BLACK AMERICAN ARTISTS AND THEIR ART

RESOURCE TOOLKIT FOR AMERICAN SPACES

This Resource Toolkit is designed for programming at American Spaces to create a greater awareness of the vital contributions Black Artists have made and continue to make to the culture of the United States.

*Beale Street Blues* by Palmer C. Hayden

FOR VIEWING AND READING

Black Art: In the Absence of Light
Kanopy Film 2021 85 min
This trailblazing HBO documentary looks at two centuries of African American art in the United States.

Smithsonian American Art Museum: African American Art – Teachers Resources/Lesson Plans

African American Art For Students Toolkit from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Lesson Plan on the Harlem Renaissance

TWO CENTURIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART

In 1976 the late African American artist and scholar David Driskell presented a first of its kind exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibit showcased the work of Black 19th and 20th century artists. Why was this exhibit significant?

The purpose was to acknowledge the work of black artists during the period of 1750 to 1950, whose contributions to American art had largely been neglected. Featuring over 200 works and 63 artists, the show included painting, sculpture, drawing, graphics, crafts and decorative arts.

Today, standing on the shoulder of these predecessors, more Black artists are influencing America’s art scene than ever before.

GLOSSARY

Silhouette Art – an image or design in a single hue and tone, most usually the popular 18th- and 19th-century cut or painted profile portraits done in black on white or the reverse.

Graffiti Artist – a person who paints graffiti in public places, especially one who specializes in high-quality work rather than vandalism.

Hip-Hop – also known as rap music, is genre of popular music developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans, Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s.

Neo-Expressionism – intense expressive subjectivity, highly textural applications of paint, vividly contrasting colors and return to large-scale narrative imagery.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Jean-Michel Basquiat began as a teenage graffiti artist who became internationally successful after he began creating his art in more traditional ways. Born in Brooklyn, New York to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat became a celebrity artist in his early twenties. He rose to prominence by drawing on the Rap, Hip-Hop and Punk influences of the 1970’s and 80’s.

Basquiat’s paintings frequently feature social commentary influenced by his Afro-Latino background. Since Basquiat’s untimely death in 1988 at the age of 27, his notoriety has steadily increased, as has the value of his art.