Marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Brooklyn Museum offers a sharply focused look at painting, sculpture, graphics, and photography from the counterculture decade defined by social protest and racial conflict
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Moving and inquisitive. The show is titled after a Benny Andrews painting ( Witness , 1968) of a brown-skinned woman staring into the distance with a knowing gaze. The curators emphasize the act of looking (a detail of the woman's eyes adorns the exhibition catalog); however, more than just image-based modes of witnessing are on offer.
Art in America
Co-curators Teresa A. Carbone and Kellie Jones present four convincing essays that address aspects ranging from representational strategies of artists, the use of photography beyond simple reportage, the impact of this work on the art history canon, and the globally situated struggle for emancipation. Joness deeply complex analysis cites numerous lushly illustrated works; her material, social, and political examination discusses the myriad ways African American artists, often segregated from the art world, articulated racial portraits of blackness as a means of accessing political authority. A variety of media are considered, including gestural and geometric abstraction, assemblage, minimalism, and pop imagery. This richly illustrated catalog will appeal to art and cultural historians, students, and those with an interest in the representative and political power of art created during the civil rights era.
This thoughtful catalog of brilliantly wide-ranging aesthetics explores the complex relations between visual art and the fight for racial justice. The text moves away from rote historical narratives, instead opting to focus on the role of the photographer in shaping action and emergent discourses, of the influence of Ghana and Cuba on politics and aesthetics, and of the tensions of politics in Pop art. These essays help guide what might otherwise be an overwhelming diversity of images, including a David Hammons body print, an iconic poster by Emory Douglas, Betye Saar assemblages, and Norman Rockwell paintings, among many others. The images themselves, brought into conversation with one another, are a valuable and resonant resource, allowing not only a deeper understanding of art from the 1960s, but of the ongoing historical reality of race in the United States. As Cynthia A. Young points out in one essay, the Civil Rights Movement was not monolithic: In fact, it encompassed a series of movements . . . with sometimes similar and often vastly different strategies, goals, and outcomes. In guiding us to better understand this reality, this book is exciting and successful.
Published in conjunction with the Brooklyn Museums knockout exhibition of the same name, this book explores the art born out of the Civil Rights era through images, essays, and artist statements. Artist Jack Whitten, whose haunting collage Birmingham appears in the show, reflects on the power of images and quotes from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, who described the sense of always looking at ones self through the eyes of others. Here, we see artists define their own visual experiences in every medium, from Romare Beardens striking collages, to David Hammonss mixed-media sculptures, to Charles Whites realist charcoal drawings. ARTNews