Terms of the Day and Images from Lecture November 14

• AfriCOBRA – (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) a collective of AfricanAmerican artists in Chicago that specifically took on the goal of creating a new revolutionary black aesthetic. 
• Exploitation Film –  an informal label which may be applied to any film which is generally considered to be both low budget and of low moral or artistic merit, and therefore apparently attempting to gain financial success by "exploiting" a current trend or a niche genre or a base desire for lurid subject matter.
• Blaxploitation Film –  a film genre which emerged in the United States in the 1970s aimed at an urban black audience.  These films were often low-budget, had majority African American casts, and used funk music and urban slang of the time.  They were often criticized for perpetuating stereotypes.

The Passion of Muhammad Ali (cover of Esquire)

Carl Fisher & George Lois

1968

Aunt Jemima and the Pillsbury Doughboy

Jeff Donaldson

1963

Revolutionary Suit

Jae Jarrell

1970

Blaxploitation 

Superfly

George Parks, Jr.

1972

Foxy Brown

Jack Hill

1974

Scream Blacula Scream

Bob Kelljan

1973

Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger

Faith Ringgold

1969

 Injustice Case

David Hammons

1970

 How Ya Like Me Now?

David Hammons

1988

 The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Betye Saar

1972

 Black Girl’s Window

Betye Saar

1969

Homage to My Young Black Sisters

Elizabeth Catlett

1968

 I Like Olympia in Black Face

Larry Rivers

1970

Family Jules: NNN (No Naked Niggahs)

Barkley L. Hendricks

1974 

Brilliantly Endowed (Self-Portrait)

Barkley L. Hendricks

1977

Terms of the Day and Images for Lecture November12

• Spiral – a collective of AfricanAmerican artists initially formed by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff on July 5, 1963. The artists in the group were moved to come together and discuss their own engagement in the struggle for civil rights, even though each found engagement in a different way. 
• Minimalism – a movement in various forms of art and design where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features, such as material and the basic elements and principles of art.
• Washington Color School – a Washington, DC-based visual art movement of the late 1950s through the mid-1970s which was related  to abstract expressionism but made attempts to be much more minimal and structured than abstract expressionism.  Members of the movement referred to themselves as “Colorists”.

 The Problem We All Live With

Norman Rockwell

1964

 The “Little Rock Nine” students integrated into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, escorted by soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division

1959

 Cover of Time Magazine

September 27, 1963

 Marting Luther King, Jr.

1929-1968 (assassinated)

Malcom X

1925-1965 (assassinated)

 Prevalence of Ritual: Mysteries

Romare Bearden

1964

 Three Folk Musicians

Romare Bearden

1967

 Rockket to the Moon

Romare Bearden

1971

 Jack Johnson

Raymond Saunders

1972

 The Dance

Emilio Cruz

1962

 Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music

Alma Thomas

1976

 Swing

Sam Gilliam

1969

Arch

Sam Gilliam

1971

Images for Lecture November 7

 Slow Down Freight Train

Rose Piper

1946

 Art of the Negro: Native Forms

Hale A. Woodruff

1950-51

 Afro Emblems

Hale A. Woodruff

1950

 Blue Intrusion

Hale A. Woodruff

1958

 Every Atom Glows: Electrons In Luminous Vibration

Norman Lewis

1951

Harlem Turns White

Norman Lewis

1955

 Evening Rendezvous

Norman Lewis

1962

 Blue is the Smoke of War, White the Bones of Men

Romare Bearden

c. 1960

Tribal Mark

Aubrey Williams

1961

 …I Have A Special Fear for My Loved Ones

Elizabeth Catlett

1946

 Sharecropper

Elizabeth Catlett

1952

Illumination No. 1

Sunder Boghossian

1964

Images for Lecture November 5

Click below for the lecture slides for November 5:

Quiz #2

Below are nine images from which I will choose the five slide identifications on Quiz #2:

The Banjo Lesson

Henry Ossawa Tanner

1893 

 Aspiration

Aaron Douglas

1936

 Portrait of Langston Hughes

Winold Reiss

c. 1925

 Barbeque

Archibald Motley, Jr.

1934

 African Dancer

Richmond Barthé

1933

 Nous Quatre a Paris (We Four in Paris)

Palmer Hayden

c. 1930

Angel

Wiliam Edmondson

1932-37

 Migration of the Negro, Panel 1: During the World War there was a Great Migration North by Southern Negroes

Jacob Lawrence

1940-41

Tribal Mark

Aubrey Williams

1961

Below are three essay topics from which I will choose the one for Quiz #2

1. In the early decades of the 20th Century, African American leaders like W.E.B. Dubois and Alain Locke issued a call to African American artists to create a new "black aesthetic" that would "uplift the race" and deliberately reconnect with the traditional and ancient arts of Africa.  Name two of the artists who made work aimed at answering this call and describe how each did so.
2. Define Primitivism and tell how it is demonstrated in at least two artworks that you have seen in class.
3. Describe the prominent artistic style of the WPA/FAP and explain what changes Archibald Motley, Jr. made to his stylistic approach when he painted Picnic as a government commission.