VISUAL ARTISTS

Black History Month

African American Artists

VOCABULARYexpressionism, narrative, collage, migration, Jim Crow laws, graffiti, Antebellum, silhouette, racial identity, gender issues, elements of art, principles of art: balance, rhythm, pattern, proportion

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONSWhy can we learn from focusing on the African American experience? What can we learn from African American artists? How is their experience similar and different from our own? Of the examples shown, which artist do you find the most interesting? Why?

Black History Month

African American Artists

VOCABULARY

expressionism, narrative, collage, migration, Jim Crow laws, graffiti, Antebellum, silhouette, racial identity, gender issues, elements of art, principles of art: balance, rhythm, pattern, proportion

Jacob Lawrence Ideas:

Vocabulary:

o Traditionalo Expressionistico Moderno ________o ________o ________

WORKSHEET

Black History Month

African American Artists

Jacob Lawrence Romare Bearden Jean-Michel Basquiat

Kara Walker

Black History Month

African American Artists

One of the most important artists of the 20th century, was born in 1917 and is best known for his series of narrative paintings depicting important moments in African American history. Lawrence was introduced to art when in his early teens, Lawrence's mother enrolled him in Utopia Children's Center, which provided an after-school art program in Harlem. By the mid-1930s, he was regularly participating in art programs at the Harlem Art Workshop and the Harlem Community Art Center where he was exposed to leading African American artists of the time.

Jacob Lawrence

Black History Month

African American Artists

On the Migration Series:

“I did plenty of research in books and pamphlets written during the migration, and afterward…I took notes. Sometimes I would make ten or twenty sketches for one incident…By the time I started work on the (Migration Series), I was more conscious of what I wanted to do. I was looking consciously at things and for things.”

Jacob Lawrence Online video

What elements and principles of art terms would you use to describe these works?

Black History Month

Romare Bearden

African American Artists

Many artists and art historians consider Romare Bearden one of America's most important and inventive artists. But he's hardly a household name. Bearden is the subject of the National Gallery of Art’s first major retrospective of an African-American artist.

About 1914, his family joined the Great Migration of southern blacks to points north and west. In the early twentieth century, Jim Crow laws kept many blacks from voting and from equal access to jobs, education, health care, business, land, and more. Like many southern black families, the Bearden's settled in the Harlem section of New York City. Romare would call New York home for the rest of his life.

Black History Month

Romare BeardenOnline video

African American Artists

Bearden's primary medium was the collage, fusing painting, magazine clippings, old paper and fabric, like a jigsaw puzzle in upheaval. But unlike a puzzle, each piece of a Bearden collage has a meaning and history all its own. Bearden said working with fragments of the past brought them into the now.

What elements and principles of art terms would you use to describe these works?

Black History Month

Jean-Michel Basquiat

African American Artists

The son of middle-class Brooklyn parents, he had a precocious success with his paintings from the start. The key was not that they were "primitive," but that they were so arty. Having no art training, he never tried to deal with the real world through drawing; he could only scribble and jot, rehearsing his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for "face" or "body" over and over again.

Basquiat's career was incubated by the short-lived graffiti movement, which started on the streets and subway cars in New York City in the early 1970s, peaked, fell out of view, began all over again in the 1980s, peaked again, and finally receded, leaving Basquiat and Keith Haring as its only memorable exponents. Unlike Haring, however, Basquiat never tagged the subways

Black History MonthJean-Michel BasquiatOnline video

African American Artists

A major reference source used by Basquiat throughout his career was the book Gray's Anatomy, which his mother gave to him. It remained influential in his depictions of internal human anatomy, and in its mixture of image and text. Other major sources were Dreyfuss' Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, and Brentjes African Rock Art.

Basquiat often incorporated words into his paintings. Early he produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and become known for the political – poetical graffiti.

What elements and principles of art terms would you use to describe these works?

Black History Month

Kara Walker

African American Artists

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California. She received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. The artist is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures.

Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters interact, often inflicting violence on one another.

Black History MonthKara WalkerOnline video

Walker's silhouette images work to bridge unfinished folklore in the Antebellum South, raising racial identity and gender issues for African American women.

African American Artists

Because of her direct approach to the topic, Walker's artwork is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Pop Art during the 1960s (she adored Warhol growing up as a child). Her nightmarish and fantastical images incorporate a cinematic feel. Walker uses images from historical textbooks to show how African American slaves were depicted during the Antebellum South.

What elements and principles of art terms would you use to describe these works?

Black History Month

African American Artists

VOCABULARYexpressionism, narrative, collage, migration, Jim Crow laws, graffiti, Antebellum, silhouette, racial identity, gender issues, elements of art, principles of art: balance, rhythm, pattern, proportion

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONSWhy can we learn from focusing on the African American experience? What can we learn from African American artists? How is their experience similar and different from our own? Of the examples shown, which artist do you find the most interesting? Why?

Black History Month

African American Artists

What words and ideas do

you associate with each

artist?

Black History Month

African American Artists

Jacob Lawrence Romare Bearden Jean-Michel Basquiat

Kara Walker

Why should we focus on the African American experience? What can we learn from African American artists? How is their experience similar and different from our own? Of the examples shown, which African American artist do you find the most interesting? Why?

Black History Month

African American Artists

Which African American artist do you find the most interesting? Why?Use vocabulary terms when you write about your artist.