Viewing page 1 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Afro-American Art History 254                            
John Outterbridge

Reference Notes

Historically, the Black artist and craftsman has an extremely rich heritage founded in West African tradition such as that found in Benin, Nigeria. In this country te grillwork of New Orleans, cabinets, furniture, fine metalware, and colonial construction in Charleston, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia and many other southern townships, bears witness to the excellence of early Black American arts and crafts.

Today, the Black artist, who for intervening centuries has been the forgotten man, is making a strenuous effort to define a new and definite Black aesthetic in art which will give reference to cultural beginnings, and to secure the fact that Black art was, is an always will be as long as racial stresses in America are in existence.

Black art and some definitions that might be considered. At its simplest, a "Black Show" is an exhibition of work produced by artists whose skins are Black. The "Black Show" is a yoking together of a variety of works which are, for social and political reasons, presented under the labels "Black or Afro-American. The "Black Show" as a serious exhibit is a 20th Century invention. It began in the dual system which characterized American life early in the century, and has continued to this day because social and political factors still make Black people a special group within the national population.

The term "Black Art" falls in the same as the Black church, blues, Black Literature, the ghetto, the Black mayor and the like. The awareness of the Black artist of his plight in relationship to world art illustrates even further that the term "Black Art" is subject to critical definition. Afro-

-1-