Status and Presence African American Art in the International Arena

From the postwar period to the present day, ‘African American’ and ‘American’ art have played key but notably different roles and occupied radically different positions within the international arena. A litany of exhibitions staged between the 1950s to the 1990s represent the routine ways in which African American artists were emphatically excluded from otherwise official definitions of ‘American’ art. Exhibitions such as ‘Modern Art in the United States: A selection from the Museum of Modern Art, New York’, Tate Gallery Jan 5–Feb 12, 1956, and ‘The New American Painting: arranged by the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Arts Council of Great Britain’, Tate Gallery, London, Feb 24–March 22, 1959 are notable examples because along with others, they coincided with one of the most vital periods for African American artists in postwar activity. Neither exhibition included artists such as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis et. al. A decade later, Tate Gallery hosted ‘The Art of the Real: U.S.A. 1948–1969’ April 24–June 1, 1969, featuring thirty-three white American artists. Support for ‘American’ art that was both wilful and pathological in its exclusion of African American art was not without precedent in Britain. Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) and the Arts Council of Great Britain, grateful recipients of these exhibitions, were already well versed in denying black British artists recognition in postwar British art. A rare concession to this was ‘American Painting from the eighteenth century to the present day’ at Tate Gallery in June–July 1946, which included Horace Pippin’s, John Brown going to his Hanging 1942 and four paintings from Jacob Lawrence’s series the Migration of the Negro 1940–41 (later renamed the Migration Series). However, despite being described as “perhaps the most representative collection of American painting ever assembled,” earlier pioneers such as Robert Scott Duncanson (1821–1872) and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) were conspicuously absent from the exhibition.

During the course of the twentieth century, African American art had out of necessity, established itself as a separate force within the United States. However, given the tumultuous political events that shaped twentieth-century America—from the lasting legacies of slavery, civil war and emancipation to the monumental periods of reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration and Civil Rights—it seems inexplicable that the work of African American artists could be considered as anything but central to definitions of American art.

The systemic, if unspoken policy which underpinned the framing of American art continued to have wider repercussions. ‘Seminal’ international exhibitions spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, which included numbers of white American artists routinely ignored the work of African American artists. Into the 1990s, other London exhibitions such as ‘American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993’ and ‘Young Americans: New American Art in the Saatchi Collection’, variously positioned African American art as peripheral, if not superfluous, to contemporary conceptions of ‘American art’. Conversely, the international group exhibition ‘Cocido y crudo’ (14 December 1994 – 6 March 1995), at the time, represented a rare opportunity to see the work of several African American artists (Faith Ringgold, Fred Wilson and Renée Green) within a larger international grouping of contemporary artists. Conceived by American art curator Dan Cameron and presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, ‘Cocido y crudo’ (Cooked and raw) included fifty-five artists from across Europe, United States and countries such as Laos, Cameroon, and Zaire (now, Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Within the international arena, the racially skewed conceptions of ‘American’ art have nevertheless both endured and prospered. The recent tome, Biennials and Beyond—Exhibitions That Made Art History 1962–2002, is but one example of how in unspoken ways, racially maleficent conceptions of ‘American’ art have been legitimised and allowed to prevail within the international arena By equal measure these historical accounts have forsaken the mighty significance of African American art in the international arena. Following Charles White’s death in 1979, the ‘Academy of Arts: GDR’ published a glowing tribute.  Titled ‘The impact of his art crossed the borders of North America’ the tribute reflected on White’s unique importance and prolific artistic career:

'People viewing Charles White’s products never forget the expressions of the faces and movements of his figures. These strong expressions become symbols of the Black people’s longing for human dignity and beauty. They have a universal resonance insofar as Charles White succeeds in depicting the struggle against the destruction of human dignity.'

White’s international activity involved numerous exhibitions in the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. In 1974, the three-person show, ‘Exhibition of American Artists Anton Refregier, Tecla Selnik, Charles White, painting, graphics, sculpture’ offered alternative framing of White beyond the category of ‘African American artist’. Charles White: ein Künstler Amerikas was published in East Germany in the early 1950s. Written by American Sidney Finkelstein, it represented the first significant scholarship on White’s work. This historical backdrop around pathologies of exclusion provide a vital context that is imperative to understanding the status and presence of African American art in the international arena. In the postwar period, African American art has and continues to have multiple trajectories, via thematic exhibitions, biennales and solo exhibitions.

At the height of the American civil rights movement, ‘Ten Negro Artists from the United States’ took place at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. Whilst African American artists already had an enduring presence within the international arena, dating back to the early nineteenth century, this exhibition was the first to present African American art as a distinct grouping. Recent exhibitions such as ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’ (2017) at Tate Modern and ‘The Color Line, Les Artistes Africains-Américains et la Ségrégation’ (2016) at Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, reflect the enduring role of this approach. Equally, Mark Bradford’s acclaimed exhibition ‘Tomorrow is Another Day’ at the US Venice Biennale Pavilion (2017), ‘Basquiat: Boom for Real’, at Barbican Art Gallery (2017), and Martin Puryear’s U.S. Venice Biennale Pavilion (2019), offer another dimension to the ways in which African American art occupies the international stage[…]

Excerpts from 'Status and Presence: African American Art in the International Arena' pp275-288 in

The Routledge Companion to African American Art History

Edited by Eddie Chambers, Routledge: London and New York: 2019