Melanie Herzog

Is it possible to have, or should we even want, an African American Art Historical canon?This class argues that the history of African American Art offers us, in practice and theory, resistant histories of 'high' and 'low' art, everyday objects, and ways of seeing. By conducting a chronological approach to African American Art, we will trace moments of historical continuity as well as emerging practices in order to better understand how the methods, materials, and meanings bracketed under the category of African American Art have been a site of innovation, experimentation, and avant-garde practice. We will spend this semester juxtaposing conventional approaches to art (painting, sculpting, line drawing, installation) with innovative approaches to visual culture (found objects, everyday materials, contemporary performance).

Artists of inquiry include Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglass, Hale Woodruff, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Faith Ringgold, Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas, David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Marlon Riggs, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, Sadie Barnette. We will also discuss author-less works, collectives, and collaborate projects.

Students are required to complete an annotated bibliography, weekly in-class assignments, and a 3 hour final examination.

Where is the Black Atlantic? What does it look, smell, taste, and feel like? How does it color our world? This class explores the visual and cultural history of the Black Atlantic?a phrase used to define the relationship between dissonant geographical locations that were forged into relationship with each other through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We will forge an understanding of how vision, texture, touch, sound, and color owe their meanings through the Middle Passage and its production of arts of the Black Atlantic. Crucial to this class is the artwork of practitioners like Jacob Lawrence, Soly Cisse, AfriCOBRA, Aubrey Williams, Faustin Linyekula, Yinka Shonibare, and Renee Green. We will focus primarily on the visual history and cultural impact of the Middle Passage as discussed through the writings of Afro-Caribbean, West African, Black American, and Black British scholars. We will work with concepts like ?native? visual forms, the coloniality of painting, Negritude, and the anticolonial imagination.