African American Artist Father Of Benny Andrews Mixed Media George Scarce

Mixed media painted dots on plastic plate. Originally obtained from renowned African American Artist Benny Andrews. George Andrews is the patriarch of a highly creative family of artists and writers, a family richly blessed with talent and deeply rooted in the soil of rural Georgia. By choice, the former sharecropper, father of ten, and lifelong artist never traveled outside Georgia's boundaries.

When his family moved from rural Plainview, Georgia to Atlanta in the 1950's, George relocated to Madison and became a sign painter for the City of Madison, where he spent the rest of his life. His passion for painting was evidenced in the brightly colored dot-filled rocks that soon began showing up around town. Adorning rocks, furniture, women's shoes and "anything that did not move, " with bold, colorful dots, he became known as "The Dot Man". George often chided his famous son, renowned artist Benny Andrews, for attending art schools to learn to paint. "I'm a natural, " he boasted. In 1989, when George Andrews was 78, Benny Andrews urged his father to paint family portraits including one of the family tree, a blend of African-American, Caucasian, Irish and Native-American heritage. As his popularity grew, the elder Andrews realized he needed to consider the permanence of his work and turned to painting on canvas. Religion, dreams, and racial heritage were consistent sources for his imagery. Andrews also incorporated social messages aimed at an urban generation attracted to violence and drugs. George Andrews reached a milestone at age 84 with his first solo museum retrospective - The Dot Man: George Andrews of Madison, Georgia organized by the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta.

Dad was a very complex container of much more than the casual observer sees or hears. The survivor of an almost unbelievable past, he became one of the most tenacious and imaginative persons I've ever known. Ideas just bubbled out of his head like lava.

He was the personification of the mythical artist/poet who sees beauty through every pore, who is driven to create regardless of the circumstances. February 15 - March 27, 2004.

Andrews, George Cleveland (The Dot Man). (Plainview, GA, 1911-Athens, GA, 1996). GEORGE ANDREWS: The Dot Man.

GEORGE ANDREWS: Painting and Objects. Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History, Richard A. Long Papers, Box 27, Folder 11. The Dot Man: GEORGE ANDREWS of Madison, GA. 60 color and b&w illus.

Information about the Andrews family. Important interviews with the artist by Gruber.

Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University. Selected Work by GEORGE ANDREWS the Dot Man. Solo exhibition accompanying an exhibition by Benny Andrews.

GENERAL BOOKS AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS. ARNETT, PAUL and WILLIAM, eds. Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South Vol. 1: The Tree Gave the Dove a Leaf. 756 color plates, 55 b&w illus.

Texts by 37 major scholars and African American writers (including a brilliant piece by Amiri Baraka), bibliog. Artists include: Jesse Aaron, Leroy Almon, Sr. Benny Andrews, George Andrews, Steve Ashby, Eldren M. Bailey, Hawkins Bolden, Richard Burnside, Vernon Burwell, Archie Byron, Ulysses S.

Davis, Arthur Dial, Thornton Dial, Sr. Sam Doyle, William Edmondson, Minnie Evans, Nora Ezell, Ralph Griffin, Dilmus Hall, Sandy Hall, James Hampton, Alyne Harris, Bessie Harvey, William Hawkins, Theodore Hill, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter, Anderson Johnson, Frank Jones, Joe Light, Ronald Lockett, Charlie Lucas, J. McCord, Joe Minter, Sister Gertrude Morgan, J. Murry, Elijah Pierce, Harriet Powers, Royal Robertson, Juanita Rogers, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lorenzo Scott, Herbert Singleton, Mary Tillman Smith, Georgia Alice Speller, Henry Speller, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, James Son Thomas, Mose Tolliver, Bill Traylor, Luster Willis, Joseph E.

Yoakum, Dinah Young, Purvis Young, and others. Included: Leroy Almon, George Andrews, David Butler, Eddy Mumma, J.

Murry, Nellie Mae Rowe, Henry Speller, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Sarah Mary Taylor, Mose Tolliver, Robert L. Pure Folk: Celebrating the Folk Art Society of America.

Included: George Andrews, John Beadle, Herman Bridgers, Beverly Buchanan, David Butler, Myrlande Constant, Dilmus Hall, Alyne Harris, Willie Jinks, Ernest Lee, Ronald Lockett, Eddy Mumma, J. Murry, Nellie Mae Rowe, Henry Speller, Louisiane St. Fleurant, Mose Tolliver, Robert L.

AUGUSTA (GA) Morris Museum of Art. Stories to Tell, Memories to Keep: Folk Art in the South.

Group exhibition from the Museum's collection. Included: George Andrews, Minnie Evans, Lonnie Holley, Bessie Harvey, Mary L. Proctor, Nellie Mae Rowe, Clementine Hunter, Lorenzo Scott, Bill Traylor.

CROWIN, CAROL and CHARLES RUSSELL, eds. Sacred and Profane: Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art.

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. 32 color plates, 60 b&w illus. An examination of the South's complex cultural, religious, racial, and political admixture as reflected in the work and beliefs of selected vernacular artists.

13 texts by Frederic Allamel, Benny Andrews, Jenifer P. Crawley, Carol Crown, Jessica Dallow, Sally Ann Duncan, Dorothy M.

Joiner, Lee Kogan, Ann F. Oppenhimer, Cheryl Rivers, Charles Russell and Charles Reagan Wilson. Includes general texts on the broad range of spiritual beliefs and individual texts on George Andrews, Nellie Mae Rowe, Thornton Dial, and the quilters of Gee's Bend; two texts each on Bill Traylor and Clementine Hunter. Dozens of additional artists mentioned in passing. Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity.

Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Includes over fifty African American artists: Jesse Aaron, Leroy Almon, George Andrews, Steve Ashby, Amiri Baraka, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roger Brown, David Butler, Archie Byron, Ulysses S. Davis, William Dawson, Thornton Dial, Sam Doyle, William Edmondson, Minnie Evans, Walter Flax, Tyree Guyton, Dilmus Hall, James Hampton, Bessie Harvey, Gerald Hawkes, William L.

Hawkins, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter, Willie Jinks, Frank Albert Jones, Eddie Lee Kendrick, Ronald Lockett, Charlie Lucas, Sister Gertrude Morgan, J. Murry, Inez Nathaniel-Walker, Leslie Payne, David Philpot, Elijah Pierce, Horace Pippin, Nellie Mae Rowe, Kevin Sampson, Earl Simmons, Bernice Sims, Herbert Singleton, Charles Smith, Mary T. Smith, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, James (Son) Thomas, Mose Tolliver, Bill Traylor, Gregory Warmack Mr.

Imagination, George White, George Williams, Luster Willis, Joseph Yoakum, Purvis Young. Small 4to 9 x 6.3 in. Encyclopedia of African American Artists (Artists of the American Mosaic). After biographical entries, short general bibliog. 66 artists included, some with full entries, some additional artists named in passing.

Includes: Charles Alston, Olu Amoda, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, George Andrews, Herman Kofi Bailey, Edward M. Bannister, Richmond Barthé, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, John T. Biggers, Elmer Simms Campbell, George Washington Carver, Elizabeth Catlett, Sonya Clark, Robert Colescott, Larry Collins, Ed Colston, Achamyele Debela, Roy DeCarava, Gebre Desta, Buddie Jake Dial, Thornton Dial, Sr.

Jeff Donaldson, Aaron Douglas, David Driskell, Melvin Edwards, Victor Ekpuk, Ben Enwonwu, Tolulope Filani, Sam Gilliam, Palmer Hayden, Alvin C. Hollingsworth, Charnelle Holloway, George Hughes, Richard Hunt, Wadsworth Jarrell, William H.

Johnson, Joshua Johnson, Lois Mailiou Jones, Ronald Joseph, Byron Kim, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Jacob Lawrence, Edmonia Lewis, Cynthia Lockhart, Frank (Toby) Martin, Richard, Mayhew, Carolyn Mazloomi, Julie Mehretu, Archibald Motley, Wangechi Mutu, Barbara Nesin, Odili Donald Odita, Christopher Okigbo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Kolade Oshinowo, Gordon Parks, Thomas Phelps, Horace Pippin, Willi Posey (under Jones), Ellen Jean Price, Martin Puryear, Femi Richards, Faith Ringgold, Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Betye Saar, Augusta Savage, John T. Scott, Gerard Sekoto, Thomas Shaw, Lorna Simpson, Edgar Sorrells-Adewale, SPIRAL, Renée Stout, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Fatimah Tuggar, Obiora Udechukwu, James Vanderzee, Ouattara Watts, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, William T.

4to 10.1 x 7.2 in. Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Folk: The Art of BENNY and GEORGE ANDREWS. 16 color plates (one double-page), 22 b&w illus and photos, exhib. Checklist includes 54 works (39 by Benny Andrews; 15 by George Andrews), colls. Bladon with text by Judd Tully. Traveled to: Lee Gallery, Clemson Univ.

Clemson, SC; Afro-American Cultural Museum, Charlotte, NC; Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi. Review: Susie Mee, "Folk and family: George and Benny Andrews, " The Clarion 15 (Fall 1990):34-41. Information about the Andrews family, experience of slavery, art and discussion of the exhibition. 4to 31 x 23 cm.

Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans. Benny Andrews and Nene Humphrey: The Art of Family. The first husband-wife show of this artist couple. Includes not only independent work but also a collection of cyanotype works they collaborated on at the Hambridge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia. The exhibition includes as well paintings by Benny's father, self-taught artist George ("The Dot Man") Andrews; writings by Benny's mother Viola Andrews and his brother Raymond Andrews as well as works by his sons, Thomas and Christopher Andrews. The Humphrey family also contributes to the show, including Nene's mother Eleanor's cross stitch and her father's paintings. Self-taught, Visionary And Outsider Artists: Works from the Permanent Collection. Included: George Andrews, Thornton Dial, Mose Tolliver, Clementine Hunter, Nellie Mae Rowe, Jimmie Lee Sudduth. Included: Benny Andrews, George Andrews, Jeffrey Cook, Thornton Dial, Sam Gilliam, Clementine Hunter, et al.

Art in Georgia from 1895 to 1960: Overview. In: The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Includes: Charles Alston, Benny Andrews, George Andrews, Cyrus Bowens, Jerome Carter, Ulysses Davis, William O. Hampton, Wilmer Jennings, Harriet Powers, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Nellie Mae Rowe, Jewel W. Simon, Alma Thomas, Hale Woodruff.

SELLEN, BETTY-CAROL and CYNTHIA J JOHANSON. Self-Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art: A Guide to American Artists, Locations and Resources. Compilation of American folk, outsider and self taught artists. It also includes gallery locations, fairs, festivals, exhibitions, auctions and organizations.

The majority of the book is devoted to brief biographical sketches. Includes: Jesse Aaron, John Abduljaami, Leroy Almon, George Andrews, Z. Armstrong, Steve Ashby, John W. Banks, Hawkins Bolden, Bruce Brice, Richard Burnside, Vernon Burwell, David Butler, W.

Crawford, Ulysses Davis, William Dawson, Mattie Dial, Thornton Dial, Sr. Sam Doyle, Vanzant Driver, William Edmondson, Minnie Evans, Amos Ferguson, Marvin Finn, Thomas Jefferson Flanagan, Ezekiel Gibbs, William O. Golding, Mary Gordon, Ralph Griffin, Dilmus Hall, James Hampton, Bob "Fan Man" Harper, Bessie Harvey, William Hawkins, Geoffrey Holder, Lonnie Holley, Sylvanus Hudson, Clementine Hunter, Alvin Jarrett, Anderson Johnson, M. Kennedy, Joe Light [and Light Family: Hosea Light, Mosea Light, Rachele Light, Rebekah Light, Rosie Lee Light], Ronald Lockett, Jesse Lott, Annie Lucas, Charlie Lucas, John W. Mason, Willie Massey, Jake T.

Imagination, Ike Morgan, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Emma Lee Moss, J. Murry, Sammie Nicely, Leslie Payne, Leroy Person, Philadelphia Wireman, David Philpot, Elijah Pierce, Horace Pippin, Naomi Polk, Daniel Pressley, Royal Robertson, Juanita Rogers, Sulton Rogers, Nellie Mae Rowe, J. Scott, Charles Smith (Louisiana), Edward Smith, Mary T. Smith, Georgia Speller, Henry Speller, Vannoy Streeter, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Rev. Johnnie Swearingen, Willie Tarver, Sarah Mary Taylor, James "Son" Thomas, Annie Tolliver, Charles Tolliver, Mose Tolliver, Willie Mae Tolliver, Bill Traylor, Felix Virgous, Inez Nathaniel Walker, Arliss Watford, Willard Watson, Derek Webster, Della Wells, George White, Willie White, Lizzie Wilkerson, "Artist Chuckie" Williams, Jeff Williams, Luster Willis, Onis Woodard, Joseph Yoakum.

8vo 10.3 x 7.3 in. Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas. 150 color plates, brief bibliog. Index, appendices of art and photo dealers, museums and other resources. Forewords by Dierdre Bibby and Samella Lewis. Text consists of a few sentences at best on most of the hundreds of listed artists. Numerous typos and other errors and misinformation throughout. In searching for the roots of Benny Andrews mature work, one place to begin is at The Art Institute of Chicago's art school back in 1957. It was a decade or so before it became common-place for art students to seek degrees in painting and sculpture from accredited universities. It was also a tense time with the Cold War, Russia launching Sputnik I and President Eisenhower sending Federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce integration at Central High School. Andrews credits Janitors at Rest from that year as his first mature work, one that incorporated aspects of collage to the canvas surface. The now-frail painting-collage (not a part of this exhibition but exhibited in 1988 at The Studio Museum in Harlem) is important on multiple levels.

For the purposes of this exhibition, suffice it to say, Benny Andrews picked a subject he felt was close to home. The small group of black men cleaned up the turpentine spills and other minor disasters wrought by the students at the famous art school.

As Andrews tells it, the janitors spent their "spare time" hanging out in the men's room-located in the museum's basement-'talking and sipping whiskey. They were constantly getting up and mopping up our messes:' recalled Andrews in an interview. Then they'd go back. Figuring out a way to add metaphorical ammunition to his composition, Andrews collaged bits of crumpled paper towels and toilet tissues (what the artist calls "foreign matter") to the camas.

The central figure site on a stool, blue-sleeved work shirt rolled up to the elbows, poised for the next inevitable disaster. If you didn't know about Andrews circumstances back then, the composition would evoke comparisons to the English Expressionist painter Francis Bacon. Focusing on this early image helps in understanding the predicament of a young black roan matriculating in a white school-one in the "frozen" North, no less. He didn't focus on a nude model, a Cezanne-like still life or any of the au courant art movements erupting in Chicago then, like the "Monster Roster" school and Painters such as Leon Golub.

Andrews had to tom to these real black men for inspiration. Benny Andrews, Portrait of a Collagist, 1989. Everything else seemed too far from home. The anecdote about Janitors at Rest leap-frogs to the present and a much larger composition, Portrait of George Andrews, the artist's father. George Andrews is comfortably seated in a stuffed arm chair, a cigarette dangling from his left hand, a drink gripped in the other. It is an intimate portrait, as textured and evocative as a Vuillard.

With his long legs dominating the foreground, shadows and all, another scene races horizontally along the back wall, a chaotically packed display of George Andrews' painted creations. By the look in the folk artist's eye, you can't really tell if he's dreaming up those paint-dotted installations of fish, birds and other kinds of natural things or if ifs actually displayed that way on the living room wall. George Andrews is relaxing but his mind is jumping, under the puffy dome of his snap-brimmed cap.

The wood-planked floor, the figure's patterned socks and pointy shoes, the decorated bottle with the painted artificial flower clinging to the lower edge of the canvas-al of it-pounds a formal battering rain on the metaphorical door marked father and son. Writing for a recent exhibition at the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center, Benny Andrews described some of that dynamic:. Ever since I can remember, Dad and I have made do with what we had, and we had about as close to nothing as one could imagine. In fact, I'm sure that's why I started using collage, and continue to use it, because it allows me to take a seemingly nondescript scrap of fabric and create something artistic. Affectionately referring to his father's nick-name; "The Dot Man" - Benny Andrews wrote:.

He's like a brush filled with dripping paint willing around looking for some place to place a drop..' His quote grows louder as you scrutinize the compelling portrait, imagining the logical progression that led the younger Andrews to collage, a long journey from his boyhood drawings scratched into the ground with a rusty nail. In the 1986 portrait, strips of canvas layered onto the subject's face season the elder Andrews with a leathery countenance, as if cured by the Georgia sun.

While there is no question that George and Benny Andrews soaked in some of the same influences that continue to fertilize their respective palettes, serious observers cannot afford to ignore the larger goldfish bowl of art and artists that made their mark on the impressionable young man from Morgan County in the late 1950s. Benny Andrews is apt to brush off correlations between his own work and that of the French Cubists who invented the collage form. He even says he was unaware of it as a movement while a student at The Art Institute. There are, however, strong affinities between Andrews and a number of key American modernists and expressionists who also embraced the collage medium.

Arthur Dove's Goin' Fishin from 1926 is a powerful pastiche of bamboo, denim and wood. You can feel the tension of the imaginary fishing line and the smooth, bleached out softness of the cut-up work shirt. Dove's collages from the mid to late 1920s also forged a link with American folk art, but his icons came from the 19th century.

Andrews is passionate about his sources: I started working in collage because I found. I didn't want to lose my sense of rawness.

We actually used the burlap bagging sacks that seed came in to make our shirts. As Andrews developed his collage style, he came to the conclusion: I didn't realize it al four but in a sense, Em really constructing-not Paint long my work. I needed something both tactile and tangible. The dynamic is not always as dear to the viewer, as say a photographic collage by Romare Bearden is.

The shards of canvas, patches of cloth or pieces of rope can be almost invisible on a big canvas unless viewed at close range. A visit to his New York studio makes that subtlety obvious. Parked in a corner, like a heap of kindling, is a stack of rejected canvases waiting for the knife. It is reminiscent of seeing the late painter Lee Krasner at work, tacking up large swatches of her recycled paintings onto a verge swatches spinning them around until she caught the right effect.

A veteran of the New York School that championed Abstract Expressionism-one critic dubbed her the "Mother Courage" of the movement-Krasner shared with Andrews the belief and practice in the magical properties of collage. Part of that sensibility-so active in the 1940s-1950s-rubbed off on Andrews once he landed in New York. The psychic tug-of-war between Andrews familial roots and the wider world outside of Madison never ceased.

Taken simplistically with Andrews, that's a fatal stance-the artist left home, went North, got an education, got famous and forgot what he was all about. The folk-influenced part is just a distracting aberration. But that exaggerated story line of You Cant Go Home Again crumples in the presence of Portrait of Viola Andrews, executed in 1986. Simultaneously serene and severe, the obviously devout matron, depicted in Whistlerian shades of black and white, clasps a Bible in bet lap. You can tell by the familiar way she holds the book that she can recite the verses by heart.

A bright scatter-shot of natural light illuminates the space around her, giving the composition an airy feel, uncluttered, crisp and clean. The posture of the artist's mother compared to the lanky sprawl of the father-in life as well as in his seated portrait-is a marvelous device for showing how opposites attract. While the composition appears to be carefully posed and one would assume Viola Andrews sat in that straight-backed chair modelling for umpteen hours, nothing could be further from the truth. Andrews is closer to the aesthetic of Edouard Vuillard. Who relied upon his imagination -as opposed to models-"to designate the thing I have in mind:' Even though the portrait is a likeness of his mother, it is more a projection of a staunchly Christian person, inextricably involved with an "easy-going and sinful man. Benny Andrews, Portrait of a Viola Andrews, 1986. As in Whistler's famous portrait of his mother, abstractly titled Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, an abstract current runs through Andrews work with just as much juice as the narrative pull of the stern woman sitting alone with her Bible.

The image becomes another American Gothic, an icon to stare at and wonder about. This reference to Grant Wood's painting shouldn't be confused with another work by Benny Andrews, titled American Gothic, executed in 1971, the year the Supreme Court upheld the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Far removed from the serenity and safety of Viola Andrews life, the earlier picture is one of the fiercest anti-war statements produced in that or any period.

But it is the formal quality of the composition that triggers its hypnotic effect. The black dress and medieval-like hat are offset by the starched white curves of cuffs and collar. The painted, all-over patterned wallpaper sets a manic tone to the disciplined stillness of the sitter. A plain wood table and decorated vase of sunflowers separate Viola Andrews from the frantic visual traffic on the wall-dancing to its own boogie-woogie. Benny Andrews calls his process a "continuous digestion of things:' Conventions are tossed aside: "It's almost like being in a sandbox.

While you're standing, it's much more of a conscious effort, but on the floor, I see more easily. I can visualize images on white paper.

My hand becomes an instrument. His associations with childhood games or drawing any of the hundreds of heroes and good Buys of his youth and tacking them on the bare wood-planked walls of his world.

Remain the critical ingredient in his ever-expanding oeuvre. In trying to explain las "eclectic" process, Andrews brought up his novel-writing brother, Raymond Andre. (whose first novel, Appalachee Red, published in 1978, won the James Baldwin Prize for fiction): He writes a story the same way I draw. That's why my work is so hard to define.

Parenthetically, Raymond Andrews dedicated that first novel to all of those who ever picked a boll of cotton, pulled a peach, or gone to town on a Saturday afternoon. That quote embraces much of the childhood activity of the brothers. Without knowing about the tremendous influence of his father "making up and doing things, " one would automatically think Andrews was shaped by Jackson Pollock, the seminal artist who did away with easels and conventional modes of art-making.

While it is partially correct to include Pollock in Benny Andrews multi-storied pantheon, the more poignant source and magnet for his art-making is George Andrews. George Andrews, Valley of the Dry Bones. Without suffering the psychic pains of being the offspring "of a famous artist" (read Jimmy Ernst's autobiography, A Not So Still Lift), Benny Andrews reaped all the pluses. He remained far removed from the "popular culture" of the North except for some magazine subscriptions and weekly "Wild West" infusions at the local cinema.

It is important to acknowledge these folkway mots that playback now in an almost magical form, uniting father and son in an exhibition. In 1988, a widely traveled exhibition, An American Vision-Three Generations of Wyeth Art, closed at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the "home seat" of the Wyeth family. As fathers and sons go, the Wyeths including the late N. As well as Andrew and Jamie are probably the most famous American artist family outside of the Philadelphia Peales. It is interesting to compare for a brief moment the very traditional and definitely "Yankee" image of the Wyeths to the category-defying traits of George and Benny Andrews.

Benny Andrews, Portrait of George Andrews, 1986. If George Andrews had "studied" painting or art-making as opposed to receiving his multi-media vision through dreams, the dynamic for Benny Andrews would have been significantly altered. Looking back in art history, it could have been a recasting of two "Old Masters, " Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger. The Younger made a handsome career out of copying masterpieces of his more illustrious father. But in the Andrews household the only models came from torn-out pages of Life or Collier's.

It would take years for the family-let alone, outsiders-to recognize that the insatiable object-making and "decorating" by George Andrews tapped a potent vein of folk art. Portrait of a Collagist reveals Benny Andrews at work, oval palette in hand, staring intently-not at the viewer-but the studio mirror. In his stretched out, mannerist style, the image comes to us tall and narrow, with the artist flush against the right side of the can-vas, backed op-so to speak-against the wall. Within this narrow space of 50 inches, Andrews struts his stuff, from the cardboard box of odds and ends on the floor to the work-in-progress landscape on the white studio wall.

The rectangle forming the landscape on the wall jousts geometrically with the oval-shaped palette impaled on the painter's thumb. The two disparate shapes seem magnetically attracted to one another. The artist stands with his paint_ brush hovering in the depths space. Despite the stillness of the pose, a kinetic wind blows across the canvas, leaving the sensation that the fabrics and things in the open carton will vault out and up into the painting. Cropped shadows-they have nowhere else to go-tail the figure and the box. The otherwise bare studio wall outlines and magnifies the major elements, acting as the untouched white "negative space" of watercolor paper. With a compulsion to document the tin, Andrews models his casual uniform of safari chinos (the left pant leg is collaged with zippered pockets) and vest, as well as a state-of-the-art pair of running shoes. In marvelous contrast, This Is George Andrews Boy Ha Ha Ha by George Andrews, jitter-bugs in an ambiguous space, barely contained by the canvas. In a now already famous anecdote-well-worth repeating Benny Andrews outlined the figure of his father on the bare canvas and then George Andrews went to work. At an uncharacteristically large scale (50 x 44 inches), the painting takes on a breathless narrative with Andrews' signature whirligig and floral whatnot shapes spinning and sputtering in mass elation.

A "picture-caption" located near the bottom right of the canvas spells out in a jangly script, This Is George Andrews Boy Ha Ha Ha and sort of runs out of room there. In the Southland Series, Benny Andrews pursues the common, intertwined threads of good and evil. Just as his portraits of his parents vividly contrast their wildly different personalities, that same tension of opposing forces persists in his cast of workers and farmers, banters, cowboys, and no-goods.

As Raymond Andrews wrote in a catalogue essay for his brother's exhibition in 1984, Icons and Images in the Work of Benny Andrews: "Momma was the community's number one Christian, under the same roof with her lived one of the community's longest surviving sinners, Daddy:". This biographical thread weaves into the art of Benny Andrews with Raymond's even more extraordinary observation: Momma always prayed that Benny would grow up to be a do artist rather than a'pouring' artist, another of his, the ability from age five to pour water interchangeably from bottle to bottle without spilling a drop, the mark of a moonshiner. This, Momma claimed, Benny got from Daddy's side of the family where it was said stretched a long line of perfect pourers.

In the mural-sized Pool, the viewer immediately assumes that the trio of sinful protagonists-so eagerly crouched over the scattered assembly of striped and solid-colored balls-prefer the green felt of a billiard table to the distant terrain of a farmer's field or the hard bench of a pew. Hugging the opposite end of the table, the other two opponents (engaged in a game called "cutthroat") study the risky shot, their red and blue cue sticks held like bayonets.

They're wearing hats too, as different in shape and tilt as their postures. This classic game-no matter what the stakes-is being played in deadly earnest. The choreography of the players movements is electric, with the center figure in the red-striped pants forming the highest point of the assembled triad.

He cups his chin and assesses the chances of his opponents shot. To the right, the third player is crouched further down, to afford a better line of sight, as a referee would in a wrestling match, to detect whose shoulder touches the mat first.

He would be the first to yell scratch. Apart from the formal fireworks, the image is severely cropped so all horizontal movement is exaggerated, and every ounce of visual space is keyed to the green baize-topped pool table. On another level, the artist tells a tale with considerable "English" (the phrase for making the billiard ball spin in different directions).

Similar in spirit to Local Hangout (painted in the same year) and Boots, Pool captures the thrill of gambling and low-key vice, made all the more comforting by the familiar smoky ambience of the neighborhood parlor. In his unique and strangely surreal way, Andrews leaves the background of the composition alone and white, unlike, for example, a Red Grooms work that would gridlock the walls with signs and at least one window affording additional views. Just when you're about to pigeonhole Andrews as an Expressionist. You realize he's a Minimalist too.

This becomes especially clear after viewing his spare line drawings-as evocative as Alexander Calder wire-drawn portraits. They tell his life story. Grooms and Andrews are related geographically and share expressionist/sharpshooter skills in draughtsmanship, Back in the late 1950s, as he found his bearings on New York's Lower East Side, Andrews met Grooms and his wife at the time, Mimi Grooms, as well as fellow-black painter Bob Thompson (whose career and life were tragically cut short), Jay Milder, and Lester Johnson.

Though plugged into those mean streets in a no-man's land time between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Andrews never abandoned, and in fact, thrived on, his rural-folkway beginnings and roughly textured figuration. Referring to Andrews fabric-streaked paintings, painter Alice Neel described them as. A surreal reality evoking not only the history of the person but also of life itself.

While Grooms found his way to "happenings" and documenting the wilds of Canal Street, Andrews resisted aesthetic assimilation. Returning to the painterly realm of good versus evil or at least, some place in between, The English Teacher stands alone, her book in one hand, a piece of white chalk painted in the other Color plate 4, p. It's a black woman at the head of a class we can't otherwise see. We are afforded an excellent view of the green and black checkerboard floor, made all the more vivid by her pointy red high heel shoes scuffing the foreground. With her floral print skirt, white blouse and vest, the teacher is decked out jaunty and proper. The blackboard behind her is bare, without even a smudge of chalk dust. The L-shaped expanse of lilac-colored wall provides an eye-resting tonic for the otherwise hard-edged background. Andrews is giving us a lesson of his own in that the teacher is black, and her language is one that was originally and brutally imposed on her culture from an entirely different context. "Black" English is spoken differently because it is a foreign language, even more so in the rural southland where Andrews received his early and moody episodic schooling. Benny Andrews, The Hunters, 1989. Rounding out the wide-range Rounding out the wide-range of character/ personas in the Southland Series, The Hunters bristles with associations of a hardscrabble land and the folks who somehow survive on it. The plural reference in the title gives equal billing to the hunter in a faded pair of bib overalls and the long-toothed curdog panting proudly at his side. Cradling a rifle in one arm and gripping the rag-doll legs of the dead white rabbit in his left hand, the hunter sizes the viewer up, as if he too were prey. His wide-brimmed straw hat partially obscures his inscrutable look. The poor rabbit is hanging upside down, looking more like a stuffed animal than a wild one. Not a drop of blood n visible, and no attempt has been made to infuse it with any appearance of a violent end. Even with the seemingly humorous and picture-taking poses of the predators and prey, a brutal irony leaps out of the frame. The silhouette-black shadows-like the cinematic chiaroscuro in High Noon-are meant to be ominous. Andrews is consistently misconstrued as a realist or regionalist, only concerned with the social-folk ethic of a mostly passed time.

In the same way he paints/collages portraits without the subject present, he creates his country land-scapes and Noah-like menagerie of exotic creatures solely from memory or imagination, hundreds of miles away from the red soil of Georgia. While it's reasonable to say Andrews shares certain historical affinities with social realists like Philip Evergood and the cosmopolitan regionalist Thomas Hart Benton, any label treads on thin ice.

Benny Andrews' potion for stimulating his unconscious-the place where his art springs, from-is to be surrounded by things that trigger associations. That elusive requirement is as strong as was OKeeffe's concrete need to be close to her beloved hills of Abiquiu, New Mexico or Reginald Marsh's obsession with the assorted flesh of Coney Island.

Standing before a room sized installation of George Andrews' art-the only way to fully experience it-you begin to hear the dialogue between father and son. Both are inexplicably unique; yet, somehow each amplifies and crystalizes the other's voice and vision. Though he wasn't a part of the ground-breaking exhibition organized in 1982 by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Black Folk Art in America 1930.

1980, George Andrews fits seamlessly into Livingston's cogent definition: The artists working in this esthetic territory are generally untutored yet masterfully adept, displaying a grasp of formal issues so consistent and so formidable that it can be neither unselfconscious nor accidentally achieved. Livingston's remarkable comment that art requires unbidden miracles to assist in its realization further bonds the two men into an art historical place recently discovered but still remote. With open passage to his dream-conjured art, George Andrews felt no need to leave home. But throughout his globe-trotting life, Benny Andrews has maintained a lifeline to Madison, spending part of each year living and making art in his nearby studio. It is difficult to imagine hi potent collage form existing without the folk and fabric of Morgan County, Georgia.

Civic / economic groups[show]. African-American art is a broad term describing the visual arts of the American black community (African Americans).

Influenced by various cultural traditions, including those of Africa, Europe and the Americas, traditional African-American art forms include the range of plastic arts, from basket weaving, pottery, and quilting to woodcarving and painting. Pre-colonial, Antebellum and Civil War eras.

The Harlem Renaissance to contemporary art. This is the carved powder horn by carver John Bush from around 1754. Harriet Powers, Bible quilt, Mixed Media. Prior to the 20th century, African-American art existed during the French and Indian War. John Bush was a powder horn carver and soldier with the Massachusetts militia fighting with the British. His work has toured throughout Canada and the US.

[1][2] His powder horn of 1756 has been part of a travelling exhibition throughout Canada and US. [3][4] Art continued in subsequent slave communities, through the end of the 20th century, African-American art has made a vital contribution to the art of the United States. [5] During the period between the 17th century and the early 19th century art took the form of small drums, quilts, wrought-iron figures and ceramic vessels in the southern United States; these artifacts have similarities with comparable crafts in West and Central Africa. In contrast, black artisans like the New England-based engraver Scipio Moorhead and the Baltimore portrait painter Joshua Johnson created art that was conceived in a western European fashion for their local markets. Many of Africa's most skilled artisans were enslaved in the Americas, while others learned their trades or crafts as apprentices to African or white skilled workers.

It was often the practice for slave owners to hire out skilled artisans. Patronage by some white families allowed for private tutorship in special cases. Many of these sponsoring whites were abolitionists. The artists received more encouragement and were better able to support themselves in cities, of which there were more in the North and border states. Now nationally recognized for her quilts, she used traditional appliqué techniques to record local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events on her quilts.

Only two of her late quilts have survived: Bible Quilt 1886 and Bible Quilt 1898. Her quilts are considered among the finest examples of 19th-century Southern quilting. Like Powers, the women of Gee's Bend developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African-American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity. Although widely separated by geography, they have qualities reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee's Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present.

[10] At one time scholars believed slaves sometimes utilized quilt blocks to alert other slaves about escape plans during the time of the Underground Railroad, [11] but most historians do not agree. Quilting remains alive as form of artistic expression in the African-American community.

After the Civil War, it became increasingly acceptable for African American-created works to be exhibited in museums, and artists increasingly produced works for this purpose. These were works mostly in the European romantic and classical traditions of landscapes and portraits. Edward Mitchell Bannister, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Edmonia Lewis are the most notable of this time. Others include Grafton Tyler Brown, Nelson A. Primus and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. The goal of widespread recognition across racial boundaries was first eased within America's big cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, New York, and New Orleans. Even in these places, however, there were discriminatory limitations. Abroad, however, African Americans were much better received. In Europe - especially Paris, France - these artists could express much more freedom in experimentation and education concerning techniques outside traditional western art. Freedom of expression was much more prevalent in Paris as well as Munich and Rome to a lesser extent. Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City by Henry Ossawa Tanner is in the collection of the White House, and hangs in the Green Room.

Acquired during the Clinton administration with funds from the White House Acquisition Trust, it is the first artwork in the White House by an African American. The Harlem Renaissance was one of the most notable movements in African-American art. Certain freedoms and ideas that were already widespread in many parts of the world at the time had begun to spread into the artistic communities United States during the 1920s.

During this period notable artists included Richmond Barthé, Aaron Douglas, Lawrence Harris, Palmer Hayden, William H. Johnson, Sargent Johnson, John T.

Biggers, Earle Wilton Richardson, Malvin Gray Johnson, Archibald Motley, Augusta Savage, Hale Woodruff, and photographer James Van Der Zee. The establishment of the Harmon Foundation by art patron William E. Harmon in 1922 sponsored many artists through its Harmon Award and annual exhibitions.

As it did with many such endeavors, the 1929 Great Depression largely ended funding for the arts for a time. While the Harmon Foundation still existed in this period, its financial support toward artists ended.

The Harmon Foundation, however, continued supporting artists until 1967 by mounting exhibitions and offering funding for developing artists such as Jacob Lawrence. Midnight Golfer by Eugene J. Martin, mixed media collage on rag paper. Kara Walker, Cut, Cut paper and adhesive on wall, Brent Sikkema NYC. The US Treasury Department's Public Works of Art Project ineffectively attempted to provide support for artists in 1933.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA provided for all American artists and proved especially helpful to African-American artists.

Artists and writers both gained work that helped them survive the Depression. Among them were Jacob Lawrence and Richard Wright. Politics, human and social conditions all became the subjects of accepted art forms.

Important cities with significant black populations and important African-American art circles included Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D. The WPA led to a new wave of important black art professors. Mixed media, abstract art, cubism, and social realism became not only acceptable, but desirable.

Artists of the WPA united to form the 1935 Harlem Artists Guild, which developed community art facilities in major cities. Leading forms of art included drawing, sculpture, printmaking, painting, pottery, quilting, weaving and photography. By 1939, the costly WPA and its projects all were terminated.

Porter, a professor in the Department of Art at Howard University, wrote the first major text on African-American art and artists, Modern Negro Art. In the 1950s and 1960s, few African-American artists were widely known or accepted. Despite this, The Highwaymen, a loose association of 26 African-American artists from Fort Pierce, Florida, created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida landscape and peddled some 200,000 of them from the trunks of their cars. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as an important part of American folk history. The current market price for an original Highwaymen painting can easily bring in thousands of dollars.

In 2004 the original group of 26 Highwaymen were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. [16] Currently 8 of the 26 are deceased, including A. Newton, Ellis and George Buckner, A.

Roberts, Hezekiah Baker and most recently Johnny Daniels. The full list of 26 can be found in the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, as well as various highwaymen and Florida art websites.

Jerry Harris, Dogon mother and child, constructed and carved wood with found objects, laminated clay (Bondo), and wooden dowels. After the Second World War, some artists took a global approach, working and exhibiting abroad, in Paris, and as the decade wore on, relocated gradually in other welcoming cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Stockholm: Barbara Chase-Riboud, Edward Clark, Harvey Cropper, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, [17] Bill Hutson, Clifford Jackson, [18] Sam Middleton, [19] Larry Potter, Haywood Bill Rivers, Merton Simpson, and Walter Williams. Some African-American artists did make it into important New York galleries by the 1950s and 1960s: Horace Pippin, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, William T. Williams, Norman Lewis, Thomas Sills, [22] and Sam Gilliam were among the few who had successfully been received in a gallery setting. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s led artists to capture and express the times and changes.

Galleries and community art centers developed for the purpose of displaying African-American art, and collegiate teaching positions were created by and for African-American artists. Some African-American women were also active in the feminist art movement in the 1970s. Faith Ringgold made work that featured black female subjects and that addressed the conjunction of racism and sexism in the U. While the collective Where We At (WWA) held exhibitions exclusively featuring the artwork of African-American women. By the 1980s and 1990s, hip-hop graffiti became predominate in urban communities. Most major cities had developed museums devoted to African-American artists. The National Endowment for the Arts provided increasing support for these artists. Important collections of African-American art include the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, the Paul R. Jones collections at the University of Delaware and University of Alabama, the David C. Driskell Art collection, the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Mott-Warsh collection. Kara Walker, a contemporary American artist, is known for her exploration of race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her artworks. Walker's silhouette images work to bridge unfinished folklore in the Antebellum South and are reminiscent of the earlier work of Harriet Powers.

Her nightmarish yet fantastical images incorporate a cinematic feel. In 2007, Walker was listed among Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in The World, Artists and Entertainers". Textile artists are part of African-American art history. According to the 2010 Quilting in America industry survey, there are 1.6 million quilters in the United States. Influential contemporary artists include Larry D.

Alexander, Laylah Ali, Amalia Amaki, Emma Amos, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dawoud Bey, Camille Billops, Mark Bradford, Edward Clark, Willie Cole, Robert Colescott, Louis Delsarte, David C. Driskell, Leonardo Drew, Mel Edwards, Ricardo Francis, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Herbert Gentry, Sam Gilliam, David Hammons, Jerry Harris, Joseph Holston, Richard Hunt, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Katie S.

Scott Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Joe Lewis, Glenn Ligon, James Little, Edward L. Loving, Kerry James Marshall, Eugene J. Martin, Richard Mayhew, Sam Middleton, Howard McCalebb, Charles McGill, Thaddeus Mosley, Sana Musasama, Senga Nengudi, Joe Overstreet, Martin Puryear, Adrian Piper, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Gale Fulton Ross, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, John Solomon Sandridge, Raymond Saunders, John T. Scott, Joyce Scott, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Renee Stout, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Stanley Whitney, William T.

Williams, Jack Whitten, Fred Wilson, Richard Wyatt, Jr. Richard Yarde, and Purvis Young, Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas, Barkley Hendricks, Jeff Sonhouse, William Walker, Ellsworth Ausby, Che Baraka, Emmett Wigglesworth, Otto Neals, Dindga McCannon, Terry Dixon (artist), Frederick J. Scipio Moorhead, Portrait of poet Phillis Wheatley, 1773, in the frontispiece to her book Poems on Various Subjects. Edward Mitchell Bannister, Driving Home the Cows 1881.

Harriet Powers, Bible quilt, mixed media, 1886. Henry Ossawa Tanner, Gateway, Tangier, 1912, oil on canvas, 18 7/16" × 15 5/16", St.

Charles Alston, Again The Springboard Of Civilization, 1943 (WWII African American soldier). Mequitta Ahuja (born 1976), painter, installation artist. Laylah Ali (born 1968), painter. Amalia Amaki (born 1959), artist. Emma Amos (born 1938), painter[2].

Edgar Arceneaux (born 1972), drawing artist. Radcliffe Bailey (born 1968) collage, sculpture[3][4].

Kyle Baker (born 1965), cartoonist. Darrin Bell (born 1975), cartoonist.

Dawoud Bey (born 1953), photographer[2]. Sanford Biggers (born 1970), interdisciplinary. McArthur Binion (born 1946), painter. Betty Blayton (born 1937), painter, printmaker[1]. Chakaia Booker (born 1953), sculptor[2].

Edythe Boone (born 1938), muralist. Charles Boyce (born 1949), cartoonist. Tina Williams Brewer, fiber artist[5].

Michael Bramwell (born 1953), conceptual artist. Elenora "Rukiya" Brown, doll creator. Beverly Buchanan (born 1940), painter, sculptor[1].

Fred Carter (born 1938), cartoonist. Bernie Casey (born 1939), painter[1]. Nick Cave (born 1959), performance artist.

Michael Ray Charles (born 1967), painter[2]. Barbara Chase-Riboud (born 1936), sculptor[1]. Jamour Chames (born 1989), painter. Edward Clark (born 1926), painter.

Sonya Clark (born 1967), textile and multimedia artist. Willie Cole (born 1955), painter[2].

Kennard Copeland (born 1966), ceramic sculptures [2]. Cummings III (born 1938), woodworker. Michael Cummings (born 1945), textile artist.

Bing Davis (born 1937), potter and graphic artist[1]. Louis Delsarte (born 1944), artist[1].

J Rodney Dennis[7][8] painter. Terry Dixon (born 1969), painter and multimedia artist. Jeff Donaldson (born 1932), painter and critic. Emory Douglas (born 1943), Black Panther artist. (born 1941), printmaker, etcher, lithographer, and painter. Driskell (born 1931), artist and scholar. Mel Edwards (born 1937), sculptor[2][1]. Ellen Gallagher (born 1965)[2]. Theaster Gates (born 1973), sculptor, ceramicist, and performance artist. Reginald K (Kevin) Gee (born 1964), painter. Wilda Gerideau-Squires (born 1946), photographer. Leah Gilliam (born 1967), media artist and filmmaker.

Sam Gilliam (born 1933), painter[2] [1]. Gordon (born 1936), printmaker[2]. Lonnie Graham, photographer and installation artist. Deborah Grant (born 1968), painter.

Todd Gray (born 1954), photographer, installation and performance artist. Renee Green (born 1959), installation artist[2]. Mario Gully, comic book artist.

Tyree Guyton (born 1955)[2]. Ed Hamilton (born 1947), sculptor. Patrick Earl Hammie (born 1981), painter.

David Hammons (born 1943), artist[2]. Trenton Doyle Hancock (born 1974)[2]. Kira Lynn Harris (born 1963), multidisciplinary[10]. Jerry Harris (born 1945), sculptor.

Marren Hassenger (born 1947), sculptor, installation, performance[11]. William Howard (active 19th century), American woodworker and craftsman. Bryce Hudson (born 1979), painter, sculptor[2]. David Huffman (born 1963), painter[12].

Richard Hunt (born 1935), sculptor[2][1]. Clementine Hunter (1886/7-1988), folk artist[2][1]. Steffani Jemison (born 1981), performance artist, video artist. Wadsworth Jarrell (born 1929), painter, sculptor. 1824, portrait painter and folk artist[2][1].

Rashid Johnson (born 1977), conceptual artist. Titus Kaphar (born 1976), painter[13].

Deana Lawson (born 1979), photographer[14]. Glenn Ligon (born 1960), painter[2]. Llanakila, artist, painter, digital illustrator, and digital artist.

Whitfield Lovell (born 1960), artist. Clarence Major (born 1936), painter. Kerry James Marshall (born 1955), painter[2].

Richard Mayhew (born 1934), Afro-Native American, landscape painter[16]. Valerie Maynard (born 1937), sculptor, printmaker, painter. Ealy Mays (born 1959), painter. Howard McCalebb (born 1947), artist.

Charles McGee, (born 1924) painter. Charles McGill (born 1964), artist, educator. Julie Mehretu (born 1970), painter, printmaker. Nicole Miller (born 1982), video artist.

Dean Mitchell (born 1957), painter. Scipio Moorhead (active 1770s), painter[1].

Lorraine O'Grady (born 1934), conceptual artist. Turtel Onli (born 1952), cartoonist.

John Outterbridge (born 1933), assemblage artist[2][1]. Joe Overstreet (born 1933), artist[1]. Cecelia Pedescleaux (born 1945), quilter.

Howardena Pindell (born 1943), painter[2]. Jerry Pinkney (born 1939), illustrator[2]. Adrian Piper (born 1948), conceptual artist[2]. Rae Pleasant (born 1985), illustrator[18][19].

Carl Robert Pope (born 1961), photographer[2]. L (born 1955) conceptual artist.

Martin Puryear (born 1941), sculptor[2][1]. Faith Ringgold (born 1930), painter[2][1].

Bayeté Ross Smith (born 1976), photographer. Alison Saar (born 1956), artist[2][1]. Betye Saar (born 1926), artist[2][1].

Scott (born 1948), sculptor[2]. Lorenzo Scott (born 1934), painter.

Ed Sherman (born 1945), photographer. Gary Simmons (born 1964), artist. Lorna Simpson (born 1960), artist[2].

Cauleen Smith (born 1967), filmmaker. Leslie Smith III (born 1985), painter. Mitchell Squire (born 1958), American installation artist, sculptor and performance artist. Renee Stout (born 1958), artist[2].

Martine Syms (born 1988), artist. Hank Willis Thomas (born 1976), photographer.

Mickalene Thomas (born 1971), painter and installation artist. Henry Taylor (born 1958) painter. Kara Walker (born 1969), artist[2] [1]. Washington (born 1962), printmaker and counterfeiter. Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953), photographer[2]. Kehinde Wiley (born 1977), painter. Gerald Williams (artist) (Born 1941) painter. Williams (born 1942), painter[1]. Deborah Willis (born 1948), photographer. Fred Wilson (born 1954), conceptual artist. This article needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). The Black Arts Movement, Black Aesthetics Movement or BAM is the artistic outgrowth of the Black Power movement that was prominent in the 1960s and early 1970s. [1][2][3] Time magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the single most controversial movement in the history of African-American literature - possibly in American literature as a whole.

[4] The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS), founded in Harlem in 1965 by LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) is a key institution of the Black Arts Movement. The movement has been seen as one of the most important times in African-American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African-American Studies programs within universities. [6] The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X.

[7] Among the well-known writers who were involved with the movement are Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Hoyt W. [8][9] Although not strictly part of the Movement, other notable African-American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said.

I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s.

Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that.

BAM influenced the world of literature with the portrayal of different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities, which was not valued by the mainstream at the time. Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered on this movement, and therefore African Americans gained social and historical recognition in the area of literature and arts. Due to the agency and credibility given, African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media outlets about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African-American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. [11] The first major arts movement publication was in 1964. The beginnings of the Black Arts Movement may be traced to 1965, when Amiri Baraka, at that time still known as Leroi Jones, moved uptown to establish the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) following the assassination of Malcolm X. [4] Rooted in the Nation of Islam, the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement grew out of a changing political and cultural climate in which Black artists attempted to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience. [4] Black artists and intellectuals such as Baraka made it their project to reject older political, cultural, and artistic traditions. Although the success of sit-ins and public demonstrations of the Black student movement in the 1960s may have "inspired black intellectuals, artists, and political activists to form politicized cultural groups, "[12] many Black Arts activists rejected the non-militant integrational ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement and instead favored those of the Black Liberation Struggle, which emphasized self-determination through self-reliance and Black control of significant businesses, organization, agencies, and institutions.

"[13] According to the Academy of American Poets, "African American artists within the movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience. The importance that the movement placed on Black autonomy is apparent through the creation of institutions such as the Black Arts Repertoire Theatre School (BARTS), created in the spring of 1964 by Baraka and other Black artists. The opening of BARTS in New York City often overshadow the growth of other radical Black Arts groups and institutions all over the United States. In fact, transgressional and international networks, those of various Left and nationalist (and Left nationalist) groups and their supports, existed far before the movement gained popularity.

[12] Although the creation of BARTS did indeed catalyze the spread of other Black Arts institutions and the Black Arts movement across the nation, it was not solely responsible for the growth of the movement. Although the Black Arts Movement was a time filled with black success and artistic progress, the movement also faced social and racial ridicule. The leaders and artists involved called for Black Art to define itself and speak for itself from the security of its own institutions. For many of the contemporaries the idea that somehow black people could express themselves through institutions of their own creation and with ideas whose validity was confirmed by their own interests and measures was absurd.

While it is easy to assume that the movement began solely in the Northeast, it actually started out as "separate and distinct local initiatives across a wide geographic area, " eventually coming together to form the broader national movement. [12] New York City is often referred to as the "birthplace" of the Black Arts Movement, because it was home to many revolutionary Black artists and activists. However, the geographical diversity of the movement opposes the misconception that New York (and Harlem, especially) was the primary site of the movement. In its beginning states, the movement came together largely through printed media.

Journals such as Liberator, The Crusader, and Freedomways created a national community in which ideology and aesthetics were debated and a wide range of approaches to African-American artistic style and subject displayed. [12] These publications tied communities outside of large Black Arts centers to the movement and gave the general black public access to these sometimes exclusive circles. As a literary movement, Black Arts had its roots in groups such as the Umbra Workshop.

Umbra (1962) was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side; major members were writers Steve Cannon, [15] Tom Dent, Al Haynes, David Henderson, Calvin C. Hernton, Joe Johnson, Norman Pritchard, Lennox Raphael, Ishmael Reed, Lorenzo Thomas, James Thompson, Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist), Brenda Walcott, and musician-writer Archie Shepp. Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism, " directly influenced Jones. Along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS. Umbra, which produced Umbra Magazine, was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: in 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah E.

On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra.

Another formation of black writers at that time was the Harlem Writers Guild, led by John O. Killens, which included Maya Angelou, Jean Carey Bond, Rosa Guy, and Sarah Wright among others. But the Harlem Writers Guild focused on prose, primarily fiction, which did not have the mass appeal of poetry performed in the dynamic vernacular of the time.

Poems could be built around anthems, chants, and political slogans, and thereby used in organizing work, which was not generally the case with novels and short stories. Moreover, the poets could and did publish themselves, whereas greater resources were needed to publish fiction. That Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement's aesthetics. When Umbra split up, some members, led by Askia Touré and Al Haynes, moved to Harlem in late 1964 and formed the nationalist-oriented Uptown Writers Movement, which included poets Yusef Rahman, Keorapetse "Willie" Kgositsile from South Africa, and Larry Neal. Accompanied by young "New Music" musicians, they performed poetry all over Harlem.

Members of this group joined LeRoi Jones in founding BARTS. Jones's move to Harlem was short-lived. , and left BARTS in serious disarray.

BARTS failed but the Black Arts center concept was irrepressible, mainly because the Black Arts movement was so closely aligned with the then-burgeoning Black Power movement. The mid-to-late 1960s was a period of intense revolutionary ferment.

Beginning in 1964, rebellions in Harlem and Rochester, New York, initiated four years of long hot summers. Watts, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, and many other cities went up in flames, culminating in nationwide explosions of resentment and anger following Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nathan Hare, author of The Black Anglo-Saxons (1965), was the founder of 1960s Black Studies. Expelled from Howard University, Hare moved to San Francisco State University, where the battle to establish a Black Studies department was waged during a five-month strike during the 1968-69 school year.

As with the establishment of Black Arts, which included a range of forces, there was broad activity in the Bay Area around Black Studies, including efforts led by poet and professor Sarah Webster Fabio at Merrit College. The initial thrust of Black Arts ideological development came from the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a national organization with a strong presence in New York City. Both Touré and Neal were members of RAM. After RAM, the major ideological force shaping the Black Arts movement was the US (as opposed to "them") organization led by Maulana Karenga. Also ideologically important was Elijah Muhammad's Chicago-based Nation of Islam.

These three formations provided both style and conceptual direction for Black Arts artists, including those who were not members of these or any other political organization. Although the Black Arts Movement is often considered a New York-based movement, two of its three major forces were located outside New York City. As the movement matured, the two major locations of Black Arts' ideological leadership, particularly for literary work, were California's Bay Area because of the Journal of Black Poetry and The Black Scholar, and the Chicago-Detroit axis because of Negro Digest/Black World and Third World Press in Chicago, and Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett's Lotus Press in Detroit. The only major Black Arts literary publications to come out of New York were the short-lived (six issues between 1969 and 1972) Black Theatre magazine, published by the New Lafayette Theatre, and Black Dialogue, which had actually started in San Francisco (1964-68) and relocated to New York (1969-72). Although the journals and writing of the movement greatly characterized its success, the movement placed a great deal of importance on collective oral and performance art.

Public collective performances drew a lot of attention to the movement, and it was often easier to get an immediate response from a collective poetry reading, short play, or street performance than it was from individual performances. The people involved in the Black Arts Movement used the arts as a way to liberate themselves. The movement served as a catalyst for many different ideas and cultures to come alive. This was a chance for African Americans to express themselves in a way that most would not have expected. In 1967 LeRoi Jones visited Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida.

Kawaida, which produced the "Nguzo Saba" (seven principles), Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names, was a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy. Jones also met Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver and worked with a number of the founding members of the Black Panthers. Additionally, Askia Touré was a visiting professor at San Francisco State and was to become a leading (and long-lasting) poet as well as, arguably, the most influential poet-professor in the Black Arts movement.

Playwright Ed Bullins and poet Marvin X had established Black Arts West, and Dingane Joe Goncalves had founded the Journal of Black Poetry (1966). This grouping of Ed Bullins, Dingane Joe Goncalves, LeRoi Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Askia M. Touré, and Marvin X became a major nucleus of Black Arts leadership. As the movement grew, ideological conflicts arose and eventually became too great for the movement to continue to exist as a large, coherent collective.

Many discussions of the Black Arts movement posit it as the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. [17] The Black Aesthetic refers to ideologies and perspectives of art that center on Black culture and life. This Black Aesthetic encouraged the idea of Black separatism, and in trying to facilitate this, hoped to further strengthen black ideals, solidarity, and creativity.

In his well-known essay on the Black Arts Movement, Larry Neal attests. When we speak of a'Black aesthetic' several things are meant.

First, we assume that there is already in existence the basis for such an aesthetic. Essentially, it consists of an African-American cultural tradition. But this aesthetic is finally, by implication, broader than that tradition.

It encompasses most of the usable elements of the Third World culture. The motive behind the Black aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world. Amiri Baraka's poem "Black Art" serves as one of his most controversial, yet poetically profound supplements to the Black Arts Movement.

In this piece, Baraka merges politics with art, criticizing poems that are not useful to or adequately representative of the Black struggle. First published in 1966, a period particularly known for the Civil Rights Movement, the political aspect of this piece underscores the need for a concrete and artistic approach to the realistic nature involving racism and injustice. Serving as the recognized artistic component to and having roots in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement aims to grant a political voice to black artists including poets, dramatists, writers, musicians, etc. Playing a vital role in this movement, Baraka calls out what he considers to be unproductive and assimilatory actions shown by political leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. He describes prominent Black leaders as being on the steps of the white house... Kneeling between the sheriff's thighs negotiating coolly for his people. [19] Baraka also presents issues of euro-centric mentality, by referring to Elizabeth Taylor as a prototypical model in a society that influences perceptions of beauty, emphasizing its influence on individuals of white and black ancestry. [19] Baraka aims his message toward the Black community, with the purpose of coalescing African Americans into a unified movement, devoid of white influences.

"Black Art" serves as a medium for expression meant to strengthen that solidarity and creativity, in terms of the Black Aesthetic. Baraka believes poems should "shoot. Come at you, love what you are" and not succumb to mainstream desires. He ties this approach into the emergence of hip-hop, which he paints as a movement that presents live words. And live flesh and coursing blood.

"[19] Baraka's cathartic structure and aggressive tone are comparable to the beginnings of hip-hop music, which created controversy in the realm of mainstream acceptance, because of its "authentic, un-distilled, unmediated forms of contemporary black urban music. [20] Baraka believes that integration inherently takes away from the legitimacy of having a Black identity and Aesthetic in an anti-Black world. Through pure and unapologetic blackness, and with the absence of white influences, Baraka believes a black world can be achieved. Though hip-hop has been serving as a recognized salient musical form of the Black Aesthetic, a history of unproductive integration is seen across the spectrum of music, beginning with the emergence of a newly formed narrative in mainstream appeal in the 1950s.

Much of Baraka's cynical disillusionment with unproductive integration can be drawn from the 50s, a period of rock and roll, in which "record labels actively sought to have white artists "cover" songs that were popular on the rhythm-and-blues charts"[20] originally performed by African-American artists. The problematic nature of unproductive integration is also exemplified by Run-DMC, an American hip-hop group founded in 1981, who became widely accepted after a calculated collaboration with the rock group Aerosmith on a remake of the latter's "Walk This Way" took place in 1986, evidently appealing to young white audiences.

[20] Hip-hop emerged as an evolving genre of music that continuously challenged mainstream acceptance, most notably with the development of rap in the 1990s. A significant and modern example of this is Ice Cube, a well-known American rapper, songwriter, and actor, who introduced subgenre of hip-hop known as "gangsta rap, " merged social consciousness and political expression with music.

With the 1960s serving as a more blatantly racist period of time, Baraka notes the revolutionary nature of hip-hop, grounded in the unmodified expression through art. This method of expression in music parallels significantly with Baraka's ideals presented in "Black Art, " focusing on poetry that is also productively and politically driven. "The Revolutionary Theatre" is a 1965 essay by Baraka that was an important contribution to the Black Arts Movement, discussing the need for change through literature and theater arts. He says: We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony, if it means some soul will be moved, moved to actual life understanding of what the world is, and what it ought to be. Baraka wrote his poetry, drama, fiction and essays in a way that would shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans, which says much about what he was doing with this essay. [21] It also did not seem coincidental to him that Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy had been assassinated within a few years, since Baraka believed that every voice of change in America had been murdered, which led to the writing that would come out of the Black Arts Movement. In his essay, Baraka says: The Revolutionary Theatre is shaped by the world, and moves to reshape the world, using as its force the natural force and perpetual vibrations of the mind in the world. We are history and desire, what we are, and what any experience can make us. With his thought-provoking ideals and references to a euro-centric society, he imposes the notion that black Americans should stray from a white aesthetic in order to find a black identity. In his essay, he says: The popular white man's theatre like the popular white man's novel shows tired white lives, and the problems of eating white sugar, or else it herds bigcaboosed blondes onto huge stages in rhinestones and makes believe they are dancing or singing. " This, having much to do with a white aesthetic, further proves what was popular in society and even what society had as an example of what everyone should aspire to be, like the "bigcaboosed blondes" that went "onto huge stages in rhinestones. Furthermore, these blondes made believe they were "dancing and singing" which Baraka seems to be implying that white people dancing is not what dancing is supposed to be at all.

These allusions bring forth the question of where black Americans fit in the public eye. Baraka says: We are preaching virtue and feeling, and a natural sense of the self in the world. All men live in the world, and the world ought to be a place for them to live. Baraka's essay challenges the idea that there is no space in politics or in society for black Americans to make a difference through different art forms that consist of, but are not limited to, poetry, song, dance, and art. According to the Academy of American Poets, many writers--Native Americans, Latinos/as, gays and lesbians, and younger generations of African Americans have acknowledged their debt to the Black Arts Movement.

[4] The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid-1960s and into the 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through in the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English-language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors.

African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild, which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, Black Dialogue was published, making it the first major Arts movement publication. The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African-American community.

It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as become involved in communities. It can be argued that "the Black Arts movement produced some of the most exciting poetry, drama, dance, music, visual art, and fiction of the post-World War II United States" and that many important "post-Black artists" such as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and August Wilson were shaped by the movement. The Black Arts Movement also provided incentives for public funding of the arts and increased public support of various arts initiatives. The Arts Council of England's (ACE) Decibel initiative produced a summary in 2003 in association with The Guardian newspaper.

An international exhibition, Back to Black - Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary, was held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2005. A 2006 major conference Should Black Art Still Be Beautiful? Organized by OOM Gallery and Midwest, examined the development of contemporary Black cultural practice and its future in Britain. On April 1, 2006, New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK, held a conference in honour of the late Donald Rodney.

Gallery 32 and Its Circle, a 2009 art exhibition hosted at Loyola Mount University's Laband Art Gallery, [26] featured artwork displayed the eponymous gallery, which featured black artists in the Los Angeles area and played an integral role in the Black Arts movement in the area. A recently redeveloped African and Asian Visual Arts Archive is located at the University of East London (UEL). While African American art of the 18th and 19th centuries continued to reflect African artistic traditions, the earliest fine art made by professional African American artists was in an academic Western style. Among the leading black sculptors of the 19th century were Eugene Warbourg and Mary Edmonia Lewis, the first professional African American sculptor.

The most distinguished African American artist who worked in the 19th century was Henry Ossawa Tanner, who painted African American genre subjects and reflects the realist tradition. In the early 20th century, the most important aesthetic movement in African American art was the Harlem Renaissance or the'New Negro' movement of the 1920s.

The Harlem district of New York became the'cultural capital of black America'. Practicing in New York, Stuart Davis was heavily influenced by African American culture and jazz music, though he was not an African American.

Aaron Douglas consciously incorporated African imagery into his work. The most important African American photographer of that period was James Van Der Zee, who photographed people and scenes in Harlem for more than 50 years.

During and immediately after World War II there arose to prominence a new school of African American artists, many of whom were the so-called'children of the Harlem Renaissance'. During the 1950s African American art was dominated by Abstract Expressionism and realism; their significant practitioners included Charles Alston, Romare Bearden and James Wells. In the 1960s and 1970s new classifications appeared in African American art based on continuing developments in abstract art and the rise of the figurative style known as Black Expressionism.

The most prominent African American abstract painter was Sam Gilliam, based in Washington, DC. Martin Puryear emerged during the 1980s as a leading African American abstract sculptor. In the 1980s African American art was the subject of a number of pioneering exhibitions, such as Black Art-Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art (Dallas Museum of Art, 1989), that brought together the works of African, Caribbean and African American academic and folk artists. Today's artists, such as Kara Walker and Fred Wilson, continue to grapple with the complex issues of African American history and identity in contemporary visual art.

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