African American Artists Tackle Issues of Race, Gender, and the Economy

Purple Delight, a mixed media art made from buttons, beads, and an antique frame by Amalia Amaki, is one of the works by African American artists on display at the Georgia Museum of Art.

ART REVIEW: African American artists have for decades used their work to protest injustice. A new exhibition highlights the works of African American artists who use their artworks to address issues of race, gender, and the economy.

BY KAZEEM ADELEKE

De Good Book Says (Church Scene), an oil on canvas by Wilmer Jennings, is one of the works by African American artists on display at the Georgia Museum of Art — Wilmer Jennings, De Good Book Says (Church Scene), 1935. Oil on canvas 30 1/4 x 24 inches. Image: Georgia Museum of Art

ATHENS, GEORGIA -A new exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia presents an opportunity to appreciate the works of African American artists. Titled Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection, the show expands scholarship on artists of color who, until recent years, have been overlooked.

Expanding Tradition includes exceptional works of art by contemporary African American artists like Willie Cole, Whitfield Lovell, Kevin Cole, and Kara Walker. Historical artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Charles Sebree, Beauford Delaney, and Benny Andrews are also in this show. Additionally, the exhibition includes rare Depression-era works by Norman Lewis, Charles White, Dox Thrash, and Rose Piper.

African American Artists in Focus

The almost 60 works on display range from the late 19th century to the contemporary era. The collection provides a comprehensive look at African American art history with a particular focus on race, gender, class, politics, and the economy.

Purple Delight, 2005 by Amalia Amaki, is one of the outstanding works on display. The mixed-media work was made from white, silver, and gold buttons, and beads. In a corner of the work is an antique frame with the portrait of a beautiful African American woman. Her head is raised high, showing off her exquisite makeup and magnificent beauty. Her gaze seems to be saying, “Look at me. I am beautiful.”

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Amalia Amaki’s Purple Delight reflects her determination to capture the lives of African American women of the Diaspora through her art. She has an M.A. degree in modern European and American art and a Ph.D. in twentieth-century American art and culture from Emory University. In her work, Amaki combines everyday materials, such as photographs, quilts, buttons, boxes, and other household items to interrogate the depiction of African American heroines and heroes in mainstream media. Purple Delight affirms her quest to re/present famous African Americans in a better light.

Willie Cole’s Untitled (Chicken), 1995, shows the innovation that has become synonymous with this sculptor, painter, and conceptual visual artist. The sculpture was created from women’s shoes and galvanized wire. This is an important example of Cole’s work. It shows how the artist combines everyday objects to create powerful sculptures and make statements about everyday life. The sculpture has the shape of a chicken.

Powerful Works of Art

In addition to achieving an interesting aesthetic, Untitled (Chicken) seems to address the issue of consumerism. Perhaps, a fundamental question deducible from the sculpture is “Why would anyone need so many shoes?” But importantly, the piece shows how Cole continues to borrow from different artistic traditions, like Dada’s readymade, surrealism, and pop art, to articulate innovative artistic thoughts. Cole believes that anything can become art: hair dryers, lawn jockeys, high-heeled shoes, ironing boards, and irons.

Wilmer Jennings De Good Book Says is an important painting with historical significance. It was painted in 1935, a year when African Americans were fighting for equality and recognition. This was when Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP successfully argued the landmark case in Murray v. Pearson. It was agreed that Maryland should open admissions to the segregated University of Maryland School of Law based on equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

But even as African Americans were fighting segregation, the lynching of black people continued across the country throughout this period. The Great Depression made matters even worse. Black unemployment was high, creating an opportunity for deeper segregation and the further maltreatment of African Americans. Many African Americans, especially those in the rural South, joined the Great Migration to the urban North, in search of greener pastures.

Art, God, and Man

Jennings’ De Good Book Says is a reminder of that turbulent historical period in African American history. For many African Americans, the church was a place of solitude and refuge. In De Good Book Says, Jennings takes viewers into the church, where African Americans were able to freely express themselves. The painting depicts a church scene, with a pastor preaching to a congregation of men and women. There is singing, chanting, and a vivid expression of spirituality. It is as if the congregation is in spiritual ecstasy.

Rays of light burst through the stained glass window, illuminating the congregation in a multi-colored glow. A sense of expectation and hope also pervades the painting. While some people raise their hands in the air, others bow their heads in supplication. The dramatic portrayal and historicity make De Good Book Says an important piece by an artist famous for printmaking.

Expanding Tradition is the inaugural exhibition for Shawnya Harris, the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art. For this exhibition, she selected from the 100 works of art by African American artists donated by the Thompsons to the Georgia Museum of Art in 2012. The donation came on the heels of a traveling exhibition drawn from their collection titled Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art. Expanding Tradition is a follow-up to that exhibition.

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Expanding Tradition and Tradition Redefined are important exhibitions that have helped advance scholarship on works by African American artists. Above all, they show the commitment of Larry and Brenda Thompson to illuminating the contributions of African American artists to the development of art in the United States. With an extensive private collection of works, there is great hope that important African American artists who have been ignored for decades will finally gain their well-deserved recognition.