In thе period аftеr thе Civil War, mаnу African American artists wеrе bеіng recognized fоr thеіr talent. Uр tо thе 1920s, mоst оf thе artists оf thіs time produced works thаt wеrе displayed іn museums аnd studios. Ноwеvеr, thе works thаt wеrе produced durіng thеsе times stіll conformed wіth European tradition аnd thе training thаt thеsе artists received wеrе stіll mаіnlу characterized аs European.
“TheHarlemRenaissance”
In thе late 1920s, dіffеrеnt African American artists formed а movement called Negro оr Harlem Renaissance. Тhіs opened thе door fоr African American art, іn thе form оf literature, music, knowledge аnd visual arts, tо bесоmе explored аnd rediscovered, whісh аlsо led tо thе upliftment оf thе individuality оf African Americans аs а people. Тhе decade thаt fоllоwеd thіs wаs considered thе “Renaissance” оf African American art, whеrе artists broke free frоm foreign influences tо discover thеіr оwn unique art form. Frоm thіs period оn, African American artists wеrе free tо express thеmsеlvеs based оn whаt hаs bееn discovered durіng thіs “Renaissance.”
The rough path thаt Black artists іnAmericahаd tо tаkе іs а testament tо whаt thеу hаd tо undergo tо “regain” thеіr identity аs а people. Gіvе thіs, thе history оf African American art shоws nоt оnlу thе struggles оf Black artists tоwаrds freedom frоm foreign influences but аlsо оf self-discovery.
The Driskell Prize is an annual award that recognizes a scholar or artist in the beginning or middle of his or her career. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art has named artist Rashid Johnson as the 2012 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize. Named after the renowned african american artist and art scholar, the Driskell Prize is an annual award that recognizes a scholar or artist in the beginning or middle of his or her career whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of african american art or art history. Based in New York, Johnson works in a variety of media, including photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and printmaking. As the eighth Driskell Prize recipient, Johnson will be honored at the Driskell Prize Dinner in Atlanta on Saturday, May 5, 2012.
“Rashid Johnson is a visual artist fully incorporating every available resource to create works relevant to both the past and the present,” said Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., Director of the High. “His ability to draw upon materials and visual sources that stand alone formally but have strong ties to the African Diaspora and highlight African culture through his imaginative and distinctive art exemplifies the qualities of a David C. Driskell Prize recipient. We are pleased to support his vision and development through this award.
” In April of this year, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago will present Rashid Johnson’s first major museum solo exhibition. Johnson will explore the complexities of black identity by creating a dialogue with legacies of black intellectual and popular figures through a process and materials-based practice of photographs, sculptures, videos, installations and paintings that are rooted in his own identity as an african american. The shifting nature of identity and one’s agency in that shift are at the root of his work, which deconstructs a false notion of a monolithic african american identity by bringing education and class differences into the discussion.
A preeminent artist of the post-media generation, Johnson skillfully oscillates among several different media depending upon conceptual needs of the work. Johnson’s specific materials allude to alchemy, transformation and magic to undermine any sense of concrete understanding in favor of prompting a sense of wonder in the unknown, yet stem from the familiar and commonplace. His sculptures, photographs and installations evoke an otherworldly idea, often incorporating found objects, plants, books, vinyl records, photographs, vessels and Shea butter for their personal and universal connotations.
Rashid Johnson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Columbia College of Chicago in 2000 and attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 2004 to 2005 before moving to New York. In 2011 Johnson was named as one of the six finalists for the The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s 2012 Hugo Boss Prize. Over the last ten years, Johnson’s participation in numerous solo and group exhibitions has been met with critical success. Originally from Chicago, he currently lives and works in New York City.
Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey and died in 2000, Seattle, Washington. He was thirteen when he moved with his sister and brother to New York City. His mother enrolled him in classes at an arts and crafts settlement house in Harlem, in an effort to keep him busy. The young Lawrence often drew patterns with crayons. Although much of his work copied his mother’s carpets, an art teacher there noted great potential in Lawrence.
"The Shoemaker," by Jacob Lawrence, gouache and watercolor on paper, 22 5/8 by 30 7/8 inches, 1945, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George A. Hearn Fund, 1946
After dropping out of school at sixteen, Lawrence worked in a laundry and a printing plant. More importantly, he attended classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, taught by the African American artist Charles Alston. Alston urged him to also attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage. Savage was able to secure Lawrence a scholarship to the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration. In addition to getting paid, he was able to study and work with such notable Harlem Renaissance artists as Charles Alston and Henry Bannarn in the Alston-Bannarn workshop.
Lawrence married the painter Gwendolyn Knight, who had also been a student of Savage’s, on July 24, 1941. They remained married until his death in 2000. In October 1943 (during the Second World War), he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard and served with the first racially integrated crew on the USCGC Sea Cloud, under Carlton Skinner.[2] He was able to paint and sketch while in the Coast Guard.
In 1970 Lawrence settled in Seattle and became an art professor at the University of Washington. Some of his works are now displayed there in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering and in Meany Hall for the Performing Arts. The piece in the main lobby of Meany Hall, entitled “Theatre”, was commissioned by the University for the hall in 1985.
Throughout his lengthy artistic career, Lawrence concentrated on depicting the history and struggles of African Americans. Lawrence’s work often portrayed important periods in African-American history. The artist was twenty-one years old when his series of paintings of the Haitian general Toussaint L’Ouverture was shown in an exhibit of African American artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This impressive work was followed by a series of paintings of the lives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as well as a series of pieces about the abolitionistJohn Brown. Lawrence was only twenty-three when he completed the sixty-panel set of narrative paintings entitled Migration of the Negro, now called The Migration Series. The series, a moving portrayal of the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the North after World War I, was shown in New York, and brought him national recognition. In the 1940s Lawrence was given his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and became the most celebrated African American painter in the country.
Shortly after moving to Washington State, Lawrence did a series of five paintings on the westward journey of African American pioneer George Washington Bush. These paintings are now in the collection of the State of Washington History Museum.[3]
Lawrence taught at several schools, and continued to paint until a few weeks before his death in June 2000 at the age of eighty-two. His last public work, the mosaic mural New York in Transit, was installed in October 2001 in the Times Square subway station in New York City.[6]
African-American artist Romare Bearden’s “Jammin’ at the Savoy” is an impassioned celebration of jazz’s revolutionary style. The work’s innovative spatial composition and spontaneous bursts of color, harmonies and dissonances replicate the music’s improvisational rhythms. Bearden (1911 – 1988) grew up in Harlem and was strongly influenced by its proliferation of jazz music. With a style derived from Cubism, Bearden strove to universalize the experience of African-Americans. Bearden created an astounding 2,000 works, and is regarded as one of the 20th century’s foremost African-American artists.
Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself. (Romare Bearden)
The artist has to be exactly the opposite [of people singing the song, I’ve gotta be Me,] and transcend himself as he makes judgements. (Romare Bearden)
Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies. (Romare Bearden)
My Work
“I paint and draw things from my imagination, which is filled with bits and pieces of experiences that I’ve lived, juxtaposed with what I’m experiencing now, and projecting what I feel will happen in the future.
While I make works of a lot of subjects, such as still lifes and landscapes, I’m really interested in doing works of people. To me, everything revolves around the individual. A successful work of a person or people is one that evokes some kind of emotion. I want my images of people to give off a feeling of being real. By real, I don’t mean rendering them photographically, but rather something more abstract, something more than what the viewer usually sees.
My subject matter is very broad, and I am very inclusive of whom I depict, although I do have a large representation of African-Americans in a high percentage of my works. Often, it’s not their race that I’m presenting, but rather what they are doing. I’m also very responsive to people who reflect their lives in their work and leisure.
When I depict the affluent, it’s often from the position of my being outside of their world, and I try to depict that perspective in how I represent them. In short, I’m a people’s painter.”
Benny Andrews
Benny Andrews: Artist’s Statement, “Benny Andrews, The Revival Series”. exh.cat. (April 13 – June 17, 1995). A.F.T.U./Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, NY. Reprinted courtesy, Benny Andrews.
Art has been Paul Goodnight’s saving grace in his recovery from his traumatic experience in Viet Nam when he lost his ability to speak from seeing the horrors of war. Though some thought he had lost his mind, he knew he hadn’t and began to communicate with his drawings of the horrors of war. With the regaining of his voice, he enrolled in Vesper George School of Art and eventually earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Massachusetts College of Art in 1976.
Goodnight has developed his own unique aesthetic philosophy to document the humanity of Black people around the world. He often incorporates African themes and symbols to provide depths of history and culture. He has traveled extensively, living among the people of Russia, China, Haiti, Nicaragua and Brazil. In his work, Goodnight creates univeral themes seen through diverse cultural lenses.
Artist Statement
“I would like to be a skilled and consummate draftsman. I try to use a collection of sensuous colors, often revealing mysterious hidden forms. I would love to convey the ability to see between the figures, melding and infusing them into an environment of endless nuances where abstraction and representational images are comfortable in the same space and where passion and humanity resonate. Once I learn to do this well, I will be obligated to pass this on, just as this information has been based on to me. Thank God for our masters!
I also try to offer the rich evidence of love in the composition of ordinary Black people whom I’ve witnessed in my travels around the world. Men, women and children who are familiar, intimate and engaging have stories written all over them, waiting to be told. My goal is to expose these stories to delight the eye and to satisfy the spirit — in short, to make them live.”
October Gallery is Celebrating 27 Years in the African American Art Industry and has operated a physical art gallery in Philadelphia, PA since 1985.
Art by Romare Bearden
We have been connecting people with art for 27 years. We deliver magic and romance to the art experience.
October Gallery believes that art is for everyone. We like to compare ourselves to the Marriott Hotel chain. The Marriott is neither the Ritz Carlton nor Motel 6. It is a mid-range hotel. The company’s Web site states that the hotel offers packages of “fun filled days and wild nights that will fit any family’s budget without breaking the bank.” At the Marriott one can get an expensive or an inexpensive room depending on availability. October Gallery’s marketing philosophy is similar to that of the Marriott. We offer an art experience that will fit anyone’s budget, that does not have to break the bank. October Gallery’s average sale is between $400 and $800. The Gallery’s prices range from $25 to $25,000.
October Gallery opened for business in July of 1985, at 3805 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It operated from this location for nine years. During the 1990s October Gallery operated six locations: two in Philadelphia; one in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; one in Echelon, New Jersey; one in Burlington, New Jersey; and one in Washington, DC.
October Gallery also presents the Philadelphia International Art Expo in November of every year. This event, now in its 23rd year, is the nation’s largest African American Art expo.
People often ask, “Where did the name ‘October Gallery’ come from?” We tell them there is a relation-ship between the tenth month of the year and October Gallery. Think about it! The month of October and October Gallery both exhibit the magnificence of beauty and color, one through nature’s multicolored autumnal arrays, the other through artists’ eyes. October comes in the fall, when the colors of nature change. Leaves on the trees change from variations of green to combinations of orange, red, purple, yellow and brown. These variegated arrays are similar to the many colors on an artist’s palate; hence, the name October Gallery.
October Gallery has always supported the communities it serves. Over a span of twenty three years, we have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in art, services and other gifts. This is no small feat considering we are a small gallery. There are community groups and organizations that, like clockwork each year, request from us a donation of art, which they then use for a raffle or a door prize so as to promote a cause. Other beneficiaries include politicians, civic leaders, heads of corporations, and other individuals to whom we give original art (valued in the thousands of dollars) in an effort to promote the art and the artists. October Gallery has also donated cash to a number of groups. We believe our type of gifts enable the public to make a “conscience connection” to Black art. We understand that if we want people to consider making art a part of their daily lives, we have to get the art “in their faces.”
Our national and international patrons and artists have witnessed firsthand the creation and development of the African-American art industry, which prior to the 1970s was almost nonexistent. This group of patrons and artists are part of what we call the BlackStream Renaissance.
The term “blackstream” was used by Black artists in the 1900s who were denied admission to the art mainstream. More recently, fine art appraiser Edward S. Spriggs of Atlanta, Georgia brought the term “blackstream” to our attention. Feeling there was a need to identify this important time of formative awareness of, belief in and commitment to African-American art, we coined the phrase BlackStream Renaissance.
We further define this growth period as being marked by a collective community conscientiousness that recognizes the creative, cultural and financial viability of African-American visual expression.
The interplay between artists, community members and available resources has created a fabric-like cohesion characterized by:
• Artists willing to create
• A community that can inspire its artists
• A community that accepts its own cultural
creations as having value
• Sufficient community resources to sustain the
exchange of value
The patrons and artists of the BlackStream Renaissance purchased and sold art, displayed it at home and at work and shared it with friends, family, co-workers and the general public. In short, they have made African-American art an indispensable part of their everyday lives. The African-American community is effectively supporting and building an art industry, perpetuated primarily by its own members.
Artists, galleries, museums and others in the art business realize that because of proper education, focused marketing and love of culture, African-Americans have shifted their habits and allocated to the visual arts a portion of the more than 750 billion dollars they spend each year. This group has invested precious time and valuable resources in African-American art and has thereby continued to give it value.
To be clear, the BlackStream Renaissance welcomes the mainstream but does not have to rely on it for content, aesthetic validation or financial continuance.
Educator and curator David C. Driskell said, “The boom in Black art has come about not in the market of galleries of the auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, but from ordinary Black people.”
Most African-American artists market and exhibit in the African-American community. Successful Black art festivals and expos, where artists sell and exhibit, recognize the importance of marketing to this special community. It is in this community where the strength and the value of African-American art begins. It is this community that has provided the foundation for the Blackstream Renaissance.
Romare Bearden – From the 
