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Olympians, Gabby Douglas and Allyson Felix were announced as Glamour magazine’s 2012 “Women of the Year,” along with three other gold medal Olympians and ten other women of distinction. Douglas brought home two gold medals and became the first African American gymnast in history to stand atop the podium. Felix won the 200-meter sprint in track and field.
Both ladies look fabulous in the spread, showing off their gold medals in clean white dresses.
Congrats, ladies!
Albuquerque is home to a rich and thriving African-American community including artists, entrepreneurs, families and individuals all tightly woven within the fabric of the city. The Black presence here reaches back to the first wave of Spanish explorers, and the history of this community includes societal and cultural challenges that, while similar to other cities, is unique to this region.
Perhaps the most infamous name in local Black history is that of Estevanico, sometimes referred to as “Esteban,” or, “Stephen the Black.” Born in 1503, Estevanico was a Spanish Moor from North Africa enslaved at a young age by the Portuguese and sold in 1520 to Andres Dorantes de Carranza, a Spanish nobleman. In 1527, Estevanico and Dorantes sailed from Europe with the explorer Panfilo de Narvaez on an expedition to conquer Florida. This expedition turned into one of the most epic journeys ever recorded and eventually led to Estevanico—the first African known to have set foot on the continental U.S.&mdash:becoming a central figure in the establishment of New Mexico.
In 1539 Estevanico found himself going north on another expedition to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. Sent ahead as an advance scout, Estevanico continued alone to present day New Mexico, one of the first non-Natives to set foot here. Almost as quickly as he arrived, however, Estevanico’s exploits were cut short. As he approached the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh he was killed by suspicious villagers.
Fast forward from that auspicious beginning to the 1870s, when Albuquerque saw the first growth spurt of its African American population with the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad. Black communities became established in the South Broadway and Barelas areas along the railroad corridor. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Black businesses thrived in spite of the discrimination inherent in the pre-civil rights era. Establishments such as the legendary swing club, Chet and Pert’s, catered to the small but growing Black community. Over the next few decades the population of African Americans in Albuquerque grew steadily, with another bump coinciding with the opening of Kirtland military base.
Today, African-Americans comprise just over 3% of Albuquerque’s population. While the community may not be large, its members contribute enormously through the arts and other cultural activities. If you’re interested in exploring Albuquerque’s African American community, there are a number of events, groups and resources that provide an easy entry point
A number of organizations and websites offer local or statewide calendars of events:
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1907 Alston’s interest in art began early. He received the art award in Grammar School and was actively involved in the arts throughout High School. In 1925 he enrolled at Columbia University in New York City where he studied art and art history. Upon receiving his undergraduate degree, he was awarded the Arthur Wesley Dow Fellowship, enabling him to earn his Masters Degree in Fine Arts at Columbia’s Teachers College.
He began his career as a commercial artist working on book jackets, record covers and magazines. Alston was a successful commercial artist, working for leading magazines such as Fortune, Collier’s, Mademoiselle and Men’s Wear. However, commercial art demanded compromises and restrictions on his style, eventually driving Alston out of the field in pursuit of a more personal form of artistic expression; stating, “I felt that I could do good painting and that I was selling myself cheap.” In 1950 the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its first exhibition of contemporary art. Along with nearly 4,000 other artists, Alston entered a painting for competition and was one of the few chosen for purchase. He considered this moment “an exoneration or certification . . . the thing that made me feel comfortable with my decision.”
In that same year the Art Students League selected Alston as their first African American instructor. By the mid-1950s the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Butler Institute of Art and IBM housed his works in their permanent collections. During this period he also completed murals for the Museum of Natural History and the Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. In 1969 Alston was appointed a “painter member” of the New York City Art Commission, which approved all designs for city buildings and works of art on city property. He was the first African American to achieve this post.
Alston’s artistic style defies simple categorization and definition. His works range from detailed drawings concerned with realism, depth and modeling to extreme abstraction concerned with simplicity, flatness and pure expression. His art always remained to him an outlet for personal expression and growth, unbound by the restrictions of one particular genera. To Alston, “The whole creative thing is one of exploration of new or different areas,” and in “developing or exploring an idea until you’ve gotten out of it everything you can, and beyond that, looking for unexplored areas.”
The diversity of Alston’s style reflects influences ranging from Egyptian and Oceanic art to more contemporary artistic styles like Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. However, his figures characteristically maintain a sculpture like quality derived from his earlier studies in African sculpture. His subjects, however, were derived mainly from the experiences of his life and time. As such they deal with the toils and triumphs of African Americans in the decades of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Alston states, “As an artist . . . I am intensely interested in probing, exploring the problems of color, space and form, which challenge all contemporary painters. However, as a black American . . . I cannot but be sensitive and responsive in my painting to the injustice, the indignity, and the hypocrisy suffered by black citizens.”
On April 27, 1977 Charles Alston died of cancer. His body of work seeks the universal artistic goal of aesthetically depicting the truth within the prism of his life experiences. In his words he tells us, “Art is the pursuit of truth as an artist perceives it. It can also be a powerful and effective weapon in the struggle for human decency.”
Color is indispensable for realizing pictorial space in all its variety; it is key to Romare Bearden’s watercolors. “City Lights” assembles 18 radiant Manhattan views, almost all painted between 1979 and 1980. Many are from a series of cityscapes commissioned for the opening credits of John Cassavetes’s 1980 film “Gloria.”
Born in Charlotte, N.C., Bearden (1911-88) grew up in Harlem at the zenith of the Harlem Renaissance. His parents were prominent figures among Harlem’s creative aristocracy. Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and other well-known artists, writers, and musicians were frequent visitors to the Bearden home. Young Bearden studied at the Harlem Recreation Arts Center, where black students were tutored exclusively by accomplished black artists. It was here that the teen met sculptor Augusta Savage, who let him hang out in her studio and fired his passion for craft.
A creative giant who portrayed the African-American experience in a narrative idiom that extended the range of modernist technique, Bearden started down a very crooked path. He wandered through a brief stint playing professional baseball in the Negro League; rejected an offer to join the Philadelphia Athletics by refusing to “pass as white”; he performed in jazz bands, designed stage sets, and published illustrations in popular magazines. Bearden graduated from New York University with a degree in education in 1935, becoming a caseworker for the New York City Department of Social Services (a position he did not fully relinquish for decades). In the same year, he took night classes at the Art Students League with German émigré painter George Grosz.
After serving three years in the military during World War II, he studied part-time at the Sorbonne on the GI Bill. Home again, his art career in stasis, he took up songwriting, partly as a way to finance his way back to Paris. (His composition “Sea Breeze” was recorded by big-band leader Billy Eckstine and salsa king Tito Puente.) Not until he married in 1954 did he return single-mindedly to his art, dedicating himself to a three-year study of the Old Masters.
Galvanized by the civil rights movement, he co-founded the Spiral Group in 1963, an association of African-American artists who sought ways to further the momentum of civil rights. It was during those years that Bearden devised his signature improvisational collage technique.
Bearden’s magnitude as an artist is evident in the grace of his hand, an artist’s most distinguishing gift. That hand is the enlivening agent of this exhibition. Celebrated as a collagist, Bearden is less well recognized as the master watercolorist that he is. An inherently luminous medium, watercolor is also the most difficult. Painterly impulses undergird his collages, their fluidity informed by a consummate command of watercolor.
His photomontage collage technique re-created the sensuous beauty of liquid color soaking the paper surface. Six of the paintings on view include collage elements, each one worked so seamlessly into the flow of color that they appear part of the same tactile reality.
An untitled image of a nude woman leaning her arms on the back of a wooden chair illustrates the unity of Bearden’s paint and collage method. One arm drapes across the chair back; the other drops downward at a realistic angle. The pendant arm, a separate piece of paper toned to the figure, ends in a hand cut from a color magazine photograph. The tiny hand, appropriately scaled, wears a wedding ring, an anecdotal detail that establishes the domesticity of the nocturnal setting.
“City Lights” is DC Moore’s highlighted season opener, yet the gallery chose to showcase the ensemble in its smaller wing. It was a splendid decision. Grouped as the paintings are by theme and format, the sensation of place — their common possession — is underscored. The subtle play of Bearden’s watercolor techniques, the exquisitely controlled pooling and eddying, invites intimacy. At close range, the eye does not glance over them but sinks into the surface together with the color that animates them.
The latticework of “Narrow Sky Line” is a shimmering evocation of slender buildings reaching skyward. Its color and design are visible at a distance. But only up close can the lyricism of it — that delicate threading at the edges, similar to the burr of a drypoint line — be seen and allowed to work its magic. Warm colors, translucent oranges and yellow green, rush upward into the dense ultramarine of a nighttime sky.
Here, and throughout the series, Bearden shifts deftly between graded washes and speckled wet-in-wet effects, between the brush and the sponge. His facility beckons the viewer to come close. “New York, New York,” worked on soaked paper in sumptuous blues and greens, is a miracle of small, spreading accidents that know just when to stop.
Look at “Night Sky” and notice how critical to the composition are the placement and sharp, clean edges of the exposed white paper that signals lighted windows etched into the building facades. While his brush seems to move instinctively, without premeditation, that precision indicates careful deliberation. The paper itself is an active part of the overall design. For added animation, some “windows” were overlaid with a quick splash of color after the initial wash dried.
Analogies between Bearden’s technique and jazz go only so far. Evident in these watercolors is the discipline and obedience to process that prompted Degas’s admission that the appearance of spontaneity requires as much cunning as the commission of a crime. It is Bearden’s color sense that is the freest element of these works. An exemplary colorist, he refreshes the urban scene with the radiant hues of the French Caribbean.
St. Martin was his wife’s ancestral home, and where Bearden lived part of every year in the last two decades of his life. “City Lights” presents a New York electrified by an Antillean current.
Until September 27 (724 Fifth Ave. at 57th Street, 212-247-2111).
By Javier Pes. Web only
Published online: 29 October 2012
As Hurricane Sandy barrels up the East Coast of the US, museum staff are battening down the hatches and putting their emergency preparation plans into action. The Smithsonian Institution has closed all of its museums today (29 October) in Washington, DC, and New York, and all events due to be held today and on Tuesday have been cancelled.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) are closed today due to the expected impact of the Category 1 storm, which is reported to be getting stronger. The Met cancelled this morning’s press preview for the exhibition “Extravagant Inventions: the Princely Furniture of the Roentgens”. MoMA, which is closed to the public on Tuesdays, says in a notice on its website that it plans to reopen on Wednesday “pending the status of public transportation and impact of the storm”. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is also closed today because of the storm. The New Museum and the Brooklyn Museum do not normally open on Mondays and Tuesdays. The offices of the latter are closed today.
The Smithsonian’s advice to staff who are preparing for a hurricane includes boarding up windows or protecting them with storm shutters or tape, and leaving some slightly open to equalise the pressure. Staff should stay in the building if it is sturdy and on high ground. “Don’t be fooled by the calmness of the ‘eye’,” they are warned. “Remember, the winds on the other side of the ‘eye’ will come from the opposite direction.”
For decades Roy S. Roberts, a 40-year veteran of the automotive industry and former General Motors group president and his wife, Maureen, have shown their love for African-American art and culture with their philanthropy.
This May, in turn, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), the only encyclopedic fine arts museum in the world with a curatorial department devoted to African-American art, displayed its appreciation for the couple. The DIA named its gallery of contemporary African-American art after them.
The Maureen and Roy S. Roberts Gallery features works by luminaries such as Elizabeth Catlett, Benny Andrews, Sam Gilliam, Alvin Loving, William T. Williams, Charles McGee and others.
Roberts spoke of his and his wife’s love of Black art. “We leave this legacy with our children, to whom we’ve instilled the values of education, working hard and giving back,” he said.
Their gifts have gone to a variety of organizations including Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the United Negro College Fund, NAACP, Urban League and Western Michigan University.
In 1977, Roberts joined General Motors in 1977 and began a steady climb of increasing responsibilities. Four years late, he was the plant manager of GM’s Grand Rapids Plant #1. In 1983, he became the first African-American plant manager of GM’s assembly facility in North Tarrytown, New York, and upon retirement in 2000 was a company group vice president. Roberts is currently managing director and co-founding member of a private equity investment firm Reliant Equity Investors.
He received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Western Michigan University and completed the Executive Development Program at Harvard Graduate School of Business.
Check out another patron couple of Black art: Bernard and Shirley Kinsey.
(Photo: Courtesy of Detroit Institure of Arts)
By Hilarie M. Sheets Posted 10/17/12
I make vegans,” says Sue Coe, the British American artist widely known since the 1980s for her sociopolitical drawings and prints. She recently published her third book on the meat industry, Cruel: Bearing Witness to Animal Exploitation (OR Books), filled with haunting and empathic illustrations of gaunt, terrified animals being herded to their factory-line deaths and dismembered by downtrodden workers. (Some of these pictures appeared in her show at New York’s Galerie St. Etienne last spring.)
Coe’s images are informed by the history of British caricature as well as by political art from the 1930s and ’40s, particularly that of Käthe Kollwitz. Some are straightforward reportage sketched directly from life in slaughterhouses and on farms. Others are more overt propaganda, such as the drawing of a fat-cat industrialist holding bloody moneybags atop a heap of animal carcasses.
In her accompanying essays, Coe equates the mass killing of animals to the inhumanity of concentration camps and doesn’t draw a distinction between slaughterhouse production and the organic trend of raising free-range animals for food. “Everything to do with breeding animals just to kill them has to go,” she says. “I’m not the vegan police, but I would just hope this book would put people on that journey because we do not need to eat animals to be healthy and well.”
Coe, who lives in upstate New York and sees animal exploitation on farms all around her, grew up in the 1950s in the suburbs of London, adjacent to a hog factory farm and slaughterhouse. She remembers it was guarded and lit up 24 hours a day, and she was terrified of the hog screams and clanging sounds at night. “My parents regarded any questioning about it as childlike. They just said, ‘This is how food is produced,’” says Coe. “It informed me as a child that adults are in denial most of the time.”
Her first stroke of social activism was freeing a tank of guinea pigs and mice that were going to be experimented on in science class. “We had a liberation club, where we all brought food and shared pocket money to feed the creatures, which we kept in garden sheds in secret areas,” she recalls. “That was the beginning of really identifying with other animals. We realized we can do this as a group, and we saw the results. We saved the animals.”
Copyright 2012, ARTnews LLC, 48 West 38th St 9th FL NY NY 10018. All rights reserved.
By Robin Cembalest Posted 10/25/12
In 1902 the Walters Art Museum acquired a Pontormo painting of an Italian noblewoman, Maria Salviati, dated ca. 1539. Back then it was considered a portrait of a woman whose hands were “in funny places,” as Gary Vikan, the museum’s director, puts it. Then in 1937, restorers removed some over-painting—and discovered a child was there. That child was assumed to be a portrait of Maria’s son, Cosimo de’ Medici.
And Then He Was a She
Now curators say the boy was a girl–Giulia de’ Medici. The daughter of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who was believed to be the son of a black female servant, Giulia is thought to have been the most prominent European woman of African descent at that time.
Darkness Visible
This discovery helped inspire “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” an inventive show at the Walters that enlists familiar faces of art history to spotlight lesser-known ones in social history. Focusing on the period between 1480 to 1610, an era of increased contact as trade routes expanded, diplomats traveled more widely, and Africans were imported to Europe en masse to serve as slaves, the show includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Pontormo, and Veronese, among many others, depicting Africans living in or visiting Europe. The museum describes the show as an effort to restore an identity to individuals who have been invisible–in various senses of the word.
The show uses representations of slaves in Europe to find out who they were, how they lived, and what their depictions say about Renaissance society. A Caracci portrait of a slave woman is a fragment of a double portrait of her owner, of whom a bit of veil remains. She is holding a clock, meant to announce her mistress’s Christian concern for the quick passage of time.
Annibale Carracci, attrib., Portrait of an African Slave Woman, ca. 1580s, oil on canvas.
TOMASSO BROTHERS, LEEDS, ENGLAND.
Land of the Freed
A significant difference between African slaves in Renaissance Europe and pre- and post-revolutionary North America is that in Europe, slaves were more likely to be freed. According to wills, testimonies, and other documents from the 16th century, owners of black Africans in Western European countries not only liberated their slaves, but also often helped them establish livelihoods as lawyers, churchmen, schoolteachers, boatmen, authors, artists, and more. Renaissance Lisbon was home to the highest percentage of blacks in Europe at the time, ranging in status from slaves to knights.
This reality is reflected in an unusual painting made by an unknown artist, probably from the Netherlands, of the Lisbon waterfront in the late 16th century, where blacks and whites from a variety of social strata co-exist in a public square.
Netherlandish, Chafariz d’el Rey in the Alfama District (View of a Square with the Kings Fountain in Lisbon), ca. 1570-80, oil on panel.
THE BERARDO COLLECTION, LISBON.
The show also includes a sculpture of the first Christian saint of African origin to be canonized in modern times, Saint Benedict of Palermo (1524–89), who was born in Sicily (then part of Spain) to parents who were probably from Ethiopia and formerly enslaved.
José Montes de Oca, attrib., Saint Benedict of Palermo, ca. 1734, Polychrome and gilt wood with glass.
THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART, THE JOHN R. VAN DERLIP FUND (2010.27.2).
No Nudes Were Good Nudes
To Europeans, as curator Joaneath Spicer writes in the catalogue, Africa was “extraordinary in its excess,” representing savagery, sexuality, the unexplored, and the unknown. The black male nude does not often appear in European art of the time–unless it is depicted among the damned, as in the Last Judgment. It was considered too threatening.
From a more decorous remove, the black body fascinated artists. Some, like Dürer, explored its phrenological aspects, focusing on the shape of the skull. Others used it to demonstrate their flair for carving certain kinds of stone, like onyx, or their skill rendering dark skin tones alongside white fabrics. Diplomats from the Congo, Ethiopia, Tunisia, and Morocco, along with other prominent Africans, sometimes served as inspiration for European artists–although, as Kate Lowe notes in the catalogue, such portraits inevitably reveal more about European fantasies than they do about the subjects’ personalities.
Peter Paul Rubens, Head of an African Man Wearing a Turban, ca. 1609, oil on paper, laid down on panel.
PRIVATE COLLECTION/COURTESY JEAN-LUC BARONI LTD, LONDON.
New-World Style
The artist who painted the Three Mulattos of Esmeraldas, Andrés Sánchez Galque, was an indigenous Indian from present-day Ecuador who trained with Catholic missionaries. So why is he in a show about Renaissance Europe? Because his subjects, Don Francisco de Arobe and his two sons, had African as well as Indian ancestry. The men, who governed an independent Afro-Indian community, had traveled to Quito in 1599 to convert to Christianity and sign a treaty with colonial rulers. To commemorate the occasion a local judge commissioned this portrait for Spain’s King Philip III.
Sánchez Galque depicted the bi-racial men in multicultural get-ups that signal their peculiar status in Colonial Latin American society: Sporting elaborate golden earrings and nose rings, holding spears in the one hand and sombreros in the other, they wear Andean-style ponchos of fine Asian silk, adorned with European ruffs and capes.
Andrés Sánchez Galque, Los tres mulatos de Esmeraldas, (Portrait of Don Francisco de Arabe and Sons Pedro and Domingo), 1599, oil on canvas.
MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO, MADRID (P04778), PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE, MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO, MADRID.
Who Sells My Purse….
As part of the programming for the show, the Walters has invited artist Fred Wilson to lecture about “Speak of Me as I Am,” his project for the American Pavilion of the 2003 Venice Biennale, which was created around the same theme: the “hidden-in-plain-sight” history of Africans in Europe. In Wilson’s case, that focus continued up to the present, in the form of African immigrants he hired to sell knockoff accessories outside the pavilion. The show also included what has become a recurring motif in his work, chandeliers in black Murano glass that play with concepts of darkness and light.
Fred Wilson, Speak of Me as I Am: Chandelier Mori, 2003, murano glass with twenty light bulbs, edition of 3 + 1 AP. From “Speak of Me as I Am” at the American Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, 2003.
©FRED WILSON/COURTESY PACE GALLERY/PHOTO COURTESY PACE GALLERY.
Afro-Centric Art History
“Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe” is the latest innovative effort to build on the work of a long-running research project with a trans-Atlantic, multi-millenarian purview: “The Image of the Black in Western Art,” launched by Dominique de Menil in the 1960s and currently managed by Harvard University Press and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the series, which began with the age of the pharaohs, published its most recent volume, which started with the American Revolution and ended with World War I, last May. Forthcoming in spring 2014 is Volume 5: Part 1, focusing on the era from the Artistic Discovery of Africa to the Jazz Age. Part 2, which covers the Harlem Renaissance to the Age of Obama, follows that fall.
Albert Eckhout. African American man, dated 1641, oil on canvas. From “The Image of the Black in Western Art.”
COPENHAGEN, NATIONALMUSEET, ETHNOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, EN.38A.7. HICKEY & ROBERTSON, HOUSTON/THE MENIL FOUNDATION.
Increasingly, scholars and curators have been exploring Africa’s role in the hybrid cultures that developed on both sides of the Atlantic. These initiatives range from “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present,” a long-travelling show organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art, to Robert Farris Thompson’s recent book “Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music.” “Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic,” recently at Tate Liverpool, tracked the influence of Africa on modernism, beginning in the early 20th century with the Harlem Renaissance continuing through contemporary art.
Carrie Mae Weems, A Negroid Type / You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / & A Photographic Subject, 1995-1996, color photograph in four parts. From “Afro Modern” at Tate Liverpool.
©CARRIE MAE WEEMS/©COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK.
As Roger Atwood reported here, on November 27 the Metropolitan Museum of Art will open “African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde,” which juxtaposes African and Western art to look at the impact of African art on Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi, among other Modernists, as well as members of the Harlem Renaissance like Malvin Gray Johnson and James L. Allen.
From Kongo to Tango
And next year comes “Kongo across the Waters,” a collaboration between the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. The focus is the art, religion, and culture of the Kongo region of Central Africa–and how they were adapted and transformed when they arrived with the slave trade in the United States and Central America. Along with a multitude of objects from Africa, the show includes vodou vessels from Haiti, face vessels from South Carolina, coiled baskets by Gullah artists of the American South, and examples of the music and dance that developed as Kongo beats were transmitted through Congo Square in New Orleans, emerging in jazz, Stepping, the Charleston, and the Tango.
The final section considers the legacy of Kongo esthetics on contemporary art worldwide, by figures including Steve Bandoma and Paulo Kapela from Central Africa, Haiti’s Edouard Duval Carrié, José Bedia from Cuba, and Renée Stout and Radcliffe Bailey from the U.S.
Radcliffe Bailey, Returnal, 2008, mixed media. In “Kongo Across the Waters,” coming to the Harn.
COURTESY JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NY.
Be There or Be Square
Back in Maryland, school groups were invited to react to the exhibition at the Walters in artworks of their own. Inspired by that unknown artist’s view of multicultural Lisbon, children from Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School envisioned a Renaissance plaza–a little Lisbon, a little Baltimore, a little Rome. The picture is on view in a display of student work concurrent with “Revealing the African Presence.” It’s another place the African presence continues to manifest and reveal itself–if you know where to look.
Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School, Renaissance City, 2012, paint on board.
LENT BY HARLEM PARK ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS (IL.2012.10.1).
Both shows will travel to the Princeton University Art Museum: “Revealing the “African Presence” will run from February, 16, 2013 through June 9, 2013; “Kongo Across the Waters” will open in November 2014.
Copyright 2012, ARTnews LLC, 48 West 38th St 9th FL NY NY 10018. All rights reserved.
Hank Willis Thomas Stages a Photo Shoot
Text by Rachel Wolff
How Sanford Biggers came to strike a pose as a two-faced dandy
Excerpt:
“It’s a little bit about blackface and minstrel-sy,” Thomas says. “I couldn’t figure out what the context was, except for Mary Poppins, which was out around the same time. But still, there’s this thing about white men with black covering them. It’s tens of years away from the minstrel era, and it’s only slightly different. Race has always been somewhat about class.”
Thomas wants to build his own take on the subject by combining the two images, riffing on this idea of racial, cultural, and socioeconomic hybridity, and fleshing out the deceptively complex characters embedded in each. He has enlisted fellow artist Sanford Biggers to collaborate and pose.
“I think Sanford’s work has been very much about cultural hybridity,” Thomas says. “He has done stuff with B-boys and hip-hop and Buddhism. He’s frequently engaged with that, and I thought he could be a kind of lens to talk about these issues.”
Biggers quickly got on board. “I think it’s an American knee-jerk response to equate black and white with literally blacks and whites. I want to find a way for it to be more nuanced,” he says. “And, in fact, I think it did that because this photograph and the character in it become more about duality and a more multifaceted being. It’s about the yin and yang, and pathology and moralism, and life and death. And superego. Those types of things. Which are things I’ve really been exploring in my recent work as well.”
The Gordon Parks Foundation permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as “the common search for a better life and a better world.” The Foundation is a division of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation.
Gordon Parks was one of the seminal figures of twentieth century photography. A humanitarian with a deep commitment to social justice, he left behind a body of work that documents many of the most important aspects of American culture from the early 1940s up until his death in 2006, with a focus on race relations, poverty, Civil Rights, and urban life. In addition, Parks was also a celebrated composer, author, and filmmaker who interacted with many of the most prominent people of his era—from politicians and artists to celebrities and athletes.
Born into poverty and segregation in Kansas in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers published in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawnshop, he taught himself how to use it and despite his lack of professional training, he found employment with the Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.), which was then chronicling the nation’s social conditions. Parks quickly developed a style that would make him one of the most celebrated photographers of his age, allowing him to break the color line in professional photography while creating remarkably expressive images that consistently explored the social and economic impact of racism.
When the F.S.A. closed in 1943, Parks became a freelance photographer, balancing work for fashion magazines with his passion for documenting humanitarian issues. His 1948 photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader won him widespread acclaim and a position as the first African American staff photographer and writer for Life Magazine, then by far the most prominent photojournalist publication in the world. Parks would remain at Life Magazine for two decades, chronicling subjects related to racism and poverty, as well as taking memorable pictures of celebrities and politicians (including Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael). His most famous images, such as Emerging Man, 1952, and American Gothic, 1942, capture the essence of activism and humanitarianism in mid-twentieth century America and have become iconic images, defining their era for later generations. They also rallied support for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, for which Parks himself was a tireless advocate as well as a documentarian.
Parks spent much of the last three decades of his life expanding his style, conducting experiments with color photography. He continued working up until his death in 2006, winning numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts in 1988, and over fifty honorary doctorates. He was also a noted composer and author, and in 1969, became the first African American to write and direct a Hollywood feature film based on his bestselling novel The Learning Tree. This was followed in 1971 by the hugely successful motion picture Shaft. The core of his accomplishment, however, remains his photography the scope, quality, and enduring national significance of which is reflected throughout the Collection. According to Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Center at Harvard University, “Gordon Parks is the most important black photographer in the history of photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter.”
We are soliciting donations of artwork from Mendocino County artists, young and old, to benefit the Youth Project’s Transitional Living Program. The artwork donated will be part of our annual fundraising art aution. We would appreciate the honor of including your most precious gift: your personal expression through art.
The event will feature artwork by students and other local artists from all reaches of Mendocino County.
100% of the proceeds from adult art will go to the Transitional Living Program.
50% of the proceeds from youth art will go to the program and 50% will go to the young artist.
If you are 10-24 years old and wish to submit art for the Celebration of Young Artists, please read and fill out the application form (Word) or PDF-version
If you are an adult wanting to donate your work, please read and fill out the application form (Word) or PDF-version
Al Johnson, illustrator, fine artist, educator and mentor has developed an inclusive vision that captures the Classical, weaves it with the contemporary and refracts it through the prism of his remarkable individuality. While formally trained in the techniques of the Great Masters, Al Johnson’s art, in fact, goes to the essence of jazz in that it brings together many influences while celebrating individuality . Mr. Johnson honed these skills, while attending famed institutions such as Pratt Institute, the Albert Pale School of Commercial Arts and the Arts Student League.
Called “the artist” since his youth, Mr. Johnson has exhibited in many corners of the world including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum in Japan and the Guangzhou International Art Fair in China. His abilities as a draftsman has allowed him the opportunity to develop the original renderings of the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. Chosen out of a nationwide search, Mr. Johnson created the commissioned portrait of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, permanently installed in Brooklyn Borough Hall, in New York City.
As a storyboard artist in the commercial and feature film industry, his signature style is sought after. The over 700 illustrations created for the feature film “After.Life” brought darkness to light from frame to frame. Mr. Johnson has developed storyboards for the Academy Award Winning Film “The Hours”, the feature film “The Fountain”, HBO’s Soprano’s, Six Feet Under and Sex and The City, the 2010 and 2011 Izod Indy 500 commercial, to name a few.
His passion is to inspire. Mr. Johnson gives back to future artists by providing his unique teaching style designed by Al Johnson Art Studios. The lists of his accomplishments are many as he motivates those to come.
Fine Art, Permanent Installations, Storyboards for Commercials and Films, Art Mentoring, Curatorial Team for Group Exhibitions
The Huffington Post |
By Sam Stein Posted: 10/30/2012 11:41 am EDT Updated: 10/30/2012 3:05 pm EDT
WASHINGTON — The politics of Hurricane Sandy are obviously difficult to game out. But the White House has clearly decided that it would look uncomfortably partisan for the president to be on the stump while the federal government was managing a massive natural disaster. And so, on Tuesday morning, the administration announced that President Barack Obama would be off the trail on Wednesday, canceling a swing through the critical state of Ohio.
From the White House Press Office:
The President will remain in Washington, DC on Wednesday to monitor the response to Hurricane Sandy and ensure that all available federal resources continue to be provided to support ongoing state and local recovery efforts. As a result, the President will not participate in the campaign events that had been scheduled in Ohio tomorrow.
Instead, he will head to New Jersey. The press office released a statement Tuesday afternoon announcing that Obama will survey the hurricane damage along with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie:
Tomorrow afternoon, the President will travel to New Jersey where he will join Governor Christie in viewing the storm damage, talking with citizens who are recovering from the storm and thanking first responders who put their lives at risk to protect their communities. Additional scheduling details will be released when they are available.
Mitt Romney is holding “relief events” on Tuesday, though those seem to be toned down campaign stops that are also helping raise money for victims of Sandy. He is also scheduled to make campaign stops in Virginia on Wednesday, though it remains to be seen how hard he campaigns against the president during the week ahead.
This article has been updated with information about the president’s trip to New Jersey.
The Tradin’ Times: One Man’s Trash is This Woman’s Treasure
This years October gallery art expo was missed by many who long for the return of the times when thousand of attendees and an unlimited amount of artists would flood this city with guests for the annual art fest. 2012 is 28 years since the early 90’s beginning of the art expo’s start. The annual event began at the Philadelphia convention center and then evolved to the Liacouras center when it enjoyed it’s largest and longest venue placement.
I was a student of Moore College of Art & Design then when I had the pleasure of displaying my photography at the expo and reading poetry during their weekly panoramic poetry readings; featuring the likes of Trapeta Mason, Rich Medina, Jill Scott and Poetica to name a few.
I was Introduced to the poetry scene via the panoramic poetry venue developed by the October Gallery inheritance, Lamar Redcross, son of October Gallery founder, Mercer Redcross.
My invitation appeared after a performance with Timi Dread and the Dub Warriors, a local dub roots, reggae band (Timi currently performs with a collective entitled “Urban Shamen” ) with whom I would sing and perform poetry, I returned to the table from the stage, were my guests and I were seated, to a napkin left by Lamar who had written, “You should come by and perform at Panoramic Poetry, I really enjoyed your performance” I took his advice and then began my history with the October Gallery and spoken word.
The October Art Gallery was then located on Church st and 2nd in Olde City Philadelphia. Years away from it’s current location at 7165 Germantown ave formerly North by Northwest, live music venue which featured the likes of John Stephens prior to his legendary classification. The gallery featured an array of distinguished art from black painters, photographers, illustrators; established and familiar to the public through then popular culture references like “The Cosby Show” highlighting Haitian painter Ellis Wilson’s “the Funeral Procession” causing Vanessa’s fight for her “rich” family name since Claire paid 11,500 for the painting in the episode. ( Wilson in real life never earning more than 300 dollars for the painting and passed in 1977)
The expo is were I met some of the most inspiring poets and visual artists. There is were I met traveling wordsmiths who made their living selling their words pressed between pages of offset printed glossy covers. I’ve written for “The Paint” the galleries corresponding paper prior to them going to cyberspace. In the early 90’s The young Redcross was gathering writer’s to publish his own collection of poetry and photography. I found out once I was asked to contribute to the Panoramic Poetry Anthology of Words, given the title of “Rhythmic” I contributed my words without question to how & why they would be used and surprisingly months later a glossy cover to a collection of words was born and I was among the October Gallery Panoramic Poets whose words wet the pages on the Pisces press release compiled by Lamar Recross published among then poet and now DJ, Rich Medina, and then poet turned vocalist, Jill Scott to name two of the contributing authors to appear with then poet now journalist, poetica.
In the 90’s our backdrop was a art gallery space with hard wood floors that gave in with a old house sound when pressure applied and echoed footsteps against the brick adorned with a mural of jazz artists and in pauses pages were heard turning and coughs were amplified and so was agreeable testimony like oohs and ahhs from the audience or truth revealed ah ha’s that translates into “you go girl” or the popular phrase ” teach” yelled from peers who could relate. It was our church on Church street to visit the word weekly on a Friday evening. There was no open mics then (no weekly, monthly events just one time events feat a poet), just a handful of folks who regularly shared there words from memory or a black and white composition book and the folks who enjoyed them.
The panoramic poetry format was a dozen artists, give or take, set to read 1 or 2 poems and a featured writer/poet sharing poetry, stories, motivation and occasional musical accompaniment; saxophone, vocal, upright bass, violin, and djembe drums and no open mic. Readings were word of mouth, prior to internet marketing and there was always a refreshment table with juice, fruit, chips and cheese and the mandatory socializing afterwards that usually lead to the next venue, dinner invites to share poetry and break bread or invites to volunteer or participate in the Annual October Gallery Art Expo, for some years I participated as a exhibitor, using the expo audience to try out a series of products and performance styles.
The expo is were I met Kwame Alexander publisher of the then popular poetry anthology 360 degrees of Black Poets. The often 3 day event made room for building alliances with other artists and authors and for some years admission to the expo remained Free and you received a original gallery print upon arrival, there were holistic health pavilions, Capoeira, Brazilian martial arts, celebrity arts auctions ( you could spot a Jordan or a Cosby purchasing the rare, striking African american art) and featured vocalists and band appearances. Normally occurring in November it was a major tourist attraction responsible for a large part then of the cities revenue. It was anticipated annually.
October gallery also put out plenty previously for its annual advertising budget, featured ads in essence magazine and highlights in ebony, all knew of its time of year being near by readership via the paint and assisting publications. Fast forwarding to the present, its rumored alliances made in Brasil by the Redcrosses has attention split, some say it became an overwhelming endeavor. What ever it was, change became inevitable for the expo and its handlers, admission rose up to ten dollars at one point, venues changed and the exhibition price had become too high for some long standing vendors.
