Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month we take this fun and educational field trip to visit the leading archives and prestigious educational institutions to discover more wonderful visual art works by African American Artists & Designers.

Black History Each year we like to take a look at outstanding contributions to art and design from the black community. Unfortunately, each year most of the links go dead and previous pages have to be scrapped or heavily reconditioned. This year, only about four of last year’s links were still live. It’s terrible when web sites allow their links to expire in less than a year.

We’ve caught up with some of the brightest Black artists and designers, photographers, illustrators and creatives both from yesteryear and today. We were a bit disappointed that we did not get a single submission from the DTG readership recommending African American artists and designers.


collections

Athletes with Eyes for Art

Thane Peterson gives us an exciting look at some outstanding African American art and illustration in the “Collections” department of Businessweek online. Here’s a sampling from the collections of pro basketball stars Grant Hill and Chris Webber. (Webber, a star forward with the Philadelphia 76ers, and Hill a star forward with the Orlando Magic) collects rare books, letters, and other memorabilia from important figures in African American history.

Businessweek Collections


Paul Collins celebrated American illustrator and painter

Paul CollinsPaul Collins

Paul Collins is a celebrated American illustrator and painter who also happens to be a designer. Watson-Guptill Publications names him one of the top 20 figurative painters. He is the designer of the Martin Luther King Peace Prize Medal, the National Physical Fitness Poster for the Carter administration and the NASA space shuttle emblem. He painted the President Ford Mural, the 40th Anniversary of Israel Mural and several other commissioned works for Anheuser Busch, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Universal Forrest Products, Amway Corporation, Johnson Products, and many more
www.collinsart.com



Hughie Lee-Smith

Hughie Lee-Smith once said: “I think my paintings have to do with an invisible life — a reality on a different level.” Graduating from the Cleveland School of Arts in 1938, he went to work for the Ohio Works Progress Administration, and the Ford factory in River Rouge. Not satisfied with that life, he migrated to Chicago where he began to show his works in 1945. Soon after he began winning awards for his art such as, Detroit Institute Founders Prize (1953), National Academy of Design (four times), the Emily Lowe Award (1957), and the award from the American Society of African Culture (1960). In 1967, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Design.
Huge history of illustrations and paintings
Learn more about Hughie Lee-Smith
The James Logan Courier
more at the Detroit Institute of Arts


The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago

We continue our tour at The Art Institute of Chicago where their collection of African American art provides a rich introduction to over 100 years of noted achievements in painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Ranging chronologically from the Civil War era to the Harlem Renaissance and from the civil-rights struggles following World War II to the contemporary period, these works constitute a dynamic visual legacy.

  • Elizabeth Catlett – Mexican (born United States), born 1915 Sharecropper, 1957 (printed 1970) Color linocut on cream Japanese paper
  • Archibald J. Motley Jr. often depicted contemporary black social nightlife in the city. His focus was Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Also known as the Black Belt, this area became home to more than 90 percent of the city’s black population by the 1930s. Nightlife, 1943 Oil on canvas
  • Kerry James Marshall completed Many Mansions in 1994 (Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas); the first in a series of five large-scale paintings depicting public housing projects in Chicago and Los Angeles. American, born 1955
  • Romare Bearden’s The Return of Odysseus portrays the climax of The Odyssey, an epic poem by the ancient Greek author known as Homer. 1977 Collage on masonite. American, 1911-1988

See many works from African American artists who helped shape our art heritage…

Chicago African American art


Douglas was the Harlem Renaissance artist

Aaron Douglas

Douglas was the Harlem Renaissance artist whose work best exemplified the ‘New Negro’ philosophy. He painted murals for public buildings and produced illustrations and cover designs for many black publications. Douglas has been called the Father of African American art, and his paintings display elements of cubism as well as shapes from Ancient Egyptian and West African art. Many of his works are like Aspiration, above, with layered images and similar color schemes. His paintings represent the African American struggle for political and creative freedoms, and though they are so dynamic, it’s important to recognize that Douglas was not only a painter, and some of his drawings and illustrations are also on display.


article at dcist.com
Enjoy an entire slideshow of Aaron’s work


Rhapsodies In Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Rhapsodies In Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance

To discover other Black artists who shaped the American art scene visit the Institute of International Arts’ wonderful art gallery. This Web site provides an introduction to the exhibition curated by David A. Bailey and Richard J. Powell and organised by the Hayward Gallery, London in collaboration with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC., and the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA). The Web site combines images and text to elaborate on some of the key themes in the exhibition: The Harlem Renaissance, Representing the New Negro, Modernism and Modernity, A Blues Aesthetic, Imaginging Africa, Haiti and Images of Black Nationhood.
Rhapsodies In Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance

African Americans in the Visual Arts

Long Island University is home of the C.W. Post Campus and the B. David Schwartz Memorial Library where you’ll find an exhaustive study called African Americans in the Visual Arts: A Historical Perspective, under the guidance of Prof. Melvin R. Sylvester, Library Periodicals Department.

Creative Folk

At the Creative Folk web site they’ve dedicated a page to posters of African American artists and graphic designers — Beyond Black History Month: The African American Studies Toolkit. Here we found a wonderful collection of visual art from such artists as

African American Registry

Finally, our searches took us to the African American Registry and their Theatre & Arts section with lots of links to both visual artists and performing artists.

 

Study of Black History & Art

Harlem Renaissance : Art of Black Americabest choice

This colorful book provides context about the Harlem Renaissance and the proliferation of Black artists during the 20’s and 30’s — it’s filled with samples of the period’s most representative works. Rounding out the art form are essays and poems by noted writers of the time. This is a good introduction to the period and is suitable for all ages.

      Hardcover: 200 pages; published by Harry N Abrams, 1994

best choice Black Art: A Cultural History

This is an excellent reference for artists’ profiles which includes a wide array of artistic achievements in the past century, from blues to reggae, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video installations of Keith Piper. Richard Powell’s study concentrates on the works of art themselves and on how these works, created during a time of major social upheaval and transformation, use black culture as both subject and context. This book places its emphasis on black cultural themes rather than on black racial identity containing more than 190 illustrations.

      Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: Thames & Hudson; 2nd edition, 2002

African American Art and Artists

best choice According to David McClelland, Temple Univ. Lib., Philadelphia

      “This book belongs on the art reference shelf of every major library. A revised and updated edition of the 1978 work Art: African American, it presents short biographies and illustrations of the work of 176 artists of African descent working in the United States from the Revolution to the present. ”

      Author Samella Lewis has brought African American Art and Artists fully up to date in this revised and expanded edition. The book now looks at the works and lives of artists from the eighteenth century to the present, including new work in traditional media as well as in installation art, mixed media, and digital/computer art. Mary Jane Hewitt, an author, curator, and longtime friend of Samella Lewis’s, has written an introduction to the new edition.

Paperback: 340 pages; from the University of California Press, 2003

Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation

best choice In this book, artist and art historian Michael Harris investigates the role of visual representation in the construction of black identities, both real and imagined, in the United States. He focuses particularly on how African American artists have responded to–and even used–stereotypical images in their own works.

      Harris shows how, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, racial stereotypes became the dominant mode through which African Americans were represented. These characterizations of blacks formed a substantial part of the foundation of white identity and social power. They also, Harris argues, seeped into African Americans’ self-images and undermined their self-esteem.

Hardcover: 296 pages; Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, 2003

Black History Month … continues on the next page…

If you have suggestions or additions, please let us know!

Thanks for reading

Fred Showker

Don’t forget … we encourage you to share your discoveries about favorite or famous graphic designers and illustrators with other readers — contact us, or give me a tweet at Twitter/DTG_Magazine