African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present
In African American Visual Arts Celeste-Marie Bernier introduces readers to the sheer diversity, range, and experimental nature of African American art and artists and considers their relationship to key motifs within black culture and black experience in North America. The book traces the major developments in African American visual culture from its beginnings in the ceramics and textiles of slave artisans to later contributions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to the fine arts...
Search in google:
In African American Visual Arts Celeste-Marie Bernier introduces readers to the sheer diversity, range, and experimental nature of African American art and artists and considers their relationship to key motifs within black culture and black experience in North America. The book traces the major developments in African American visual culture from its beginnings in the ceramics and textiles of slave artisans to later contributions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to the fine arts and abstract expressionism, sculpture, installation art, video art, and computer graphics.Bernier analyzes the work of twenty-one artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, William Edmondson, Howardena Pindell, Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Betye Saar, Horace Pippin, and Kara Walker. She highlights key but frequently neglected and little-discussed black artists, situating their works within their specific historical and political contexts. Bernier provides a new understanding of their relationship to fundamental themes of the black experience such as black stereotyping and caricature in mainstream discourse, poverty in the inner city, and the division between the rural and the urban.
List of Plates vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 11 'The Slave who Paints': Beginnings and the Visual Arts Tradition Dave the Potter James P. Ball Harriet Powers Edmonia Lewis Henry O. Tanner 182 'Establishing an Art Era' in the Harlem Renaissance Aaron Douglas Archibald J. Motley, Jr Charles Alston 563 Struggle, Survival and Early Abstraction William Edmondson Horace Pippin Jacob Lawrence 894 'Images are Weapons': History, Narrative and a People's Art Charles White Elizabeth Catlett Gordon Parks 1245 'Art comes to have a life of its own': Aesthetics, Experimentation and a New Visual Language Norman Lewis Romare Bearden Betye Saar 1606 'Racist Pathology is the Muck': Towards a Transgressive Visual Poetics David Hammons Howardena Pindell Kara Walker 194 Epilogue 221 Appendix A 227 Appendix B 229 Sources and Further Reading 234 Index 258
\ From the Publisher"Presents some compelling art work by a range of modern and contemporary African American artists spanning more than a century. . . . Includes previously unpublished testimony and commentary from the artists themselves to elucidate their creative practices."\ -H-Net Reviews\ \
