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Edmonia Lewis (1843-1911) was one of America's pre-eminent sculptors during Reconstruction, and her neoclassical masterpiece "The Death of Cleopatra" was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. It survives to this day only because a racetrack owner bought it to use as a tombstone for one of his favorite steeds.
In 1972, a fireman, taken by its beauty as it stood in a machine yard in a Chicago suburb covered with grime, lobbied for its restoration. Finally, in 1987, more than a century after its creation, conservators discovered it was Lewis' lost "Cleopatra." Black women artists, argues Lisa Farrington in her new book, "Creating Their Own Image,'' have never had it easy, and they are still struggling for acknowledgement and representation.
"Creating Their Own Image" is the first comprehensive history of African American women artists. Farrington, who is the author of "Art on Fire: The Politics of Race & Sex in the Paintings of Faith Ringgold," finds it "unpardonable" that such a history has not been written sooner. Historical surveys can be tedious and stodgy, but Farrington's personal engagement in her subject matter and her emotional investment in the politics of race, gender and personal expression make "Creating Their Own Image" an exciting -- and disturbing -- read.
Farrington begins by examining Western images of blackness, beginning with the ancient Greeks. Art through the Renaissance is filled with positive portrayals of Africans. As the slave trade developed in the 1500s, so did negative stereotypes of Africans. The Western imagination began to typecast African American women as "both sexually attractive and physically repulsive .. . as either naïve and childlike primitives or dangerous and cunning shrews." For the remainder of the book, Farrington creates a compelling narrative of women artists, despite every imaginable obstacle, redefining these images and, ultimately, demanding acceptance on their own terms.
The narrative proper begins during the Middle Passage with the emergence of slave art, including domestic-oriented work such as quilts, dolls and textiles, as well as gardens and burial sites. Farrington then leads us through the splendors of black women's art during the Reconstruction, the post- Reconstruction backlash, a new flowering during the Harlem Renaissance and the WPA, what she views as the setback of Abstract Expressionism, and black women artists' love-hate relationships to the Black Power and feminist movements. The second half of the book is devoted to contemporary art, covering abstraction, conceptualism, outsider art, postmodernism and post-Black art.
This is a huge amount of material, and while a certain amount of reductiveness is inherent in the textbook form, Farrington manages to convey the complexities of her subjects' lives and cultural contexts. Thus, despite her positioning of Abstract Expressionism as an apolitical monster that destroys the careers of politically engaged social realist artists, Farrington is respectful of black women formalists, exposing as racist the assumption "that art made by African Americans must inherently be the art of social protest."
Repeatedly Farrington warns that the very institutions that support black artists can also threaten their self-expression. During the Harlem Renaissance the Harmon Foundation, which widely promoted African American art, had a strong aesthetic position, encouraging work that portrayed "supposed black traits" such as strength, rhythm, optimism and simplicity. At the same time, white patrons of African American art sought a "cliched black 'primitivism.' " African American artists "had to walk a fine line" between these expectations and "imagery that expressed their own individuality."
Farrington is also critical of the outsider art phenomenon, in which she sees a patronizing childlikeness projected onto artists who have developed outside the art establishment. "Fundamental to the art world's perception of vernacular artists is the notion of modern 'tourism,' which allows people of different cultural origins to cross over into one another's arenas and experience the Other, whose difference from their own actuality promises delight and amusement." Farrington goes on to examine the sophistication and originality of a handful of female vernacular artists, including Clementine Hunter and Nellie Mae Rowe.
Farrington, who teaches art history at Parsons School of Design in New York, assumes the reader of "Creating Their Own Image" has little knowledge of black history, American history or art history. Without apology, she begins her discussion of the Harlem Renaissance by explaining what Harlem is ("a small section of uptown Manhattan") and tracing the sociology of black migration to Harlem. Throughout her large-format book, Farrington is generously accessible without talking down to the reader. She sums up the tenets of conceptual art in two succinct yet meaty paragraphs. She discusses Carrie Mae Weems in terms of French literary theorist Roland Barthes' essay "Rhetoric of Images." To analyze Adrian Piper's performances, she summons Kant.
Lavishly illustrated, exhaustively researched, "Creating Their Own Image" is a magnificent achievement. Since Sept. 11, many writers and artists have been soul-searching, questioning what it means to make art amidst today's frightening politics. Farrington makes a convincing argument that art cannot - - and should not -- be stripped from its political and cultural contexts.
Dodie Bellamy's novel "The Letters of Mina Harker" has recently been rereleased by the University of Wisconsin Press.
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"And the more you hit something hard, the more hardened it becomes--the stronger it becomes. And that's what's happened: I'm resilient." - Michael Jackson
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