Viewing page 33 of 57

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

SIU

The visual artist has only begun to scratch the surface. The rash of poorly painted images of Martin Luther King, inspired by his assassination, are often too pitiful to recall. Much the same can be said of the images of Malcolm and others. It seems that the Black artist did not know himself nor the meaning of the men he attempted to capture in symbolic form. Strong and inventive interpretations created by Reginald Gammon, Cleveland Bellow, Kofi Bailey, among a few others, provide notable exceptions to this paucity of works dealing with Black heroic figures. The visual syntax of their works provides the strength of presence consistent with the symbolic significance of important Black heroes. The hero provides the necessary ego reinforcement, the symbol of strength for the individual and the collective group. In addition to contributing to the development of positive racial self-portaiture, images of heroes offer, in a word, the possibilities of becoming.

One does not suggest that Black artists devote all their efforts to history painting. But it does seem a bit odd that so little quality work exists in this very important area, especially works that are directed to the very young. A serious, serialized approach to making visual statements about the Malcolm's, the Kwame's, and the Martin's could produce more works that define and reveal, a departure from simple illustrations depicting great Black historical personalities.

(3) The third point is that the Black artist must seek to understand more fully the other arts, to draw upon the insights in Black life as provided in prose and poetry and in music and dance. In terms of encouraging the Black artist to respond to the concept of variation on a theme, the Black dancer may prove to be enlightening. I refer not to the professional dancer but to the Black folk. (The Black professional dancer is in many ways like the Black visual artist; there are only a few who have discovered themselves and who are making aesthetically tough statements.) However, concern for a variation on a theme can be seen in the invention that exists within the parameters of the Continental and the Hustle, and the Twist to the Bump. While all the arts are seldom at the same level of excellence and sophistication at any one period of time, clearly the most consistently vital art in the Black community is the dance of the Black folk. It thrives on the keen criticism of competitive performance; it is a virtual metaphor for the "challenge and response" view of the causes of human achievement. The dance is at once inspired by and exerts its influence upon music and Black fashion.

Within the work of the Black dancer there is the subtlety, the abstraction, the variation on a theme and the stuff for the imagination to develop an aesthetically tough art - an art which in its own right approaches the dynamic quality of traditional African sculpture.

But in the final analysis an aesthetically tough Black art will evolve when Black artists are fully aware of and understand what each other is doing. Inevitably among Black artists there are the chroniclers and the interpreters. The chroniclers are the artists who will produce the "visual monographs," resolutely recording the data of Black life. The interpreters are those artists who will synthesize and present in symbolic form the plethora of images and ideas that abound in the Black community. With these two groups of artists fully appreciating what the other is doing, the stuff for an aesthetically tough art will be realized; it will be an expression constantly changing - though not drastically. For the roots of this art will be grounded within the tradition of the Black folk. Not a blind celebration of all that can be labeled folk, but an emphasis on those aspects that are value positive - ones that are life enhancing and essentialist in nature.

Notes
This essay is a revision of a paper presented at the 19th Annual Convention of the National Conference of Artists in New York City, April, 1977.

*David C. Driskell, Two Centuries of Black American Art. New York: Alfred M. Knopf, 1976, p. 79.

† The term is used here to refer to the overall character of masterpieces of traditional African art, works that are psychologically meaningful to the particular ethnic group that produced them, but appeal aesthetically to those who may be completely ignorant of the culture from which the works came.

‡ Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, pp.100-115.