BLACK ARTISTS IMPACTING ART HISTORY YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Hues of Humanity presents a collection of must-know Black contemporary artists who have influenced art history and continue to make waves in the global art world today. Dive in to learn how artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, and others utilize identity, narrative, and artistic medium to challenge the sociopolitical and aesthetic status quo of historically Euro-American institutional art practices.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Death of Michael Stewart, 1983. Acrylic and marker on sheet rock, framed, (86.4 x 101.6 cm). Collection of Nina Clemente, New York © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar. Photo: Allison Chipak. © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2019, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2019.
The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.​​​​​​​
 JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Watch his documentary here and the 1996 bio pic "Basquiat" here to learn more about his personal life and legacy.

Kerry James Marshall (American, born Birmingham, Alabama, 1955), Past Times, 1997. Acrylic and collage on canvas. 9 ft. 6 in. × 13 ft. (289.6 × 396.2 cm). Metropolitan Pier and Exhibition Authority, McCormick Place Art Collection, Chicago.​​​​​​​


I tend to think having that extreme of color, that kind of black, is amazingly beautiful... and powerful. What I was thinking to do with my image was to reclaim the image of blackness as an emblem of power.
KERRY JAMES MARSHALL

Kehinde Wiley, Two Heroic Sisters of the Grassland, 2011 (oil on canvas). Dimensions unknown. Hort Family Collection. © Kehinde Wiley. Photo by Max Yawney.

You have to be careful about over-politicizing the utterances of people of color because, oftentimes, there's poetry that seeks to go beyond that narrative.

KEHINDE WILEY

Amy Sherald, Precious jewels by the sea, 2019. Oil on canvas 304.8 x 274.3 x 6.4 cm (120 x 108 x 2 1/2 inches). © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Joseph Hyde.

I'm painting the paintings that I want to see in museums. And I'm hopefully presenting them in a way that's universal enough that they become representative of something different than just a black body on a canvas.

AMY SHERALD

Kara Walker, Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994. Paper. Overall 13 x 50' (396.2 x 1524 cm). Gift of The Speyer Family Foundation in honor of Marie-Josée Kravis. © 2020 Kara Walker.

I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn't walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful.

KARA WALKER

Mark Bradford, Scorched Earth, 2006. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, acrylic paint, bleach, and additional mixed media on canvas. 95 1/4 x 118 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (241.94 x 300.36 x 5.72 cm). The Broad Los Angeles.

If power is abstraction, which many black men, black women, and people of color have very little voice in, well, then I want to sit at the table.

MARK BRADFORD

Faith Ringgold, Double Dutch on the Golden Gate Bridge, 1988.Acrylic on canvas and painted, dye and pieced fabric. 1740x1734 mm; 68 1/2x68 1/4 inches. From the 1988 Woman On A Bridge Series. Swann Auction Galleries, gifted from the artist; private collection, New York.

No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.
FAITH RINGGOLD
MORE: ART IN COLOR
Click the video players to watch Art in Color, a YouTube channel created by Houston curator Jaelynn Walls that educates on contemporary Black artists. Learn about the stories of Chris Ofili, Sonya Clark, Emma Amos and B. Anele.
MORE: CURATORIAL ACTIVISM IN CONVERSATION

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