Walker Evans and James Agee
Depression-era photojournalism
set new standards for the evidentiary integrity expected of art informed by social awareness and political activism.
Bearden: travel march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
founding member of the Harlem-based art group known as The Spiral
songwriter, known as co-writer of the jazz classic "Sea Breeze"
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working for racial equality
work with Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Norman Lewis, Merton Simpson
"Mississippi 1964": murder by KKK. ( -> collage: not too much political)
"The Street": challenge media's record (distorted) of African Americas
Andy Warhol Charles Moore (architect) William Majors
Collage: started Picasso's Cubist composition, newsletter and picture talk politics
Rauschenberg Whitten: turn to dog, policeman
Black Arts Movement (BAM)
Playing with blackness
"surface versus death" problem: passing isn't black
limit the word "black"
"passing for black" controversy: a black person under white unzipped jacket (black surface lacking depth)
BAM's relation to popular culture
protest white use of flat, white, commercial, oppressive use of surface.
"black fantastic": black cultural nationalism (black pride)
black will no longer be politicized as "black hairstyle is only a hairstyle (but blackness is not only black body)
"black beauty": a way to de-colonize mind and body. (worry distortion of black beauty created by antiblack racism)
Mahogany (1975, the film)
Diana Ross's performance: freedom
ability to appreciate blackness of themselves
black fantasy vs. natural beauty
BAM: fighting for people hate their own natural (processed) hair
Link: China's shoping center - American White Consumerism
Went back last year, shocking: shopping mall, poster of european man, women fashion. (not just one, but ALL white faces!)
The salesman could not speak english, and costomers are all Chinese local people.
Colonizing of ideology so entrenched.
Amiri Baraka: natural / un-nature mix
Badu, Iton: unclothed body. Red, black, green color.
Badu: along young black people to claim their right to be individuals (not only a part of black collective)
"Badu's assassination": 2010 (What kills her?) Assassination of black women. "Strip" him naked to the world!
(Cardboard) Surface vs. Skin
Mingering Mike: black green, red
Glenn Ligon's Play with Commercial Surface
Black light: white denial of the possibility of black light. (black light hard to imagine due to glare of white light)
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