Ain Image: The History of African-American Women Artists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

  A survey of the art of African American women. The feminist movement has been critiqued equally being geared toward the concerns of white women. By singling out the art of blackness women, Farrington chronicles the artistry and engages the histories, concerns, and visual strategies employed past women who emerged from a legacy of slavery, racism, and sexism.

• Farrington, Lisa E. African-American Art: A Visual and Cultural History. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2017.

  A textbook that surveys the production of art, compages, and photography past African Americans from the 18th through the 21st centuries. The about upward-to-date survey text in the field, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the subject field. Each chapter features a contextual analysis of the flow or topic covered and in-depth discussions of individual artists, movements, and ideas. The author emphasizes visual literacy. Useful key terms and questions for farther study accompany each affiliate. This book is appropriate for an undergraduate survey as well as an overview for graduate students.

• Lewis, Samella South. African American Art and Artists. Rev. 3d. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

  The 2003 publication of African American Art and Artists is the third edition of this survey text, first published in 1978. This was the standard survey of African American art of its time and was aimed toward the general public and undergraduates. The third edition has a new introduction and has been expanded to include later artists. Similar other survey texts in this field, information technology is driven by biographical treatments of artists from the 18th through the 21st centuries.

• Patton, Sharon F. African-American Fine art. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Patton's African American Fine art is a comprehensive survey text that is not driven by biographical material simply rather by a chronological and topical discussion of the contexts and concerns of African American artists from early on slave communities through the 1990s. Patton inserts useful definitions of terms, trends, and ideas that provide background material to the discussion. This text is suited for undergraduate surveys of the field.

• Porter, James A. Modern Negro Art. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992.

  The archetype survey text of the field of African American art. Porter was the founder of the discipline and first published the book in 1943. The 1992 edition adds an introduction by David C. Driskell. Porter writes an belittling treatise that defines the field and lays out many of the issues that remain relevant today. This is an essential piece of work for graduate students or historiographers interested in how the soapbox around artists of African descent emerged.

• Powell, Richard J. Black Art: A Cultural History. second ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.

  This is the second edition of the book originally titled Black Fine art and Culture in the 20th Century, showtime published in 1997. It is a well-illustrated and condensed analysis of "black art." Powell distinguishes black art from African American art by including the black diaspora. While he acknowledges the hybridity of blackness culture, he discusses sites of commonality. Powell also discusses video, film, and performance art. The advanced analytical word is appropriate for advanced undergraduates.

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