Strategies for Visualizing Cultural Capital

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-141
Author(s):  
Amy M. Mooney
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Black Press ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Black Entrepreneurs ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

This chapter examines the ways in which the portrait was utilized as a tool for social change as it presented the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and consciousness of Chicago’s black entrepreneurs and became a distinctive form of cultural capital. Positioning themselves as models for emulation, Robert S. Abbott, Jesse Binga, and Anthony Overton generated public campaigns that visualized the dignity, style, and progressiveness essential to the conceptualization of the New Negro. They worked to establish an ethic of representation that countered the unconscionable effacement of civil rights. By patronizing African American artists and publishing their portraits in Chicago’s burgeoning black press, they lent their likenesses toward the formation of a modern collective black identity.

Spiral

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marissa H. Baker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Art World ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
New Negro ◽  
New Negro Movement ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

Spiral was a collective of African American artists that briefly formed in New York City between 1963 and 1966. Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis were the main founders and leaders of the group. The first meeting convened in Bearden’s studio, with Charles Alston, Felrath Hines, Lewis, Richard Mayhew, William Prichard, Hale Woodruff, and James Yeargens in attendance. Later, Emma Amos, Calvin Douglass, Perry Ferguson, Reginald Gammon, Alvin Hollingsworth, William Majors, Earle Miller, and Merton Simpson joined the group. Prompted by a sense of momentum and urgency from the Civil Rights movement and the imminent March on Washington, which occurred during the summer of 1963, the group gathered to discuss the role of art in the struggle for equal rights. The artists were also eager to discuss racism and their exclusion from New York’s art world. Older artists such as Woodruff and Alston were influenced by the tenets of the New Negro movement—a movement in the early 20th century that encouraged African American artists to use art to achieve racial progress by refashioning the image of the Negro as self-assertive and urbane. Under their influence the question of a ‘‘black art’’ and ‘‘black aesthetic,’’ which put the artists’ racial identity at the center of the debate, remained central to the Spiral group.

Modern Negro Art

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marissa H. Baker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Art ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
New Negro ◽  
African American Art ◽  
New Negro Movement ◽  
American Artists ◽  
American Society ◽  
African American Artists

Modern Negro Art by James A. Porter (1905–1970) is a ground-breaking historical study of African American art from slavery to the early 20th century. The first major text of its kind following Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925), it was the main source of information on African American artists until comparable historical surveys were published in the 1970s. The book presents an overview of artists’ biographies with analysis of the style and subject matter of their work. The chapter "The New Negro Movement" lays out Porter’s main argument against Locke’s well-established racialist position. Locke advocated for the development of a "Negro art’ that would counter negative stereotypes and present a more appealing image of the New Negro to American society. Countering Locke, Porter argued that seeking to "exploit the ‘racial concept’" limited the potential expression of African American artists. Instead he advocated for a treatment of African American art as already integral to the history of American art. Rejecting Locke’s emphasis on an African ancestral heritage, Porter demonstrated the historical development of African American art in North America from slavery to the early 20th century. His research and thorough attention to overlooked African American artists remain the book’s most vital contributions to the field of art history, and accounts for the book’s continuing impact.

“Who Are You America but Me?”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Helgeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Chicago Renaissance ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists ◽  
Racial Progress

This chapter considers the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, the first black-organized world's fair that sought to showcase African American artists on a national stage. It delineates the diversity of voices and competing visions of racial progress that defined the character of the Black Chicago Renaissance. Historians have described the exposition as a failure; the event did not attract mass audiences, and it did not create a broader public debate about the meanings of black identity, legacies of slavery, or contemporary discrimination in the United States. Yet, by examining the exposition as presented, rather than what it failed to be, the chapter uncovers important and sometimes surprising influences on the fair's messages.

On the Blackness of Post-Blackness

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-60
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Art ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
African American Art ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Racial Categorization ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Black Art ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

This chapter argues that Colson Whitehead’s novel Sag Harbormirrors post-Black art’s emphasis on simultaneously rejecting and embracing the racial categorization of African American art. In doing so, Whitehead’s novel represents a qualified liberation for African American artists that optimistically imagines a freedom from racial categorizations that is still rooted in them. This chapter analyzes Whitehead’s novel in the context of the competing definitions of post-Blackness offered by Touré in Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? as well as in the original formulation by Thelma Golden. Employing a framework of “racial individualism,” the chapter argues that a loosening sense of linked fate has led to the privileging of individual agency over Black identity. In doing so, post-Blackness serves to discursively liberate African American artists from any prescriptive ideal of what constitutes black art without implying either a desire or intent to not address issues of race.

Race Women

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Women ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the fascinating history of Bennett College – one of only two single sex colleges dedicated to educating African American women. Although Bennett would not make that transition until 1926, the institution played a vital role in educating African American women in Greensboro, North Carolina from the betrayal of the Nadir to the promises of a New Negro Era. The latter period witnessed Bennett, under the leadership of David Dallas Jones, mold scores of young girls into politically conscious race women who were encouraged to resist Jim Crow policies and reject the false principals of white supremacy. Their politicization led to a massive boycott of a theatre in downtown Greensboro and helped to set the tone for Greensboro’s evolution into a critical launching point for the modern civil rights movement.

Douglas, Aaron (1899–1979)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catrina Hill
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
African Art ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
Tribal Art ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

Aaron Douglas was an African American artist and educator often referred to as the father of "Black Art." He was a leading figure of the artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas is best known for his work of the 1920s and 1930s, which featured abstracted silhouettes combined with African tribal art and ancient Egyptian profile heads. European artists like Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso had been influenced by African tribal art for decades, but Douglas was among the first African American artists to blend African art with modern abstraction. Douglas produced illustrations for such magazines as The Crisis, Survey Graphic and Opportunity along with co-founding the short-lived Fire!! A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists. He also illustrated books by several well-known literary figures, including Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. He is recognized for several public murals, including the Birth o’ the Blues at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, Evolution of Negro Dance at the Harlem YMCA, and Aspects of Negro Life at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. As a professor of fine art Douglas encouraged generations of African American artists to create their own modern Black aesthetic.

A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present.

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Barbara Chase-Riboud ◽  
Romare Bearden ◽  
Harry Henderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

Scenes and Scenarios

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koritha Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists ◽  
Historical Moment

This chapter argues that blacks living during lynching's height accurately read the discourses and practices of their historical moment, and their cultural artifacts reflect their insights. Namely, the plays by black dramatists contain specific characterizations of the nature of lynching, and they inspire black community practices that enable African Americans to continue to interpret their surroundings accurately. In an environment where their extermination was said to make the nation safe, African Americans perceived the truth behind the façade—that lynching was really master/piece theater, designed to reinforce racial hierarchy. African American artists therefore offered scripts that encouraged their communities to continue to rehearse an understanding of themselves as full citizens.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document