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Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

With new artists emerging on a consistent basis and shows opening practically every week, the sheer volume of all of this information can sometimes feel a tad overwhelming. Here are just a few of my personal favourite artists to look out for in the new year and one or two interesting and potentially important shows […]

13th November 2011/by Studio Damoah

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50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

“The art history of the black diaspora is still an ‘undiscovered’ country,” Kobena Mercer 2009. Curator, writer and critic Eddie Chambers once described black art as, “Art produced by black people, largely and specially for the black audience, and which, in terms of its content, addresses black experience.” A definition which in a so called […]

24th September 2011/by Studio Damoah

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Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

13th November 2011/by Studio Damoah

Media & links

50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

24th September 2011/by Studio Damoah

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Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

Artists

If you know anything about me, you know that one of my philosophies for art is that it by its very nature, represents the spirit of the times. At this moment in our history, no other artist captures this sentiment better for me than Geoffrey Raymond. An American painter, born in 1953, Raymond is best known for painting controversial Wall Street CEO’s , placing the paintings in the street and asking passers by to write their opinions of the subjects onto the portraits using marker pens. After the announcement of the $85 billion bail out for insurance giant AIG back in 2008, Raymond sat outside the company head quarters with a portrait of its then CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg. One person wrote, “Snarling rat bastard die! You suck. Love, Kim.” Utter genius, talk about capturing the spirit of the times. Really interesting and engaging work documenting our history.

the fallen prince. 2008. Geoffrey Raymond. Copyright the artist. image from artists blog.

Artist Rebecca Fontaine-Wolfe, whom I interviewed earlier this year, is another one to watch. She is still early in her career having graduated in 2004. Her style has been described as a fine balance between the photo realistic and expressionist. She is concerned with the female form and specifically with modern ideas of image, beauty and identity through beautiful and arresting portraits. A girl after my own heart. Her career is on the up and I think she she will grow significantly in 2012.

July. 2010. Oil, acrylic and resin on natural canvas (c) Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf

Maximillian Weidman is eccentric, witty, sarcastic and intelligent in his examination of pop culture, consumerism and the media. Again, the spirit of the times is evident in his work. He uses various media including sculpture, enamel on canvas and spray paint on canvas. One of my favourite pieces of his was a screen print entitled “Quantitative Easing.” It is made up of repeating one billion dollar bills (yes I did mean to say one BILLION dollar bills) with the following phrases written on them, “Love sucks, cash rules,” “Trust no one,” and my personal favourite, “The United States of Play.” Very Clever.

Max Wiedman. Quantitative Easing. Spray Paint and Silk Screen on Canvas. 2011. Image copyright the artist. Taken from artnet

Events

If you love art as much as I do then you simply must go and see Leonardo Da Vinci at the National Gallery. Open until February 2012, the show is the largest exhibition of Da Vinci’s surviving paintings ever exhibited. The exhibit focuses on the period when Da Vinci worked as a court painter in Milan.

Leonardo da Vinci. 1452-1519. The Virgin and Child. Copyright The State Hermitage Museaum St Petersburg

Unless you have been hiding under a bushel these last few weeks, you will be aware that the London 2012 Olympic posters were unveiled early in November. A number of British artists including Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Martin Creed, Chris Ofilli and Bridgit Riley designed the posters for the games. The opinions of the posters have been, shall we say varied, with some online commentators calling them “astoundingly bad,” and “incredibly lazy.” While I don’t personally like all of them, I think that was going a little far. Judge for yourself. The posters are currently on sale and will be shown in a special exhibition in the summer of 2012 as a part of a special advertising campaign for the games.

Chris Ofili. For the Unknown Runner. Copyright the artist. 2011

Links:

Geoffrey Raymond: http://annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com/

Max Weidman: http://www.maxwiedemann.com/

Rebecca Fontaine-Wolfe: http://www.rebeccafontaine-wolf.com/

National Gallery: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

Olympics Posters: http://festival.london2012.com/about/posters/posters.php

13th November 2011/by Studio Damoah

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50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

“The art history of the black diaspora is still an ‘undiscovered’ country,” Kobena Mercer 2009.

Curator, writer and critic Eddie Chambers once described black art as,

“Art produced by black people, largely and specially for the black audience, and which, in terms of its content, addresses black experience.”

A definition which in a so called “Post Black” era, is not relevant to all black artists working today.

The 1960’s

The 1960’s was the decade in which a new black cultural consciousness came into being. The world saw the birth of the civil rights movement and the assassinations of its most famous figure heads, namely Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King in 1968. In an effort to align themselves with the significant changes that were taking place at the time, there was a shift in the terminology that young African Americans used to describe and identify themselves from “Negro” to the seemingly more assertive “Black.”

An unprecedented increase in the use of the media to report on world issues influenced many artists, causing them to respond to the change in the media landscape in a variety of ways. Jeff Donaldson’s satirical book, The Civil Rights Yearbook 1964, highlighted the power that the media had over public opinion on the subject of race.

In 1966, Andrew Salkey, Edward Kamau Brathwaite and John LaRose established the Caribbean Artists Movement in the UK. Active between 1966 and 1971, the group was created to help form an aesthetic informed by their own cultural heritage and to encourage recognition of West Indian art forms in the UK. The movement went on to inspire many black visual artists to produce work in this vein and included artists Ronald Moody, Errol Lloyd and Winston Branch.

The 1970’s

Many black artists of the 70’s seemed to move towards abstraction. Abstraction provided a medium through which black artists shared their mood and ideals. Artist Jack Whitten acknowledged that being “black” showed itself in his work, without actually being able to define precisely what was black about it. Frank Bowling, a Guyanese born artist, trained in the UK became most known for his controversial essays on the subject of blackness in art, especially his 1971 essay, “Is Black Art about Colour.”

Artists were afraid of depicting black people as nude until the sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s because of fears of being accused of being either a racist or pornographers according to Richard Powells, “Black Art A Cultural History.” The historical assumptions of social scientists that black’s were morally depraved contributed significantly to this self censorship. From then on, different artists used the black nude to conceptualise various political and social themes. Artist Dana C Chandler, in his 1971 painting used an erect black male penis, chained and depicted on the inside of a jail cell against the backdrop of a mock American flag to depict his feelings about the anxieties of the black power movement. Artist Faith Ringold examined feminist themes from a personal and political perspective through her depictions of the black female nude.

Dana C Chandler. American Penal System. 1971. Copyright Dana C Chandler

The 1980’s

1980’s was defined as the decade of art institutionalization in the African diaspora and was marked in the USA by the Smithsonian museum purchasing countless works by black artists.

In the UK, the 80’s defined a generation of artists influenced by the many political issues and events, including the 1981 Brixton riots. Artists including Claudette Johnson, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney and Marlene Smith formed the BLK Art group in response to an overriding feeling that despite achieving world wide success, it was difficult for black artists to be accepted at the top of the art establishment. In 1988, Eddie Chambers, one of the founders, curated the landmark exhibition “Black Art: Plotting the Course.” Chambers also worked with Sonia Boyce, a black British multimedia artist whose work referenced race, identity, feminism and contemporary urban culture.

Keith Piper. The Black Assassin Saints copyright Keith Piper 1982

In 1989, the all black exhibition entitled“The Other Story Afro-Asian artists in post-war Britain, shown at the Hayward Gallery, had a significant impact on the scene.

One of the most iconic black artists of the 80’s, Jean-Michel Basquiat, often used words in his neo-expressionist work which incorporated his cultural heritage. One of his most famous works produced in 1981, the “Irony of the Negro Policeman” illustrated the control that wider white American Society had over African Americans at the time.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Irony of The Negro Policeman. 1981

The 1990’s

The 1990’s was marked by the term “Post Black.” A term that curator Thelma Golden claims to have coined with artist Glenn Ligon. The term was used to define an artistic genre, including a group of artists who refused to be defined by their race, yet who examined complex notions of race and racism through their work. The movement was an attempt to include marginalised black artists into the discourse on Western Art History.

Golden went on to further examine the 90’s in the context of mass marketing by stating in an essay that “Artists live in a world where their particular cultural specificity is marketed to the planet and sold back to them.” Various artists produced work in response to mass produced marketing materials depicting racial and sexual stereotypes including African American artist Renee Cox.

British artist Chris Offilli used his work to critically examine black popular culture, using satire to ask serious questions about society, racism and the mass marketing of dumbed down images of blackness as was illustrated in his 1996 piece Afrodizzia.

2000 to Present Day

Today, there has been shift in consciousness among many black artists from producing work which was a visible symbol of the black experience to more conceptual, subtle and complex work, which declares cultural heritage while simultaneously referencing and repudiating the historical injustices associated with it.

Yinka Shonibare uses his work in complicated and challenging ways to examine various notions of identity including what it means to be African, black, British and post modern. Shonibare is known for historical installations of mannequins dressed in so called African print fabrics.

Shonibare-Scramble for Africa. 2003. Copyright Yinka Shonbare. Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Significant awards have been given to black artists during this time, cementing their place in art history and recognising their contribution to it including Chris Offilli, Steve Mcqueen, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall and Robert Colescott.

Black artists have historically used art to voice political and social concerns with little recognition from wider society. Today, they are getting more recognition than ever before and have moved on significantly from Eddie Chambers 1980’s definition of black art, but in the words of Sonia Boyce…

“…Work produced is still regarded and reduced in totality to questions of ethnicity and cultural difference, outside the historical context of contemporary art. We are working towards a time when the work displayed in exhibitions is no longer cordoned off from it’s contemporaries as a separate and marginal area of artistic production.”

Thanks to Sophia A. Jackson for asking me to write this piece for the October Black History Month edition of Lime Magazine. Without her, it would not have occurred to me to write it.

Please comment and add anything you feel I may have missed out of this short piece. This research is by no means exhaustive.

References

Black Art, A Cultural History by Richard J. Powell. Published by Thames and Hudson World of Art 2002

Introduction to Contemporary British Art of Black and Asian Diasporas: focus on the 1980s

Leon Wainwright, Middlesex University, 2002

http://www.glaadh.ac.uk/documents/wainwright_bibliog.htm

Variant.org:African And Asian Visual Artists Archive by Sonia Boyce

http://www.variant.org.uk/1texts/Sonia_Boyce.html

24th September 2011/by Studio Damoah

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Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

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Top Arts Events and Artists to Look Out For in 2012

50 Years of Black Art in the African Diaspora. A Brief Overview

Adelaide Damoah

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