The Social Struggles of Contemporary Black Art

Introduction and Rationale

Of the many fascinating texts included in Professor Ferguson’s seminar, Social Struggles of Contemporary Black Art, the one most significant to me was a 2011 documentary, AfriCOBRA: Art for the People, about the AfriCOBRA group: an artists’ collective founded in Chicago in 1968 to develop a positive and empowering Black aesthetic. The film combines new and archival photographs and interviews of the artists with images of their artworks, whose bright “cool-ade” (the artists’ play on “cool” and “Kool-Aid”: grape, lemon-lime, cherry, orange, raspberry) colors echo in the African prints in the artists’ clothing or accessories. Quick cuts and the animation of words—either found on the artworks or quoted from the artist interviews—give the documentary a frenetic energy. As a review from the Studio Museum in Harlem (a central institution of Black art, founded, like the relatively modest AfriCOBRA group, in 1968) observes: “Lettering, which forms images in the paintings is animated by special effects and exaggerates the dynamism of the already electric canvases.”¹ The documentary concludes with the animation of words spoken by AfriCOBRA artist Barbara Jones-Hogu that also appear earlier in the film: “Do you see me?” “I see you.”

The question and answer resonate with the AfriCOBRA artists, who affirm: “Right,” “Exactly,” and “Beautiful.” [2 Their work—like that of other artists in the curriculum unit—responds to the seeming absence in American art of both images of Black subjects and the work of Black artists. Just as the AfriCOBRA artists share their work within Black communities (“Do you see me?”), their work represents the members of those communities (“I see you.”). In sum, Barbara Jones-Hogu’s words vividly express the communal nature of the AfriCOBRA group’s art, which—again—is made to be seen in the communities and homes of the people who inspire it rather than preserved in art museums (institutions that have only recently begun to include artists and curators of color). In the documentary, the direct address of call-and-response of Jones-Hogu’s words welcomes everyone—regardless of race—to enjoy the celebratory art and join the group in its future-oriented, liberatory movement. The art is so “electric,”³ the group’s ethos so positive, the artists—many of whom were in their seventies when interviewed for the documentary—so energetic and engaging, that I found myself thinking: “Yes! Where do I sign up?!” My response is notable, I think, for a few reasons: I am not Black. I am not an artist. And, most important for the curriculum unit, I had never heard of the AfriCOBRA artists (whose work has now continued for more than half a century) before Professor Ferguson’s seminar.

During the seminar, in fact, I recognized only a single artist, Kehinde Wiley. Living and working in Richmond, Virginia, I am familiar with Wiley’s Rumors of War (2019), a bronze-on-limestone sculpture that stands outside the city’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). Wiley’s first public artwork, Rumors of War shows a physically powerful and exultant Black soldier, who wears contemporary clothing (jeans and a hooded sweatshirt) rather than a uniform and rides a charging steed: This image of Black heroism confronts Richmond’s racist legacy as the former Confederate capital and, until very recently, home to numerous monuments of the Confederacy’s equestrian generals.⁴ Wiley’s June 2016 visit to Richmond for the VMFA opening of his exhibition, “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” inspired Rumors of War, as the artist responded to the “‘dread and fear’” he experienced while walking amidst the city’s commemorations of the Confederate cause.⁵ The sculpture shares its title with a 2005 series of paintings in which Wiley responds to the tradition of equestrian portraiture, replacing figures like military officers, nobles, and royals celebrating projects of conquest with Black sitters whom the artist encountered “on the street [. . .] in Harlem.”⁶ [In 2020, national demonstrations against racial injustice—particularly police violence against Blacks—were concentrated, in Richmond, at the controversial monuments, resulting in their eventual removal.] In addition to Rumors of War, I am familiar with Wiley’s 2006 painting, Willem van Heythuysen, which the VMFA also owns and exhibits. Like other paintings of Wiley’s, the work critiques the art of European Old Masters by putting it in conversation with the Black men and women it excludes: Willem van Heythuysen is named for a Dutch merchant from Haarlem, the Netherlands whose 1625 portrait Wiley echoes in his representation of a contemporary Black male from Harlem, New York.⁷ The juxtaposition alerts the viewer to the lasting impact of European colonialism (and its corruption) on where and how we live today. Finally, like many others, I know Kehinde Wiley as the artist chosen by Former president Barack Obama to paint his portrait for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. At the portrait’s 2018 unveiling, Obama explained that “he was drawn to Wiley’s work because the artist challenges conventional views of power and privilege. ‘He would take extraordinary care and precision and vision in recognizing the beauty, grace and dignity of people who are so often invisible in our lives.’”⁸ This making visible of the too-often invisible (“I see you.”) is a theme that will recur throughout the unit, and it is the reason that—whether or not they choose to read further and employ the information or materials that follow—I urge teachers to find ways to include the artworks (listed in the “Content” section) in their instruction.

Before the seminar, several observations about myself and my students informed my interest in the development of a curriculum unit about contemporary Black art. While I am extremely verbal and spent spare time during adolescence either reading or talking on the (corded) telephone, twenty-first century learners most often engage the world by means of the visual and communicate with one another via apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. In addition, although our district ELA curricula include texts that reflect our students’ identities (my school’s population is roughly 50% Black and 50% Hispanic, with increasing rates—currently about 37%—of English-language learners), students tend to struggle with the antiquated vocabulary and complex sentence structures of curricular texts like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself and The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. Related by Herself. There is also frustration from both students and some faculty members about subject matter (colonialism, slavery, racism, colorism, mental illness, etc.) that is not more positive, particularly given the range of traumatic experiences that are commonplace among our students: homelessness or housing insecurity, domestic violence, drug abuse, hunger, and—increasingly—migration. A study of Black art, as I will discuss below, enables students to engage relevant texts with immediate authority and analytical complexity while looking both toward the past—about which I would argue students should know more—and the future.

The curriculum unit has been designed for my 10^th-grade ELA students and will serve as the mandatory, skill-and-content “crash course” with which the school year begins: Students will review academic vocabulary while practicing skills like annotation, persuasive and analytical writing, research, and oral presentation. We will start with a week-long study of works from the artists of the AfriCOBRA movement (described above and, in more detail, in the unit’s “AfriCOBRA” section). During the second and third weeks, we will examine artworks from Kerry James Marshall and Hank Willis Thomas respectively. Works from additional artists (Faith Ringgold, Kehinde Wiley, Ester Hernandez, and Betye Saar) will supplement the selections from Marshall and Thomas. (See the relevant sections of the unit for information on these artists.) Students will examine the politics of celebratory representations of blackness as well as the ways that Black artists resist and undercut a dominant culture stemming from European and American colonialisms that would erase or malign Black identity. Students will consider the ways that personal style (clothing, hair, music, dance) can serve as forms of resistance. Finally, students will examine the ideological power of advertisements and the ways that some artists seek to disrupt that power through an engagement in advertising content and techniques.