Unknown Speaker  00:22
This. Specifically, and I am going to be taking my choose from a notion that the feminist art historian Sandra Langer brought forward an idea of all visions, new frontiers of contrast between tradition and contemporary developments. And in looking at the work of African American artists from that perspective, one of the things that I began to see is that it gave me a peculiar ly useful kind of vantage point to on the parallels and differences between the practice of black women in particular, and other American women artists. So I'm hoping that you'll to be able to see that here. Let me just get the remote here. This afternoon, I want to address in the theme of old visions, new frontiers. With respect to the work of American born black women artists. Active in the fine arts for over a century, African American women have produced a unique cultural legacy. There is a history that to a great extent, consists of tantalizing fragments, a territory that has languished in art historical neglect. The story of black women's participation in visual arts remains larger than told and lacking verifiable past. The art of contemporary black women is easily mistaken for a historical anomaly. All too often. As a result, work by contemporary black women is viewed as being divorced from familiar aesthetic and social origins, leaving the peculiar impression that their race and gender somehow magically erased the effects of art school training, while their art school training somehow severed all ethnic groups and gender based ties. In fact, the complexity of African American women artists, responses to the aesthetic models and social conditions of their time, probably accounts for the bewildering diversity of their products. During the 1980s, for example, black women have painted in Indians as unlike as those of Howard Mandel there on the left, and Rene green here, right. And Dells 1982 8300 No Tombow Japan, is a large five foot nine inch by 12 foot five inch unstretched Canvas in which slim Canvas strips have been patiently sewn together and coated with acrylic paint. The detail, then, tiny paper dots and photo transfer images are embedded in the viscous surface. Inspired by a year long stay in Japan the painting combines formal sensuousness and symbolic resonance that is characteristic of this artist's work. In contrast, Greene's Empire number for a 1985 painting and she has a for me recently that her work now is very, very different. Uses The Calculatedly crude vocabulary of Spike head expressionism to broadcast its anti imperialist message loud and clear. In sculpture, the 1980s saw such artists as Maren Hassinger here on the left

Unknown Speaker  04:49
and when they step right, moving in opposite stylistic directions, executed in 1989 passengers rain continues her Over a decade long use of wire rope to create elegantly reductive drawings in space that evoke natural phenomenon. Stout, a Washington DC based artist, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer. Her 1988 The Guardian of the medicine boxes, employs figurative imagery and a potent combination of artist made and recycled objects to suggest spiritual abundance. throughout the decade, African American women have explored Iraq dazzling variety of media forms. Los Angeles's veteran collage assemblage and installation artists Betty saw his work you're seeing her on the left has mined the visual poetry of computer circuitry and microchips, for example, in such works as her 1988 Lost dimensions of time in New York meanwhile, Candace Hill was busy experimenting with photographic techniques in pursuit of a fascination with linguistically based post structuralist theory. Hills, the use of multiple exposures worked like 1984 men when I would say this title incorrectly. It's an odd one. Men when will end mirrors the indeterminant multi referential nature signs. At the same time, Martha Jackson Jarvis who like Renee stout resides in Washington DC, has been put in one of the world's oldest art materials ceramic clay, to stunning new uses. The gathering was a 1988 room size installation, in which Jackson jar was marked space and suggested opposing centrifugal and so triple that either centrifugal forces with forms consisting of 1000s of shorts of glazed fire clay. Another 1988 installation Adrian Piper's corner seemed worlds apart from Jackson Jarvis's evocation of the cosmos. However, the installation by Piper featured a video monitor that was stationed in a corner, apparently pinned there by an overturned conference table. Flagging the monitor to birth certificates hung on adjacent walls, dated 1911 and issued in West Virginia. They have belonged to the artists late father, one declared him white, the other pronounced him an Octoroon. In her on screen videotape performance, Piper invited viewers to consider the ramifications of a recent estimate that 80% of us whites have some black ancestry. Given the immense variety of even this tiny sample of contemporary work by African American women, it seems difficult to imagine what aside from race and gender classifications might link them and and historically meaningful what this difficulty looms large, as long as we are unwilling or unable to construct a history of African American Women's are once we start to fill in even a few of the records many blanks however, the situation changes. We have no evidence of black women working as fine artists prior to emancipation. But we know that the skills of slave craftsmen, primarily seamstresses, weavers were highly valued at times wittingly, at times, unwittingly, southern planters imported African craft traditions and techniques along with African bodies.

Unknown Speaker  09:15
Along the South Carolina Georgia coast, especially in the area, known as the Georgia Sea Islands, it was African note, as well as African resistance to malaria that turned treacherous marshes into lucrative rice plantations. In addition to methods of cultivation, the region's African labor force supplied traditional implements like the coiled grass rice banner seen it left in a photograph taken in South Carolina in 1908. The photograph that Ryan taken in Angola, around 1929 30 shows our South Carolina subjects African sister, creating a call Well, brass basket is the structural twin of the American rice fan. I'm showing you a detail of an American example here on the left. But the story of Afro American functional, as well as fine art is a story of cultural hybridization. As we see in this turn of the century photograph of a Charleston, South Carolina street vendor, are two baskets are equipped with handles, signaling a European mode of design, but note that she bears one basket on her head, a typically African mode of transport. Harriet Powers's 1886 Bible quilt, here on the left, demonstrates a similar cross cultural fluency. Well, silhouetted forms are reminiscent of the famed applique Clawson phone people have what is now the Republican beneath it subject is strictly Judeo Christian. A contemporary artist whose work you've already seen today, who like powers, mix narrative quilts, Faith Ringgold is the daughter of a Harlem fashion designer and great granddaughter of a Florida slave quilt. Her 1986 The Color Purple quilt, thus honors both a contemporary black feminists literary monument, Alice Walker's novel, and a black female artistic legacy, embodied in the black pill tradition.

Unknown Speaker  11:42
Documented activity by black women in the fine arts starts with the work of Marian Mooney, Louis, half Chippewa and half black. She is thought to have been born around 1845 Perhaps in Ohio, or near Alpha near Albany, New York. Her most famous work you're seeing here forever free, was started in 1867 commemorate the emancipation proclamation that decreed an official into us slavery, a part of the Harriet Hosmer circle of American women artists in Rome when she executed the marble. Lewis had also been associated with what feminists before leaving the United States. Hence, it seems likely that the gender iconography of forever free was its triumphant standing male. The rest of paternalistic hand on the shoulder of the kneeling supplicant female was not fortuitous. With the adoption by Congress in the 14th Amendment in 1886, excuse me 1866. Language limiting citizenship rights to males have been introduced into the US Constitution for the first time seeing their own campaign for equality severely damaged by a piece of legislation that empowered blacks. Women suffragists, who had previously been staunch supporters of black civil rights, are now staunchly opposed to a proposed 15th amendment extending voting rights to black men. Given her strong feminist ties, Louis may well have counted herself among those few black women who felt as Sojourner Truth put it in an 1867 speech. Remember, at 67 is the year of this piece that emancipation left, quote, slavery, partly destroyed, not entirely, unquote. And realize that if, quote, colored men get their rights and not colored women, there's the color men will be the masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. Sojourner Truth. In addition to its black feminist overtones, forever free is the earliest extant fine artwork by an African American to represent the harsh facts of the bondage. As such, it is the distinguished ancestor of works like Lois Neelu Jones's 1944 long victim here on the right. And then he soars. 1972 is Jim Crow, really dead reference to the whole system of segregation? Works that works to illustrate black women artists continued preoccupation with racial injustice. In 1987, construction separate but equal. Howard in a p&l

Unknown Speaker  15:06
looks beyond American shores to focus on South Africa's apartheid system. Africa isn't a new interest for black women artists, though. Although the version you're seeing here on the left is undated. We know that men up vote were up for model the plaster version of this subject. This one is an alabaster, Ethiopia awakening in 1914. In the 1980s, Lorena Brady has produced a performance piece and a photographic ensemble, both entitled never Titi slash divan, Devonian Evangelium, I'm showing you one of the pairs of photograph from the entire ensemble that pairs images of the ancient Egyptian Queen and her and her family, with the artists dead sister, Devonian, evangelists and her family. The work is at once a payoff to the lost world of the pre Cosby era black middle class, meditation on female sibling and mother daughter relationships and a rebuttal of the myth that Egypt wasn't a black culture. Nancy Elizabeth profits 1930 convalesce here on the left, was one of the first works by an African American to be purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Stylistically a product of early 20s 20th century academic realist. It seems like years apart from catties 1983 investment, right, a wall construction that borrows such traits of traditional African sculpture as the use of ceremonial fringes polychromed and Rybnik. A symmetry among women painters, Lois Jones was one of the first to call from the legacy of African sculpture. As we see here in her life, the Tisch, a canvas executed in Paris in 1938. By the late 1970s, black women artists like Sangan gudi, and Maren Hassinger, and black male artists like David Hammons, all three of them you see, in the photograph on the right, we're not only emulating African sculptor, African sculptures, static forms, but had begun taking on the African tradition of intermediate performance together in Guti, the central figure garden, why Hassinger the white failed figure it rear right, and Hammonds, the staff Barrett left, performed ceremony for freeway fetishize the neath Los Angeles freeway around in 1979. racial oppression and African heritage though are by no means the only recurrent tropes in the history of African American Women's are. There is a deep, often mystical attachment to nature found works as distinct from one another as the late Alma Thomas's flowers for the Jefferson Memorial, and undated Canvas from the early 1970s. And Jackie Holmes's 1979 song from the earth, a pen, a paper and mixed media dipped, which of which I'm showing you the right panel that resembles a musical score. In three views of Mount Fuji, a 1982, collage construction, Howard, you know, Condell conflict interests in Japan's topography, and a tradition of landscape painting in which Mount Fuji figures prominently. Paradoxically, Maren Hassinger takes us indoors to enjoy her version of the natural paradise in heaven. Passenger line the walls with Rose waves spray the room was sent and let the viewer take it from there.

Unknown Speaker  19:44
Jackie Holmes with her song from the Earth isn't alone in demonstrating musical tendencies. Augusta Savage was the only black artists commissioned to produce some work for the 1939 World's Fair savages The Heart took as its theme The so called Negro national anthem. James Weldon Johnson's lira Lift Every Voice and sin. modeled in plaster. This monumental chorus of black voices presided over the court of the fair's Contemporary Arts Building. In her 1983 Audience participation performance piece, funk lessons, Adrian Piper sought to share the transcendent properties a much scorned black working class cultural artifacts, funk music and dance with a non black working class audience, in the process of instructing participants in the elements of music and the accompanying dance style, Piper and to put audience members in touch with some of the sources of their unconscious fears and anxieties about cultural difference. Finally, black women artists share a history of producing images of women. Such images include at Moni Lewis's 1875 stature of Hagar, the Old Testament Egyptian slave, who, like so many African American women, was forced to become for Masters concubines, then victimized by a jealous mistress. They also include images of white linen, like any e a Walker's 1896 pastel portrait la Parisienne. Right. Laura Wheeler Waring's 1927 Oil portrait of Anna Washington dairy, elicited praise for its creators technical facility, when it was exhibited in the first Komen Foundation exhibition of work by black artists. Elizabeth caplets 1972 mother and child is one of this sculptors countless images of black woman. By the mid 1970s, with her family and women's theories, Faith Ringgold was producing soft sculpture, reminiscent of the elaborately applicated costumes of the Igbo people of Nigeria's traditional named spirits. Barbara Chase, who seems to have also tuned into African female imagery, when she created her 1974 bronze and silk cord black Zanzibar table with its bronze folds and braided prints. The 12 inch high sculpture resembles the turban head of an African woman with braided hair. On the other hand, in her 1985 Mamba Mambo, Alison Saar invokes the black diaspora, simultaneously referencing the Afro Cuban dance Mambo and the term for an afro Haitian priestess also Mambo while her seductively naked and Red Shoe subject wield a deadly African mom, ba, ma MBA, snake. And soar has chosen a women's art form the sequent voting flags of Haiti as the vehicle for this culturally complex imagery. Very dark slide I'm sorry about this. In recent years, a number of black women have produced work dealing with questions of identity. For example, Howard indepen, Dale's 1980 video performance free white and 21 describes the harrowing effects of racism and its internalization by black women in business, in contrast, ever make it out. Slide 1987, who we was staunchly refuses the straitjacket of racist misconceptions, turning the mockery of racial stereotyping back on the perpetrators. To works by Adrian Piper, her 1981 pencil drawing self portrait exaggerating my Negroid features

Unknown Speaker  24:47
and her What will become of me. A duration peace began in 1985. Continue black women's ongoing conversation about identity there are new Draw however, in being among the few self portrait images I found in an admittedly random collection of black women artists slides. The only other self portrait in my possession was Candace hills 1985 stone, which contains the reflected images of the artist and upper right, and her daughter near the photo center. Well, the assertion of selfconscious identity is probably a development unique to the generation of black women who have come of age with the second wave women's movement. One could argue that the content of the resulting works is not entirely unlike that ammonia Lewis's Hagar, or metaphors, Ethiopia awakening. In conclusion, though, I would like to focus upon a pair of images that strike me as being absolutely unprecedented. Clarissa slaw is lay on top of me here on the left, a 1984 Venn diagram, and Adrian Piper's 1986 And my calling card number two. The former slides piece breaks important thematic ground by focusing on incest. While the ladder breaks black women artists silence about the restriction of female activity by our sexual harassment of women who dare venture into public places of amusement and not an escort. Although we arrived in new territory, with these work specific themes, they remain tied to the dreams of previous generations of black women artists works in protest, they remind us that black liberation will not be complete until black women are free of gender exploitation and domination. Like Emoni Lewis's forever free carved over a century ago, these words indicate that in the last quarter of the 20th century, black women still face what Sojourner Truth called slavery partly destroyed, not entirely.

Unknown Speaker  27:44
Black women artists,

Unknown Speaker  27:46
well, no, it was maybe it was in San Antonio.

Unknown Speaker  27:53
I was wondering what, what any or all of you think of those kinds of shows? And if you think that that's sort of an adequate response to that question, in sort of a museum. But just based on the way you think about this, I

Unknown Speaker  28:15
had this discussion several times with a friend of mine, Kelly Jones were one point where we were both in school, we said, we're really happy to see it because we need a venue to show our work. And but at this point in history, it's really patronizing. And it's just not a not a fair way to present artists. Certainly, I I prefer to see my work within a larger context and an a broader context. And I, that's why in my talk, I discussed the Hispanic arts in the United States Hispanic culture in the United States, which is at the Brooklyn Museum by the way, it isn't any longer it was at one point it's it's the only venue right now, where we can the only method we can show our work, but it's it's sort of distorts us and it's I had someone recently who called me

Unknown Speaker  29:32
said to me, I'm she was screaming on the other side of the phone and she said, it's the first time it's the first time I'm gonna be at a show in Georgia and and it's with it's not because I'm a woman, it's not because I'm a Puerto Rican woman. It's because my work fits in within you know, the curatorial agenda that this that this curator has decided to do and on she said, I'm getting the money and I'm flying over there because it's it's I have to celebrate If she said, we have to see more of this, hopefully it'll it'll, it'll change I'm not so sure that's the case. For me,

Unknown Speaker  30:14
it's a really difficult time. And because as an artist, I feel very self conscious wherever I show, whether it's in one of those, you know, so called minority or strictly of color shows or whether it's not, it's in a different situation, because there's always uncomfortable sense that one way or another, you're being used, possibly, you know, and whether you're being nice, they want you to, they want to play up your ethnicity, by including you in the show, we need one of those there, you know, or you in a different situation where you feel like you're, there's a possibility of being ghettoized in the sense that who is going to come to see this show who is going to review it, and all of this sort of imbalance of power that comes into play. However, I guess I would qualify the that statement by saying that, I do think that that special shows where the, where it's specifically that say, of car color shows do serve a purpose. And I believe it's more how they're done and who's doing it. And, you know, it's never a totally comfortable situation. But I think that, for instance, the couple of the situations I've been in, for instance, at the coast to coast woman of color show, it was organized by women of color, for women of color, and the basic power structure and decision making everything was basically within our own domain. So that I felt that you can't really, there's no little level of being used necessarily in that case. And I think that it's still the issue that in terms of the visible, the invisibility, rather, a lot of artists of color is still so strong that in a way, we need more and more venues to get the work out. And unfortunately, the case of Asian Americans, I feel that even though we're getting the workout and the work is out there, it's not being documented. And it's not, you know, when when you have the officials, institutional people saying, well, we don't, we can't find them. And it's because, you know, if you try to go through, go through and find them, and the printed matter, it's not, we're not there. And, and it's because we left the institutional parts we don't, as compared to, let's say, Latinos or African Americans. I mean, we don't have that level of its traditional development, for instance, what we have even a museum level, situation that promotes and documents and warehouses and all that. Our work, so aged Americans, so that's a whole other level. So whole other aspect of this. And another panel earlier this morning at the Asian economic center, actually was concerning the Havana Biennale in particular, but when we, I was addressing the relations. I was just dressing black artists from England, and the fact that when we were there, we got into a lot of discussion and dialogue with them specifically about the issue of racism in the arts. And, you know, one of the one of the things that kept coming up over and over is, well, who is the audience for our work and the fact that the work may address, you know, aspects of identity and community and so on. And yet, oftentimes, it's not fully supported by the community economically or in terms of the venue, and it's oftentimes in the white power structure that it gets presented or, you know, I mean, how many of these discussions are we having where it's always sort of a more of a white control situation? And I think, if we can sort of, sort of get to a situation where these things are also initiated by somewhat determined by all communities that would be willing to

Unknown Speaker  34:36
I guess, what I feel about this whole issue of segregated shows is that it is a double edged sword. That there are very strong reasons, positive reasons for doing shows that separate out groups in order to look at it as a group and to see you know what it has isn't common, whether it's in historical terms, strictly aesthetic terms or whatever. But there are also situations in which that is continually perpetuated. Yes indeed becomes cannibalization. The other side being that, well, if you are constantly inserting partisan color into mainstream situations, are you then burying that aspect of their work that has to do with their specific past? cetera? So I think there always been those problems. And to me the situation is solution it's it's part probably rather utopian. going back and looking at what our assumptions are about art exhibitions, about art itself, because I think that part of the reason why this is so much of a question for all of us and why it is so disturbing for all of us, is that to one degree or another, we've internalized the notion of art as separate from the rest of the social sphere. And then you break through those boundaries, then it's like well, you know, why not have women's shirts why not have Asian American show? Why not have whatever whatever all shows in one way or another have some social link or basis whether it's disguised or not don't find it very much but it's fun think we're all struggling dealing with I think maybe that's why you're getting submissions because this takes people and hurts people

Unknown Speaker  37:25
contacted me six weeks that's the situation.

Unknown Speaker  37:42
Right, exactly.

Unknown Speaker  37:45
The shadows, which show should be

Unknown Speaker  37:50
groups of Hispanics and blacks, we'll just put it

Unknown Speaker  37:58
within our living environment,

Unknown Speaker  38:02
just have it have us get into so much more conscious of how

Unknown Speaker  38:18
a slide shows that

Unknown Speaker  38:29
there is a need to challenge the sort of the traditional modes of presenting works of art sort of on a, you know, sacred way, where it's you just frame it and hang it up a pie and a white wall. And you have to walk in a, you know, the it was special corridor, and it's sort of like, almost like a, like a sort of a religious act, and that, that, that doesn't not invite very many people to see art as a as part of their lives. That, you know, it'd be exhibition ways of methods or the structures of grading exhibitions. It's been the same for like 80 years and hasn't changed and there is some rumbling right now, of some museum directors and curators just beginning to, to talk about, you know, why not have the, you know, new ways of showing work outside on billboards, or having, you know, people who are not artists coming in curate shows, and that sort of thing, but it's just talk right now, it hasn't happened yet. Hopefully, maybe we'll begin to see some of that

Unknown Speaker  39:48
question earlier by someone to list where they could track some of the artists, something that might be of interest. I'm very good money and Louis's work, and there's going to be a number of people in the group with museums, the show basically if anybody wants to see more recently, the work of

Unknown Speaker  40:24
we were very close friends actually. Classmates together Berkeley. She, she was killed in 82, actually a few months after the publication of Republic pay. Is that incredible Yeah. Oh, she immigrated here. I think in our teens, early teens, to Hawaii, them to better family settled in San Francisco. And that's been arena issues

Unknown Speaker  41:18
Yeah, I did mention, well, the alternative museum will be having that exhibition based on St. St. May 5,

Unknown Speaker  41:30
is it opening?

Unknown Speaker  41:36
That's right. And that opens in April, right? No, June, June. Oh, yeah. Margo, why don't you tell us

Unknown Speaker  41:47
just in case you want to see more works. To show the deputy chair the collaboration with the studio visit the new museum temporary show about the issues. Three openings. The first is May 11. Which is on a second one will be on the 15th which will be across the street from the. Studio Museum. So it's like a show where the artists involved. It's where they distributed around. So it's not like we went to the studio, we only spend the next important idea necessarily. So so he was just like, oh, that's a good idea. Actually. Yeah. Also, if you send Center for Research,

Unknown Speaker  43:27
or distribute to the students, oh, it's a good idea. Give out things.

Unknown Speaker  43:37
Definitely. Write and do research and all that. I know what it's like to find information. Something that I think people sort of outside Art of Color circles sometimes don't realize is what the information sources are for the different art groups. And I would say that of the museum spaces on this lesson should be like the top museum and gallery, non commercial gallery for its five institutions that are listed here. All of them are incredible repositories of information about artists of color

Unknown Speaker  44:18
documentation catalogs,

Unknown Speaker  44:20
catalogs, they are happy to refer people to artists if they don't have the information themselves. Some of them have archives to one extent or another

Unknown Speaker  44:29
set. We do need one for consecrating really great to have like one Yeah. For African American artists, there is something called Cash Phillips. They have the largest

Unknown Speaker  44:51
for Asian American or Asian American Art Center for one, which is located 26th Street, just below Canal Street. I would just also like to add that there's an umbrella organization for Asian martial arts and cultural organizations called Beijing Arts Alliance. We're located on Lafayette and Bleecker and we share a space with what but Asian American, we have on our rosters over 100 Asian Americans most of them are very small, fledgling community based organization. But nevertheless you know, the existence of that alliance. Some information if you want to pursue it

Unknown Speaker  45:47
as much I have a cyber History Museum,

Unknown Speaker  45:52
the Museum of advice do not much of what you have available in the files as they do have the documentation catalogs that you can look at that you can borrow as well. Well, I guess it's, that's it, thank you very much. There is a reception down the hall