Essay on Portraying the New Negro in Art

The “Black Aesthetic” is a form of cultural expression that solidified itself during the Black Arts Movement that was meant to exemplify black pride and reformation, culture, and community. Many works that arose out of the Black Arts Movement depicted the role and responsibilities of the black artist. Ralph Ellison claimed in his essay, “The World and the Jug” that he did not want to be seen as a Negro artist but rather just an artist. This was understandable because he wanted to be known for his talent rather than as a figurehead for his people but since then, there has been a lot of significant historical and cultural development to this argument. After “The World and the Jug” was released in 1964, we had the death of Malcolm X in 1965 which was the catalyst for the Black Arts Movement to truly begin. Black artists became very insistent upon invoking change through their work and expressing their blackness unapologetically and it began to show.

Hank Willis Thomas is a contemporary African American artist who was born in 1976. His mother is also a contemporary artist as well as photographer, curator of photography, historian, author, and educator. Sanford Biggers is also an African American artist and he was born in 1970. However, his work integrates film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, music, and performance. Mistaken for each other a lot, due to their race, they decided to work together and make a collection of art that would engage identity and racism. Both artists “engage themes of identity, history, and popular culture,” and desired to portray “racial hybridity” in their artwork (“Hank Willis Thomas”). The photograph they constructed is of Sanford Biggers portrayed as a minstrel in a top hat and tails. His face and clothing are bisected, with the right being black and the left side being white. The color contrast was man made in this photograph, alike to the racial divide that separates our world. As the viewer approaches the image and walks to the left or right the color dichotomy disappears. The viewer is in control of the perspective of the image; we are in control of the racial divide that plagues our

Ever since The Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural south to urban cities up north, there was a dispersion of races and rights. (Stuart) White people still had the majority rule during this era. Bathrooms, theatres, schools, buses, and restaurants were segregated to where blacks and white were seperated. Due to this, there were many activists who fought for equality between races. Some of those activists were W.E.B DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and Madam C.J Walker. All of them were a part of the NAACP activist group that fought for civil rights. Along with them was the author of The New Negro named Alain Locke. He was also an activist that smashed all the social and racial impediments that hindered black achievement with his writing. (Stuart) His book represented a new look for African-Americans. It had on the cover well-dressed blacks in a studio posing with a backdrop of a station. (Stuart) He and all the other activist of this time were trying to represent their culture and race in a new, better way so there would be less criticism towards

For a long time, his art was criticized, being told that his pictures were more of caricatures, rather than soulful representations of African Americans, “His abstracted representations of African Americans were more popular among white Parisian patrons”( Michael Rosenfeld Art). He took these critiques sensitively, and in “Janitor Who Paints” you can see he painted over the bodies to make much more forgiving scenes. In time, people began to appreciate his art for what it really was, rather than being repulsed by it because they weren't familiar with what they were seeing. Palmer Hayden lived his life traveling and expressing the real African American

The experience of growing up at the epicenter of socio-political change has yielded a body of work deeply rooted in personal biography and historical detail. Evokes Marshall intellectual journey over the last years beginning visits to the library. In the third and fourth grade, he knew all about art from the library. Went he was in the seventh grade he was taking summer classes at the Otis Art Institute. Marshall's career as the first painting to address the idea of black aesthetics. This team “black aesthetics” started

Photographer Roy Decarava when asked about being labeled as a “black photographer” versus just a “photographer” he says “I’ve learned to live with it, because it is the nature of the society, and I’ve said, the society is insane in it preoccupation with unreality...I’m black first which puts me in a different category...They simply don’t think of black in the context of white society. They think of blacks as separate.” Abstract Expressionist artist may not be racist or insensitive, however the live in the nature of their life in postwar United States and they accept society’s attitude towards the other. One of the artist in Modern Heroics Romare Bearden exhibited after World War II with other distinguished Abstract Expressionist, however

The artist that I would like to discuss is Betye Saar. She is one of the artists that took part in the "Black L.A. art movement". This took place in the 1970s. Her art speaks of American culture combined with her African American folk culture. She makes assemblages that make political statements. The political statements that she makes through her art seems to start discussions regarding issues that African Americans go through. She stated that these issues, particularly political issues, were almost unavoidable. Growing up in Watts, she knew individuals who had it very rough, even just day to day. Being African American and having African American friends, she knew the dangers of them potentially being wrongfully arrested/likely to join a

Jones says, “we were too honest and too naïve for our own good. We talked revolution because we meant it; we hooked up programs of revolutionary and progressive black art because we knew our people needed them, but we had not scienced out the how these activities were to be sustained on an economic side,” (Zygmonski 146). “Whether BART/S really embodied Jones’s theoretical principle… is moot. Or greater significance is the fact that angry, honest art was being brought to working-class African Americans,” (Sell

This paper highlighted the life of the father of African America art, we looked at his upbringing and the keys he sued when it comes to creating the vision for painting and the told that he needs. We then went through a couple of his most famous work and discussed the significant

It is incredibly important to the future success of art that art’s “White men’s club” be a thing of the past. Encouraging the talent of the future is imperative. It is also crucial though

As I look at his work I become inspired not only because of who he is and what he has meant to the progression and authentication of African American artist within the fine art world or his color palette, but rather his content. He paints these extremely lively scenes that

Carl E. Moore is a Memphis artist who uses art as a form of visual communication. Through his paintings, Moore addresses many social issues and/or problems taking place in our society. His works express his personal experiences and the experiences of others in black communities. While using a number of social subjects as a conversation piece, Moore brings light to the ongoing problems that minority communities face daily due to social inequalities and broken justice systems. His style of painting is heavily influenced by the works of Jacob Lawrence, Stewart Davis, Salvador Dali, Charles White and Michelangelo.

What did an international movement of art do for the African American citizens who encountered prejudice complexities when trying to have their talents acknowledged? The discovery of Social Realism emerges. This was a universal societal movement that flourished during the time of global economic depression. In the event of the country’s pecuniary setbacks, this was a vital and prosperous movement that helped explore the realities of life for humankind. As known, this movement was the most unsurpassed development for the African American community. Furthermore, African American artists, performers, and writers wanted their truths exposed fittingly about their customs and beliefs to dispel the stereotypes of

This chapter undertakes to explicate the way that distinction operates at a key moment in African American cultural history. Black art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black power. The Black arts and the Black power concept both relate to the African Americans for self-determination and nationhood. It has been widely held that the fundamental characteristic of Black arts poetry is its virulent antiwhite rhetoric. Houston Baker stated, the influential black critic J. Saunders Redding disparaged the Black Aesthetic as representative of a discourse of “hate”, a “native racism in reverse”. The personality of African-American culture is established in the authentic experience of the African-American individuals, including the Middle

However, not all black artists during this time adhered to the Black Aesthetic or were committed to the Black Arts Movement. Many, including Ralph Waldo Ellison, stood conscientiously apart. He saw himself as a “spokesman for the ‘infinite possibilities’ that he feels is inherent in the condition of being an artist rather than a Negro artist” (Christianson 354). He did not see the two cultural worlds of black and white trumpeted by Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and other Artists of the BAM; Ellison believed art was colorblind. Furthermore, he believed mainstream culture was seeped in African American traditions and influences. Ellison believed the “themes, symbolism, rhythms, tonalities, idioms, and images” in many American artistic creations were obvious signs of the inclusion and acceptance of African American culture (qtd. Martin, Modern American Poetry).