Black Art History Is Beautiful

Despite exclusion from the canon of Art History, We Are History. Self-education is a means to stay informed.

[moma]

#ArtSpeaks: Nectar Knuckles on Charles White

“That’s a really unique ability…to look at a work of art and feel it seeing you. And in this room, I feel seen.” –Nectar Knuckles, a curatorial fellow in our Department of Drawings & Prints, shares how it feels to enter the #CharlesWhite galleries at the Museum. Watch her full gallery talk on “Spiritual” (1941).

[thecolorblockcurator]

Which Way, 1975, Elizabeth Catlett

[critical-objects-deactivated202]

Beverly Buchanan was born in North Carolina and spent most of her life in the American South. In her youth she often accompanied her father Walter, a professor of agriculture, on his surveys of rural farming communities, becoming fascinated with African-American practices of subsistence, self-determination, and storytelling. Keenly attuned to the relationship between place and history, Buchanan developed a sculptural practice that drew on the idioms of land art, post-minimal sculpture, and outsider art without ever aligning with a single style formally or temporally. Some of her best-known works are the “shack” sculptures she created up until her death. Combining a documentary impulse with improvisational, evocative construction, these miniature houses are the result of Buchanan’s sustained research into southern vernacular architecture. Categorized according to their particular styles, the sculptures were often paired with “legends” cobbled together by Buchanan, which serve to mythologize and commemorate the inhabitants of the original homes. Lest we view the objects with too much preciousness, the artist once set several of the shacks on fire in her backyard—a reference to the widespread racial violence of the Civil Rights era. Despite their frequent categorization under the (inherently problematic) term of “outsider art,” Buchanan’s shack sculptures share the same political ambitions of her frustula, ruins, and other work—a politics embedded in material and form and that emerges through slow processes of time, physical presence, and sustained attention.

Beverly Buchanan, Moonshine Man’s House, 2009

[venusvag]

Video still of Howardena Pindell's Free, White And 21, 1963

  Howardena Pindell recounts bias incidents she has experienced as an African American woman in educational institutions, employment offices, and in various social settings.

[my-kelde]

Deborah Roberts. As I Am, 2017.

mixed media + collage on paper

[hypocrisyandparadox]

Devin Troy Strother - A Black John Baldessari in, “Nigga This is Art”

[anassembly]

Devin Troy Strother

A Black Marina Abramovic in “I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you with this arrow”, 2012

Acrylic, gouache and paper collage on panel

10 x 8 inches

[breeananykole-deactivated202104]

Devin Troy Strother, Gurrrl I’m just talking about that composition, Gurrrrl what’chu know about that post modernism, 2012

[bellygangstaboo]

[thecolorblockcurator]

Lorna Simpson, 2012

[thecolorblockcurator]

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

[artismyhustle]

[brooklynmuseum]

Born in 1915, Elizabeth Catlett is one of the oldest artists presented in We Wanted a Revolution. Her sculptures and prints addressing the Civil Rights Movement came after a long career of groundbreaking work and influenced the younger generation of artists directly involved in the Black Arts Movement in the United States. Target (1970) was made in response to the killing of Black Panther activists Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police officers in December 1969. Using the crosshairs of a rifle scope as a framing device, Catlett indicates the viewer’s complicity as a witness to injustice. 

Installation view. Elizabeth Catlett (American, 1915–2012) Target, 1970. Bronze. Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans.

[afrodiaspores]

(via W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900))

“W. E. B.” Du Bois — sociologist, historian, activist, Pan-Africanist, and prolific author — had also, it turns out, a mighty fine eye for graphic design. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, Du Bois studied at Fisk University, Humboldt University in Berlin, and Harvard (where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate), and in 1897 he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University…

Created by Du Bois and his students at Atlanta, the charts, many of which focus on economic life in Georgia, managed to condense an enormous amount of data into a set of aesthetically daring and easily digestible visualisations. As Alison Meier notes in Hyperallergic, “they’re strikingly vibrant and modern, almost anticipating the crossing lines of Piet Mondrian or the intersecting shapes of Wassily Kandinsky”…

[thecolorblockcurator]

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

[knowyouarehistory]

Kerry James Marshall, Mastry

[cmog-deactivated20230215]

In honor of Black History Month, we’re highlighting works in our collection by African American artists. Throughout his career, Fred Wilson has sought to reveal the black presence in various historical periods. In this multi-layered mirror, he’s looking at the history of Venice, Italy. Ornate, black, and beautiful, this Venetian-style mirror complicates and darkens the reflections of all who look into it, inviting viewers to contemplate the nature of race and identity. 

Fred Wilson, I Saw Othello’s Visage in His Mind, Murano, Venice, Italy, 2013. 2016.3.6.