Black Women Empowerment
Through the decades, black women have used art to capture the joy, pain, and glory of black culture and other things. I have learned that woman artists have come a long way from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I have also learned how women have expressed their frustrations, rebellions, and emotions through art when the patriarchal society silenced them. I would like to focus on the theme of the black woman race. Even when society started to become more liberal and accepting of women artists, black women were still the minority. For example, someone like Harriet Powers had to create her beautiful Bible Quilt in secret. Within the Quit expressed gems for freedom that she yearned for. Fast forward hundreds of years later, we now are able to see a black woman as America’s first lady, Michelle Obama. As art has moved to cubism and modernism, it made a way for these women artists that I am going to talk about to express their "self - conscious set of practices and characteristics through which modern art is understood". (Chadwich, 279). All the artwork that I have attached relates to women empowerment and the desire of pouring the black race and history into society and all parts of the world through art.
Amy Sherald is a contemporary African - American painter who is known for her portraits that address issues of injustice in black culture. Sherald’s style of painting skin tones in gray helps to break society from judging individuals based on their skin tone. She states that she wants people to imagine life outside of the “circumscribed stereotype, or identity that can be controlled by many circumstances such as their environment”. After living in Baltimore, she was inspired to paint about poverty in African American society. She continues to live and paint in Baltimore, where she creates a plethora of influence through her paintings. Amy is known for her famous painting of Michelle Obama, which would change the art industry forever. This painting of Michelle Obama stood for the representation for the black woman artist to come and it stood for all the black women who are not represented in the mass media and entertainment industry. As Michelle Obama states herself in her painting “ Mrs. Obama commented on the lack of black women in portraiture and shared her hope that Sherald’s portrait would inspire younger generations. Mrs. Obama said, ‘I’m also thinking about all of the young people, particularly girls and girls of color, who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution.” Learning about women in art from the Middle Ages until this modernism period has been huge enlightenment for me. Especially seeing women like Amy being able to paint First Lady Michelle Obama through her own radical style of grey skin is incredible. Granted there are still issues in women of color in that industry but to see this advancement and improvement is outrageous. It surely is a big movement for all people in the black community.
Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, and Hauser & Wirth.
Lorna Simpson is an African - American photographer and multimedia artist who is mainly known for her conceptual black and white photos. Lorna Simpson explores the experience of African American women in contemporary society. Simpson re-remains photography as conceptual art. Her images are specifically selected from original photos from eBay and flea markets. Simpson likes to show her subjects from the back, instead of depicting them from the front. She also liked to show them from behind with their faces and eyes “obscured” or “omitted”. This allows her to emphasize the social and political implications of the African textures and hairstyles. Simpsons' work is often shown as open-ended or fragmented. Simpson states that her work “ seeks to explicate the ways in which race and gender shape human interactions, specifically in the United States, through the medium of portraiture”. In her famous work “Stereotypes” she was able to portray how the identity is “externally projected”. Lorna does not just capture photos but uses them in an essential way that is able to help society be more open-minded about African - American women.
Simpson, Lily.” Stereo Styles [Styles stéréo]”. 1988. Collection of Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy
Faith Ringgold is a painter, civil rights activist, author, and more. She is best known for her narrative quilts. Faith was born during the Harlem Renaissance. Faith is a renaissance woman who was able to first-hand experience art during her time until the art in this day and age. The woman portrays an African American woman who is looking at herself in the mirror. The African American woman cries as she looks at herself in the mirror because she does not see the woman that society wants her to be. The controversy of who the woman sees in the mirror, speaks to the multifaceted nature of her identity. The painting challenges the visual history of women and mirrors in Western Art. Faith’s artwork always communicates to her political beliefs. Her inspiration stems from James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Impressionism, and Cubism. Ringgold’s paintings received a lot of attention, but at the same time, she received backlash due to her works being focused on the underlying racism in everyday activities. Her themes became “normal” during the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s movement.
Fig. 2. Faith Ringgold, American People Series #16: Woman Looking in a Mirror, 1966. Oil on canvas, 33 x 32 in. Courtesy the artist, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London and ACA Galleries, New York; photography by Benjamin Westoby. https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/faith-ringgold/
Kara Elizabeth Walker is known for her conceptual art, multimedia art, text, painting, printmaking, and her collages. She was born on November 26, 1969, in Stockton, CA. Walker explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her large- scale tableaux of collaged silhouettes among black-and-white pastoral landscapes. Walker often provocatively illustrates slavery in the antebellum South. Walker wants her work to do more than impress the viewer. Walker states that she wants the viewer to get pulled into history, giggle nervously a little, never walk away, pulled into fiction, something “ demeaning and something very beautiful” then something beautiful and creative. Kara’s work illustrates racial stereotypes of the past and present. What I extremely love about Kara’s work is not only does it address slavery and racial discrimination but it also raises awareness of the bigotry that still exists in the United States.
Walker, Kara. Resurrection Story Without Patrons, 2017 Etching with aquatint, sugar-lift, spit-bite and dry-point on paper
39 3/4 × 49 in
101 × 124.5 cm
Augusta Savage's career was elevated during the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930’s she was well known as a sculptor, art teacher, and community art program director. Her career almost collapsed during the Great Depression, however, she endured and became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She launched her own “Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts” located in Harlem. She was one of four women to receive a professional commission from the Board of Design of the 1939 New York World Fair. She created life Every Voice and Sing “ The Harp”. Much of her work is clay or plaster because she could not afford bronze. Her work is currently displayed in Washington, D.C in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her sculptors bring awareness and significance to African American history. Her sculptors have the ability to capture pure emotions in expressions and poses of their subjects. Savage symbolizes the power and strength of African Woman, she was denied from art schools in Europe, she received the commission from W.E.B Dubois and received a scholarship for art school in Paris. Savage told the Black Women to America, 1982 that her goal was to teach and inspire “youngsters to develop the talent they know that I possess, then my monument will be in their work”.
Augusta Savage, Civil Rights Sculptor. Courtesy Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, 1935-1942. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/augusta-savage-4269
Work Cited
https://www.artsy.net/artist/lorna-simpson
https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/faith-ringgold/
http://www.artnet.com/artists/kara-walker/
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/augusta-savage-4269
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Thames Hudson Ltd, 2020.
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