Overcoming Oppression through the Production of Art

Essay Instructions:

As the Civil Rights Movement fractured in the 1970s, organizations were created to support and promote “Black Arts” that paralleled and contributed to the Black Power movement. Essential questions still remained: How could artists best overcome oppression from without (and within) through the production of art? One answer to this question was an embrace of Blackness as a form of beauty and power. Another answer for many women artists was to create work that specifically uplifted the beauty and power of Black women. Fierce resistance to police brutality united many. Artists including David Hammons, Dana C. Chandler, Jr., Betye Saar, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Faith Ringgold, Roy DeCarava, Barkley Hendricks, and Elizabeth Catlett, contributed powerful art to these vibrant conversations. Artists including Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Martin Puryear contrastingly insisted on their right to make abstract art less visibly engaged with themes of protest. In the 1980s, artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fred Wilson rose on the art scene with radical new visions of “fine” arts.
Largely removed from academic fine arts training, African American artists termed “outsider,” “folk,” “self-taught,” and/or “visionary,” continued a centuries-old tradition of innovative artistic production. The work of these artists, including Horace Pippin, Bill Traylor, Joe Minter, Thornton Dial, Nellie Mae Rowe, Mary Lee Bendolph, and Essie Pettaway, in recent years has been praised and prized for its sophisticated aesthetics and social commentary.
1. Watch: Professor VoiceThread “UNIT SIX: The Black Power Movement, Afro-femcentrism, Abstraction, and Visionary Art”
2. Read: The interpretive guide for the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Crystal Bridges Museum, Tate Gallery, and Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2018) (.pdf)
3. Read: Lisa E. Farrington, Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 146-167. (pdf)
4. Read: bell hooks, “Altars of Sacrifice: Re-membering Basquiat,” in Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (New York: The New Press, 1995): 35-48. (pdf)
5. Watch: “Fred Wilson” https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=YWkDzrNbVXI (GO TO 15:18-28:00).
6. Watch: Maris Curran, “While I Yet Live: The Master Quilter’s of Gee’s Bend, Alabama” New York Times Op-Docs (November 13, 2018).
7. Submit: three entries in the Journal platform on BlackBoard that reflect on all six sources of information in this unit. Each entry should be 200-300 words in length and discuss specific points of information, using names of authors, videos, artists, places, dates, titles, etc. You can think about these entries in terms of answering general questions about your engagement with each VoiceThread, reading, or video. For example, discuss something new that you learned, or something that surprised you. Did course materials lead you to think about the topic, the United States, or yourself, in a new way? DUE DATE: Complete all journal entries no later than Sunday, July 28, at Midnight.
8. Post: The text of one of your journal entries as a Discussion Thread in the Unit Six Discussion Forum no later than Sunday, July 28th, at Midnight.

Essay Sample Content Preview:

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Three Journal Entries
Entry 1
While reading The Interpretive Guide for the Exhibition Soul of a Nation, one is taken through the history of black art, how it was used to enhance the Civil Rights Movement, and the names of people who were integral to the movement but through their art. However, before going deeper into the article, one thing that stands out is the fact that there was no consensus on the matter of choosing a single image to symbolize black art. This is indeed quite intriguing as Siegal notes that the artists “knew that something set them apart from other painters.” However, this “something” was not clearly defined and thus left room for debates and in the end a lack of consensus. The artists, though, knew they were united in their experiences as African Americans and this brought them together. A good example is The Wall of Respect in Chicago which united artists from the African American community. However, in spite of all the above, not all the participants have their names mentioned. The article explicitly says that many contributed but are not mentioned in this exhibition. This bit stands out for me because these individuals may not be mentioned but they did leave a legacy that will live for eons.
Entry 2
Women have had it rough for centuries. They have been considered second on many occasions as men continue to take first place. While reading Creating their Own Image: The history of African-American women artists by Lisa Farrington, one is taken through a period when women decided they wanted their contributions in the art world recognized. From this piece, two events are chronicled as having contributed greatly to this movement. The first one was the publication of The Feminine Mystique and the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Through these two, women felt empowered and started challenging the status quo. There had been great women artists in the past but their names were rarely mentioned. Questions were asked about how women had been portrayed in the art world. However, a new movement within the women’s movement emerged as well. Women like Betye Saar started speaking out against the women’s movement as it was racist or biased towards African American women. So, this m...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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Overcoming Oppression through the Production of Art

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