In this hyper-realistic world, it's sometimes reassuring to see great 2-d, flattened work, for instance the work of Aaron Douglas, portrait and silhouette master of the Harlem Renaissance. Luckily The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas (Lawrence) hasn't forgotten the early 20th century artist, who as it happens hails from down the road in Topeka, Kansas. Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist is scheduled to open at the Spencer in September and will constitute the first major touring retrospective of Douglas's work.
For those of us not blessed enough to grow up anywhere near the Schomburg Center or Fisk University where Douglas's massive murals adorn the walls, it's a rare opportunity to peep the master of the geometric iconographic style of the man once referred to as the Father of Modern African American art. Aaron Douglas may be the only individual to have his work featured in both The Crisis, the NAACP's official magazine (back when that meant something), and Vanity Fair. So he was on the grind in Harlem (back when that meant something) while Henry O. Tanner, our beloved Banjo lesson artist was off in the cuts in Europe refusing the call to form a black art school for emerging African American artists.
The pinnacle of the talented tenth, Douglas's work needs to be viewed by today's artists, if for nothing else than to spy where some say African American modernism began.
Aaron Douglas opens at the Spencer on September 8 and runs through December 2.
We've noted that the collage form--nothing new in the history of black visual culture--has in the past several years staged a resurgence on the international scene. And we see artists invigorating collage with meaning, using it the way old school hip-hop djs practiced their craft; by sampling those images they know will have emotional resonance, and having, oh say, Amiri Baraka do the captions.
That would be collage artist Theodore Harris. One thing Harris is able to do very well is put into image what so many feel about the current political state of affairs. From images of Capitol Hill turned upside down, to collaged photos of an ak-47 pointed at Muhammad Ali, the Philadelphia-based artist doesn't hold a damn thing back. The result is that he is not type of artist that will be embraced by everyone, even those left-leaning individuals who swear by The Daily Show. There is no notion of objectivity in his work, it's all from a skew-embraced perspective, an anti-propaganda rhetoric that is both powerful and prophetic. Those of you in Atlanta have a chance to check this man's work out at Hammonds House Museum through September 9. For the rest of you, keep the eyes peeled in your neck of the woods.
You know what would be dope? If every black tattoo artist, graphic designer, and tagger in the greater D.C. area, hit up the Inscribing Meaning exhibit at National Museum of African Art. Whether it's the graffiti signatures of Durant Sihlali, the anonymous body art of Iké Udé, or John Muafangejo's linocut titled "Judas Iscariot Betrayed our Lord Jesus for R3.00m," there's something to be inspired by.
And if that pan-africanist attention towards script and symbol could help form a unified symbology in the greater D.C. area black arts scene, who knows what code and design could come? Maybe we'd start seeing more inverted ankh tattoos, graffiti that includes kemetic lettering, book designs that favor scrolls over tomes. Even those not actively engaged in symbol making will find this exhibit interesting as it demands an answer to the question "What is a script?" We find that not only are we enveloped by meaning laden symbol, but that Africa is a home for a variety of sacred and profane scripts. While it's easy to lay these concerns at the feet of academia and dismiss them, when the notion of symbol is addressed in cloth design, jewelry, and books, it becomes an issue of the everyday. Then again it could just be we've been reading too much Samuel Delany.
A show of Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold, and Fatima Tuggar would be a brilliant accomplishment on its own. Each woman articulates a relationship to blackness and the feminine that is unique and challenging. All three women, plus forty-two other international women artists who have produced feminist art will be on display at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (Bilbao, Spain) in an exhibit titled Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The show focuses on the struggle between the imposed sexuality placed on women (Kiss Kiss) and the violence that such impositions mandate (Bang Bang). Looks to us like the feminist trend (most notably jumpstarted by The Brooklyn Museum's Global Feminisms) is speeding up internationally.
For those not in the know, Carrie Mae Weems makes magic with photos by rephrasing dominant iconography of culture into a matrix that allows for a black cultural aesthetic. Having come to the craft as an adult, Weems's subjects are as developed as her craft. Her Kitchen Table Series allows the viewer to question gender roles in a way no amount of text truly can.
Faith Ringgold is an artist who makes a mockery of the divide between high art and craft. While it's taken the quilts of Gee's Bend to get many to see quilt making as art, Faith Ringgold's painted story quilts have been carrying that message to all who've seen them for years. An accomplished children's book author and illustrator, Ringgold utilizes the traditionally female medium of quilting to address what others barely attempt to on canvas.
Fatima Tuggar utilizes digital imagery to challenge conventional notions of the role of women and Africans. Her images often have a sarcastic tone about them calling out the assumptions one makes about what they're supposed to be seeing. She's not going to give you that. Instead, she'll challenge your perceptions and conceptions.
Yeah, like I said before, if it was just them the show would be hot. But there are forty-two other international artists. Plus it's in Spain. We say get gone.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang closes September 9.
About this time last year, we gathered your opinions and ideas so we could craft an online publication best suited to your needs. It's that time of year again!
Please take a moment to fill out our short readers' survey (seriously, it's short) so we can learn a little more about who you are, what you like, and what you want more of. We take these things very seriously and want to know who you are.
As added incentive we'll draw one survey from all completely-filled-in surveys and award a $50 gift certificate to Powell's Books. Choose from the famed store's unparalleled collection of new books, rare books, DVDs, and other gift merchandise.
Survey ends Friday, August 3!
Bracketed by textured walls that in many ways resemble Keba Konte's work, a collection of faded, tattered and dyed ironing boards, car seats, and found luggage are assembled to resemble the outline of a boat. The piece, titled "Noah's ark: Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans," is the latest attempt by photographer/mixed media artist/waffle maker Keba Konte to keep the memory and reality of post Katrina New Orleans alive in the minds of all who witness his work. It would seem that the materials were pulled from some ninth ward home, still massacred and broken from nature and governmental ineptitude. In actuality, these materials are part of Konte's artistic praxis; collecting materials is part of his DNA.
"The thing is these [ironing boards, chairs, suitcases, etc.] have been sitting in my basement really, unused and it wasn't until I took the trip to new Orleans, post Katrina, I was there, part of a documentary crew… and we did a lot of interviews, a lot of first time testimonies, survival stories mostly. Hearing stories of people surviving on the remnants of their homes, refrigerators, mattresses, cushions, luggage, trunks. When I came back from that experience, I just looked at my materials in a whole other way. So when I was laying these materials out, I decided on the form; it was all about structure before it was about images. Then I realized, wow that just took the shape of a boat, and it just really came through. So I'll just call it Noah's ark."
Konte's skill is in making the found look like the massaged. Noah's Ark is no random assemblage but rather an intentionally rough eye drawing montage created by a gourmand of artistry. While no single piece of the work is left unadorned, it's not always clear that one person is responsible for each accouterment. One piece of luggage has a Lion of Judah painted in light blue acrylics, another ironing board has an elaborate dark blue beaded procession throughout it. But the variety of skill makes one wonder how one person could be responsible for all of it. That is until you meet Mr. Konte.
"I mean if you're using a piece of lumber you can't just sand it down and strip it and all that…You're missing part of the blessing that comes along with it. [Pointing to a piece of his work that looks like a small chair] Like "Seat 239." The wearing down of the print, the tatters on the bottoms of the slip covers of the ironing boards, each one is treated differently, a different technique, but I still wanted them to have a unified shape. So there's acrylic paint, oil paint, photo transfers, beads in blue, straight up ink, torch and screwdriver burnt thing material; it's an assemblage. My hopes were that it would still hold together, as one photograph, one band, one music. Most of the images are pre-Katrina. Even though I was there after and got lots of images of the devastation in the Ninth Ward--water lines ten feet high, swallowed up and spit out cars. It was just too much. We already knew that. We were inundated with those images; I didn't need to bring that. What I wanted was to bring New Orleans as we last wanted to see her. And really, on a really glorious day. Most of these images were from the Funeral of Big Chief Tootie Montana. Some say he was the funeral for New Orleans itself. That was the last great second line jazz funeral, commemorating one of the greatest culture men in New Orleans."
Hipped to Big Tootie's death by Bay Area artistic legend and social activist Marcel Diallo, Konte took his camera and his heart down to the Big Easy both before and after Katrina. But two years later, Konte is still doing the work of incorporating one of the most devastating events in recent memory into his art.
"I was on the phone this morning with Chuck Perkins. He's the loud mouth MC and poet extraordinaire from New Orleans and he'll be doing a rare Bay Area appearance at the Dark Room and at the Guerilla on Sunday. And at the Darkroom in San Francisco I'll be doing a slide show with his poetry. And then I'll show some pre- and post-Katrina images there. And you know, it just keeps coming back and as that story goes on I'm probably due for another visit just to see what has and has not been done."
His visit will have to wait until after August 12th as he'll be in a big show along with legendary artist Emory Douglas of the Black Panther Party. Konte has "re-mastered" some of Douglas's old political drawings into re-colored limited edition posters for a new generation. Konte's respect and admiration for Mr. Douglas is apparent when he speaks of the elder's talent and temperament.
"A lot of the images he made for the Black Panther paper were pen and ink. But his style looked very block cut or silk screened or separated out or something. But it's just pen and ink and his style that just represented on the paper. Sometimes it was two, maybe three colors. I always thought they'd lend themselves really well to the silkscreen process... He's definitely an under-celebrated artist. I mean it took forty years to make a book. But it's a beautiful book and I love to see him shine. He's just such a healthy and beautiful and strong cat. He's a great example. A lot of cats who came out of that era, if they came out of that era, came out with some serious scars, mental and physical. But he just seems to be shining, so I definitely want to honor him."
Keba Konte's 88 Pieces of Me will be shown next at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
Summer in New York City is when the sensory rages and reigns, and BAM serves samples of punk, progress, and sci-fi at the third annual Afro-Punk Festival. Through July 7, the festival showcases art, film, music and discussions opening with Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and filmmakers whose work binds them together as explorers in facets of blackness.
Bobby Seale opened the festival on Thursday, June 28 with ponderings of the movement: what it was, what it is and where it's going, accompanied by May Day Parade and Bobby Seale (1969), two historic shorts documenting the 1968 "Free Huey" rally in Oakland and Bobby Seale interview conducted during his imprisonment.
The festivities are set to the backdrop of "Selections from the Black Panther" an exhibit in partnership with the Aperture Foundation that examines the Party through the historic lenses of Party photographer Stephen James through images from his book, The Black Panthers (Aperture, 2006). To counter the Movement's pictorial history, Pratt students from the undergraduate Communications Design Program examine the cultural and iconoclastic effects of the Panthers, Afro-punk scene, and revolutionary art in "Pratt Art Exhibition: Panthers, Punk, and Revolutionary Art." Both exhibits are housed in the Afro-Punk Festival Art Lounge in the BAM Lobby and Natman Lounge.
Featuring over a dozen filmmakers, documentaries, films, and shorts, the Festival's exploratory series exceeds themes of red, black, and green jumpsuit-nationalism and black rock, and pours into defining identity and how artists translate these concepts in their bodies of work. In Still a Brother (1968), Williams Greaves, a fundamental documentarian in the development of black cinema, challenges the notions of the black middle-class, while Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1968) feeds like an improvisational frenzy wrought with candid dialogue. And with Afro-Punk exuding such diversity and introspection, we are wondering where Raymond Gayle's Electric Purgatory--the Fate of the Black Rocker (2005) is located in the program. Just purgatory, pondering.
The festival even boasts its own Afro-punk soundtrack, featuring free sweaty-sounding rockers and rockettes at the BAMcafe, the Brooklyn Museum, BK's Southpaw and an Afro-punk block party with all the acoustic-ments.
The Afro-Punk Festival is June 28–July 7 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
July 2nd and 3rd, 2007 marks the eighth annual Black Consumer Research and Advertising Summit, the only industry conference devoted exclusively to African-American marketing, media and consumer research, presented by Target Market News. The conference will be held at the Wyndham Hotel, in Target Market News's second rated city of the top five black cities: Chicago. The summit will close out with the second annual "Marketing to African-Americans with Excellence (MAAX)" awards ceremony. The awards ceremony annually recognizes the contributions, innovations, and exceptional performance of African-American marketing, advertising, media, and consumer research professionals. Target Market News seeks to keep the African-American community informed on the latest developments in marketing, research, and media.
The Summit will feature workshops and speaking forums on the buying power of Black America, the Urban Radio market, Black consumers and the 2010 census, marketing and street cred in the Post-Imus era, and much more, and will be followed by the second annual MAAX Awards ceremony. The 2007 honorees are: Advertising executive of the year, Eugene Morris (Chairman and CEO of E. Morris Communications); Media executives of the year, Catherine L. Hughes (Chairperson and Founder of Radio One) and Alfred C. Liggins III (CEO and President of Radio One); Marketing executive of the year, Gwen Kelly –(Senior marketing manager of African-American Initiatives for Wal-Mart); Research executive of the year, Pepper Miller (President of Hunter-Miller Group); Public Relations executive of the year, Michelle Flowers (President and CEO of Flowers Communication Group); and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Carol H. Williams (CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Carol H. Williams Advertising). The honorees, chosen on the basis of the longevity of their careers, their advocacy of African-American marketing, and the professional accomplishments that distinguish them within the industry, were selected by the editors, writers, and contributors of Target Market News.
The Summit, which typically reaches sold-out capacity, will be held in downtown. A variety of guest speakers are expected. Target Market News President and Publisher Ken Smikle stated, "We are especially honored to give well-deserved recognition to these professionals for being champions for the African-American consumer market.
De La Soul and the Schoolhouse Rock crew knew exactly what they were talking about; three is indeed the magic number, but you don't have to take Code Z's word for it. Just ask Kenny Leon and the good people of the True Colors Theatre Company. In conjunction with the summer-long cultural juggernaut that is the National Black Arts Festival (Atlanta, USA), True Colors is slated to present three productions: Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (July 11- 28), Emergence-SEE! (July 26-29), and "Week 37" of the cycle 365 Days/365 Plays (July 25-27). Leon, a national player, and fresh off his stint as director of August Wilson's Radio Golf, is holding the reigns of all three works. The brain-children of such playwrights as Georgia native Lonne Elder III, Daniel Beaty, and Suzan-Lori Parks, this selection of works does damage to the notion that cross-generational dialogue doesn't exist, and that critical thinking is out of vogue in popular culture.
Parks, a highly regarded triple-threat (MacArthur Foundation "Genius" being #1 on the list), was supposedly urged to write plays by the great James Baldwin. That advice led her eventually to write the screenplay for Spike Lee's Girl 6 (hey, we love Spike, really). And while that isn't a crime punishable by death, it's good that she was redeemed with later works such as Getting Mother's Body: A Novel, and Topdog/Underdog.
All in all, it appears that TCTC is aiming to cook up some hot (intellectual) fun for the summertime. Each production tackles the issue of freedom struggles, which is presented through meditations on upward mobility, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and war. And boasting such featured players as Glynn Turman (Cooley High anyone?) and Daniel Beaty (who earned Ruby Dee's stamp of approval), True Colors all but ensures that those in attendance will get caught up.
