Book review– The Soul of a Nation Reader

..Although concerned with discourses emerging from this era, Godfrey asseverates that the reader also seeks to counter particular omissions in American art history: ‘There are many anthologies of key texts by artists and critics associated with Minimalism and Conceptual art’, the curator states, before lamenting that there are no equivalent anthologies about ‘Black artists of the period’. To remedy the situation, this publication presents some 200 texts written by over 50 different contributors from both notable and less familiar names, including Marion Perkins, Raymond Saunders, Emory Douglas, Dore Ashton and Lawrence Alloway. Although primarily centred on New York, this is veritable treasure trove of material, garnered from long defunct art journals, self-published pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, exhibition statements and newspapers articles, as well as transcripts from interviews and public roundtable discussions.

While debate, argument and critical appreciation are invariably centred on black artists and their work in a racially factitious society, a burning but largely unanswered question is where do white artists, the minimalists and conceptualists, figure?  Yet Godfrey’s ‘guiding principle’ for selecting material is very broad. It includes ‘the role and predicament of Black artists, or of Black women artists specifically; the possibility or impossibility of a Black aesthetic in general and in specific media’, ‘the status of abstraction in Black art’ and ‘debate concerning' the role and predicament of Black artists, or of Black women artists specifically’. Notable inclusions from outside the visual arts offer a broader context and recognition of the interplay between how black writers and the Black Arts Movement, primarily a literary movement, supported, influenced and riled black visual artists in equal measure. This material includes Ishmael Reed’s ‘The Black Artist: Calling a Spade a Spade’, 1967, Amiri Baraka’s ‘The Black Aesthetic’, published in The Negro Digest in 1969, and Toni Morrison’s foreword for the first edition of the short-lived Black Photographers Annual in 1973.

<< Back to previous page