The Power of Representation: Black Families in American Art
From SAAM
February 17, 2021
In this post, we are sharing a selection of images by Black artists that explore the theme “The Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity.” Since 1928, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) has selected an annual theme for Black History Month to bring focus to a particular aspect of Black life in America. ASALH is an organization created in 1915 by Carter G. Woodson—known as the Father of Black History Month.
“A unique commonality exists between young and old,” the artist observes, “because there is always a continuity between the past and the future. It is this commonality which I strive to depict in my work.” Eddie Hudnall Jr.’s photograph, The Guardian, shows a father enfolding his young daughter as they stand along a street reflected in the mirrored lenses of his glasses.
The overlapping forms of hands and arms in Romare Bearden’s Family reinforce the scene of family and generational bonding. The grandfather’s outward gaze connects the viewer with this scene of heritage and hope.
William H. Johnson, Going Out, ca. 1939-1942, gouache, pen and ink and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.1088
A mother and daughter, dressed to the nines, are ready for a night on the town, likely in Harlem. The mother is distinguished by her red beret, bright red lipstick, and high-heeled shoes, and the daughter by the bow in her hair, her white dress, and abstracted flowers.
Lynette Youson, Gullah Fanner Basket, 2002, sweetgrass, bulrush, pine needles, and palmetto fronds, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Martha G. Ware and Steven R. Cole, 2011.47.76
Lynette Youson, Gullah Fanner Basket, 2002, sweetgrass, bulrush, pine needles, and palmetto fronds, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Martha G. Ware and Steven R. Cole, 2011.47.76
Lynette Youson , a fifth-generation basket weaver from a Gullah community in South Carolina, began to sew scraps of grass at her great-grandmother’s side when she was only five, and continues this family tradition today. The Gullah are a group of African Americans living in the Southeast who maintain cultural, linguistic, and artistic traditions from West African ancestors.
Colonel Frank is an invented persona based on the artist’s father, who, she said, brought the world to her shy and introspective mother. The colonel also reflects Stout’s own search for a personal history.
In Familia del Mar, the gazes – of the father concentrating on straightening his nets, the mother who watches him work, and the baby facing the photographer – illuminate relationships within the family.
Artists in their own words
When artists visit SAAM, we always take a moment to ask for their perspective and add to our online video library of artist voices. Mark Bradford discusses his Amendment 8, and how abstraction and identity intersect in his practice. Mickalene Thomas addresses the importance of representation in art, especially at a national museum.
Mark Bradford
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0.00%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
1x
Chapters
descriptions off, selected
captions off, selected
This is a modal window.
Artist Mark Bradford discusses his use of materials, his interest in abstraction, and his thoughts on having Amendment #8 in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
MARK BRADFORD: The materials that I use and have really always used have always been paper. The tools of civilization, how we build and destroy ourself, are the materials that I'm really interested in, and paper is one of the main ways in which information is displayed. Paper in itself is simply a bunch of fragments held together by a binder. I always saw it as pigment dried in a binder and cut into eight and a half by eleven blocks. Just in my head I thought, "Oh, well, you just have to wet it so that it can move like paint."
What constitutes a painting, and who are the gatekeepers of that?
I'm sure that me being a painter was a very political gesture for me. If you're Black and from South Central, you have a lot of identity stuff that you could just fall right into. I just thought I was going to do abstract work, but it was going to talk about race, class, culture, and all these things, but I was going to do it from an abstraction place, which gave me freedom. Then I was going to look outside. I wasn't going to do this kind of hermetic, interior, close the world off, which is historically what we understand abstraction as being. I was going to have a relationship with the world and with politics because I was interested in those things.
I was really starting to get very interested in the foundations of our country. The Amendments, or the Bill of Rights, are still what we go to. Interesting enough, it is on paper. I mean, it is one of our historical documents, one of our most important documents are on paper. We put paper in the photocopier, so it's both precious and not precious at all. It's both protected by security guards and shredded.
So "Amendment #8" is actually part of the "Bill of Rights" series. There are certain fragments that cling to the edges of the composition. Certain words flow in and out, they're legible and not legible, they hint, but in some ways that's how we really do understand the dense documents. We will never fully understand. They're so dense, but we pull, and we glimmer, and we dive, and we project onto these documents. At the time of the Constitution, certain people weren't even human, women didn't have rights, so we moved them forward as the country moves forward. We amend what we excluded in a way.
What better place than the Smithsonian to have an Amendment painting? It just fits; it makes sense. If you look at what's going on in the media at the moment with Black male bodies and me being a Black male and doing an Amendment painting and sitting in the Smithsonian—that's just super layered.
“I just thought “I was going to do abstract work,” but it was going to talk about race, class, culture, and all these things, but I was going to do it from an abstraction place, which gave me freedom. And then I was going to look outside. I wasn’t going to do this kind of hermetic, interior, clothes the world off, which is historically what we understand abstraction as being. I was going to have a relationship with the world, and with politics.”
Mickalene Thomas
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0.00%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
1x
Chapters
descriptions off, selected
captions off, selected
This is a modal window.
Artist Mickalene Thomas discusses her use of craft materials, her artistic influences, and the importance of seeing oneself represented in museums. Read a web comic from Drawn to Art that illustrates the artist's words.
MICKALENE THOMAS: Hi, I'm Mickalene Thomas. I'm here at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
I guess my appeal to craft materials is also another historical reference to women making art. When I was in undergrad, I couldn't always afford oil paint. Because I was in a school and still had to make work, I had to figure out ways in which to still make my art and not limit myself to “I can't make my art, because I don't have oil paint or acrylic paint.” So I gravitated toward non-traditional materials that were considered maybe, for some, a low art, but also to others a high art, if you look at outsider artists, right? I began going to Michaels craft stores, because I could afford felt, and I could afford yarn, and I could afford these little bags of rhinestones or glitter. I could get an abundance of those versus a tube of paint.
I began to acquire these materials and find meanings and ways to use them in my own work as a way of identifying myself but also making an image. That's something that I also push forward with some of my students is not to limit yourself with what you can't do, but just try to think of what you can do and use those materials that are within your own environment to make something.
When I was living in Portland, Oregon I would go to this bookstore called Powell's Books. Within the stacks of their books, I would just go up and down the aisle pulling out books on African-American artists. I remember looking at a William H. Johnson monograph and thinking at that time, "Oh, this is catalogue raisonné" and thinking how his sensibility of his line, representation of his journeys, and the people in his environment, and depicting his world, and depicting African-American lifestyles was a direct representation of who I was. It's really important for me, as an artist, to have a representation of myself so that youth could see themselves in these particular environments like museums. When they see my work, with all the art history, whether it's from William H. Johnson, to someone like David Hockney or Matisse, that when they're standing here that they see themselves.
“I remember looking at a William H. Johnson monograph and thinking at the time, “Oh, this is catalogue raisonne,” and thinking how his sensibility of his line, representation of his journeys and the people in his environment, and depicting his world, and depicting African American’s lifestyles, was a direct representation of who I was. It’s really important to me as an artist, to have a representation of myself, so that youth could see themselves in these particular environments like museums.”
Explore more highlights from the collection including artworks spanning three centuries of creative expression in various media, including painting, sculpture, textiles, and photography.
Artists have been capturing all the different moods of light for millennia. American artists such as members of the Hudson River School, or the American impressionists, managed to capture light as a way of defining the landscape.