The Black Arts Movement was a Black nationalism movement that focused on music, literature, drama, and the visual arts made up of Black artists and intellectuals.
Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. The Black Arts, wrote poet Larry Neal, was “the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.”
As with that burgeoning political movement, the Black Arts Movement emphasized self-determination for Black people, a separate cultural existence for Black people on their own terms, and the beauty and goodness of being Black.
The Black Arts Movement began-symbolically, at least-the day after Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. The poet LeRoi Jones (soon to rename himself Amiri Baraka) announced he would leave his integrated life on New York City’s Lower East Side for Harlem.
In 1965, the activist, poet, and writer Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) launched the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem, New York. The Black Arts Movement started in 1965 when poet Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones] established the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem, New York, as a place for artistic expression. The school centered Black culture and liberation in artmaking. The opening of this Theatre was a key moment in launching the BAM, as it was a shared space for artists to create a Black aesthetic that was in direct conversation with liberatory politics.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
Black Arts poets embodied these ideas in a defiantly Black poetic language that drew on Black musical forms, especially jazz; Black vernacular speech; African folklore; and radical experimentation with sound, spelling, and grammar.
It not only highlighted the work of Black artists but sought to define a universal experience of Blackness that expressed empowerment, pride, and liberation.
The Black Arts Movement celebrated Afrocentrism by exploring and blending images from the past, present, and future into visual imagery that would inform a modern-day lexicon using contemporary modes such as poster and commercial art, lettering, and patterning.
Key Figures and Their Contributions
Artists associated with this movement include Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, James Baldwin, Gil Scott-Heron, and Thelonious Monk. Other key figures of the BAM include Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, and James Baldwin. Their poems, plays, and essays were important for developing the Black radical tradition.
Importantly, these artists often created in community, which encouraged a sharing of ideas and resources. It was common for literary and visual artists to work alongside dancers, like Alvin Ailey, and musicians, like Thelonious Sphere Monk. This interdisciplinary, collective energy was important to their immediate political impact, and their legacy.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet and teacher and is known as the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her work Annie Allen (1950). Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Six weeks after her birth, the Brooks family moved to Chicago. Growing up in Chicago and attending majority white, then Black, and then integrated schools gave Brooks a varied perspective on racial dynamics in America which would later come to influence her future work.
In the 1940s Brooks became heavily involved in attending poetry workshops in Chicago, in particular workshops organized by Inez Cunningham Stark. She published several works of poetry including A Street in Bronzeville (1945), and In the Mecca (1968) which both earned critical acclaim. One of her better known poems “We Real Cool” was published in her third book of poetry, The Bean Eaters (1960), and is widely studied in literature classes and re-printed in literature textbooks.
Nikki Giovanni is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Giovanni was born as Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. She attended Fisk University receiving a B.A. in History and later went on to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Giovanni’s work covers topics ranging from race and social issues explored through poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays.
She was a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and her work was heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. Her poetry during this period in Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, reflected a strong African American perspective and because of this she was hailed as the "Poet of the Black Revolution." Over the years Giovanni would shift her focus to children’s literature, human relationships, women writers, and hip hop.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
The Black Arts Movement, sometimes referred to as the Black Aesthetics Movement, was influential in its ability to put together social, cultural, and political elements of the Black experience and established a cultural presence in America on a mainstream level.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
By incorporating visual motifs representative of the African Diaspora, as well as themes of revolutionary politics supporting Black Nationalism, the Black Arts Movement overtly distanced itself from white Eurocentric forms of art.
The Black Arts Movement arose in tandem with Identity Art and Identity Politics, a genre in which artists focused on presenting the faces and experiences of their marginalized populations which also included women and the LGBT community.
Strong aesthetics and powerful statements representing the Black racial identity emerged during this time that would come to be synonymous with the Black community such as Black Power, "cool-ade" colors and militant chic.
The Black Arts Movement saw the rise of collectives which would, bond together and provide a solidified front for Black artists to showcase their experiences as a separate and cohesive cultural identity within the nation.
The Black Arts Movement spurred the rise of many educational and advocacy-related initiatives that would integrate into overall American culture providing the opportunity for immersion into the communal psyche of the country.
Artworks and Artists of Black Arts Movement
The Wall of Respect was a twenty-by-sixty-foot mural painted on the facade of a two-story building at the corner of East 43rd Street and South Langley Avenue in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood. The piece was an homage to Black historical and contemporary figures involved in politics, education, athletics, and the arts.
Fifty unique portraits were represented of individuals who lived and worked in line with the Black Power and Black Nationalist ideologies. This included Nat Turner, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and Harriet Tubman.
Mural c.1965-66Sir WattsArtist: Noah Purifoy Sir Watts depicts an abstracted human-like torso clad in armor. The piece is an homage to the casualties of dissent between race, informed by a historical event the artist, Noah Purifoy, experienced.
Beginning on August 11, 1965, racial tensions in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts reached a violent climax, leading to a six-day riot that caused thirty-four deaths and more than forty-million dollars in property damage. In the aftermath, they collected materials from within the rubble and piles of debris. They then fashioned remnants from the devastation into a group of sculptures.
Mixed-media assemblage 1968Black UnityArtist: Elizabeth Catlett Black Unity is a double-sided wooden sculpture merging symbols and representations of Black identity. One side depicts two human faces, while the other is shaped like a fist.
The color of the wood, a dark cedar, alludes to dark skin. The profound message in Cartlett's sculpture is due to its synthesizing of cultural themes and social ideologies into nearly universally recognized symbols. The simplified representations in Black Unity offer an effective contextualization of Black power and serve as an object-based gesture of unity and protest.
Fabric 1970Jihad NationArtist: Nelson Stevens Jihad Nation features portraits of a Black man and woman sporting afro hairstyles with contemplative upward gazes. The faces are painted on top of a geometric background with a warm palette alluding to familiar color combinations of Pan-Africanism.
Signs and symbols such as the ankh, pyramid, and modern-day apartment complex signify the act of Black nation building, which is a common theme throughout Stevens' art. Stevens was a key member of AfriCOBRA, whose paintings are prime examples of the artist collective's unique aesthetic.
Oil, acrylic, and collage on linen - Portland Museum of Art 1970Homage to Malcolm XArtist: Jack Whitten Homage to Malcolm X is a monochromatic oil painting on a triangular shaped canvas. The color, shape, and gestural application of paint signify the essence of Malcolm X's powerful leadership and influence.
While many examples of visual art from the Black Arts Movement can be described as figurative art with recognizable and representational elements, Jack Whitten utilized abstraction and non-representational modes of painting to make similar statements of Black empowerment.
Oil on canvas 1971RevolutionaryArtist: Wadsworth Jarrell Revolutionary is a portrait of Black activist and educator Angela Davis in what artist Wadsworth Jarrell considered to be "an attempt to capture the majestic charm,...
The Negritude movement, which signaled the awakening of a pan-African consciousness among black French intellectuals, has been understood almost exclusively in terms of the contributions of its male founders: Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and Leon G. Damas.
This masculine genealogy has completely overshadowed the central role played by French-speaking black women in its creation and evolution. In Negritude Women, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting offers a long-overdue corrective, revealing the contributions made by four women -- Suzanne Lacascade, Jane and Paulette Nardal, and Suzanne Roussy-Cesaire -- who were not merely integral to the success of the movement, but often in its vanguard.
The Pan-African Art Movement has been a powerful force in uniting African cultures and showcasing the continent’s diverse creativity. It is a movement that encompasses various artistic styles and expressions, reflecting the rich cultural heritage of Africa.
The Pan-African Art Movement emerged as a response to the colonial and post-colonial experiences of African people. This art movement seeks to unite African cultures and promote a sense of shared identity, history, and creative expression.
The Pan-African Art Movement can be traced back to the early 20th century, when African artists started responding to the oppressive forces of colonialism. During this time, the Negritude movement emerged, led by intellectuals and artists such as Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas.
From the 1980s onwards, the Pan-African Art Movement has gained global recognition and has expanded its reach. International exhibitions and collaborations have helped promote African artists and their works.
The Mbari Artists and Writers Club, founded in Nigeria in the 1960s, played a crucial role in the development of the Pan-African Art Movement. This collective of artists, writers, and intellectuals sought to promote African art and culture and create a platform for artistic expression.
The Dakar School, established in Senegal in the 1960s, has been a significant force in the Pan-African Art Movement. This art institution nurtured and promoted the talents of African artists and contributed to the development of contemporary African art.
How Did The Harlem Renaissance Influence The Black Arts Movement? - Tales And Texts
The Pan-African Art Movement has played a crucial role in showcasing Africa’s diverse creativity to the world. By challenging stereotypes and promoting African artists in the global art scene, the movement has helped to redefine the perception of African art.
The visual arts from 1919 to 1938 included in the book suggest the extraordinary vibrancy of the time when Harlem was a metaphor for modernity. From the beginnings of Harlemania to the beginnings of the Great Depression, this authoritative resource presents the people, places and times that defined an era and documents the launch of cultural development among African Americans in 1920s Harlem.
Black Arts Movement (BAM) activists sought a usable past not simply in the idea of a general Black artistic tradition but more specifically in antecedent African American cultural movements. By far the most important was the Harlem, or New Negro, Renaissance of the 1920s. Like BAM, the Renaissance was a multidisciplinary and multi-genre arts movement that gave Black artists a national and even international status.
Also important to BAM activists as both antecedents to their movement and examples of what Harold Cruse would make famous as "the crisis of the Negro intellectual" were the radical political and cultural circles of the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, especially those associated with the Communist Party.
These circles provided audiences and venues for African American artists, some of whom, like Sterling Brown, Margaret Burroughs, Langston Hughes, John O. Killens, Jacob Lawrence, and Margaret Walker, provided critical support and mentoring for the nascent BAM.
BAM activists and Black Power militants as well were keenly aware of the political and cultural developments in the Third World, especially the debates between the adherents of Leopold Senghor’s Negritude and revolutionary nationalist Africanism of such independence leaders as Guinea's Sekou Toure and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah.
In general, BAM writers and artists sided with the revolutionary activism of Toure and Nkrumah against what they saw as the depoliticized culturalism of Senghor and Negritude. They were also inspired by the non-aligned movements of newly independent African and Asian nations and from the often-violent independence struggles against colonialism and neocolonialism.
An immediate antecedent to BAM was the bohemian counterculture of the 1950s and early 1960s. Although such literary groups as the Beats, the New York School, and the Black Mountain School are often still characterized as "white,” they were actually among the most interracial intellectual circles in the United States, especially in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Such African American writers as Amiri Baraka, Bob Kaufman, Ed Bullins, Ted Joan, A. B. Spellman, and the seminal Umbra Poets Workshop were intimately tied to the literary counterculture. In fact, Baraka as writer, editor, and publisher was a key figure in creating the idea of a "New American Poetry" in the 1950s and 1960s.
BAM cannot be comprehended outside the context of the rise of Black nationalism in the 1960s. Of course, Black nationalism has a long history in the United States reaching back to the eighteenth century.
However, with the mass circulation of the ideas of Malcolm X, first within and then outside the Nation of Islam, and the explosion of the uprisings of the 1960s, especially after the Watts Rebellion of 1965, nationalism exerted a new influence on Black artists and on the African American community in general to an extent unseen since the heyday of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1920s.
Poet Larry Neal, who coined the term Black Arts Movement, described it as “a cultural revolution in art and ideas.” This movement included poets, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and painters.
