{"id":6672,"date":"2021-02-23T04:45:54","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T04:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/black-art-in-the-absence-of-light-review\/"},"modified":"2021-02-23T04:45:54","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T04:45:54","slug":"black-art-in-the-absence-of-light-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/black-art-in-the-absence-of-light-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Art: In the Absence of Light review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The recently released documentary,\u00a0<\/span><em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Black Art: In the Absence of Light<\/span><\/em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, simultaneously explores the challenges Black Artists continue to face in reaching mainstream audiences and the importance of their artwork in the narrative of American (United States) art history. The film takes a hard look at the significant role exhibitions, curators, and collectors play in perpetuating biases and breaking boundaries by underlining historical moments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Directed by Sam Pollard, the film introduces the foremost black artists working today and the artists that preceded them. The film begins with historical footage from the event that inspired the documentary, the landmark 1976 exhibition, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lacma.org\/art\/exhibition\/two-centuries-black-american-art\" target=\"_blank\">Two Centuries of Black American Art.<\/a>\u201d According to the late artist and curator, David Driskell, this exhibition hosted by the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) was \u201cthe first major modern exhibition which brought the black subject, period, to the American Public.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The film\u2019s central theme is the black figure\u2019s significance as a subject in artworks and black artists\u2019 representation in museum collections\/exhibitions. In a 1976 interview, Driskell warns against those critics and historians that group all artwork by black artists together under the label of \u201cBlack Art\u201d because it isolates the black artists from the canon of American Art. The director and producer perhaps chose to underscore the stigma behind this label by using it as the title of the documentary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Artist, Kehinde Wiley describes the Whitney Museum of American Art\u2019s 1994 exhibition \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/whitney.org\/education\/education-blog\/looking-back-at-black-male1\" target=\"_blank\">Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art,<\/a>\u201d curated by Thelma Golden, as life-changing. \u201cHere, for the first time, you are seeing black masculinity, not as something on television that\u2019s menacing, that arm\u2019s length, but rather artists embracing it as subject matter, another color on their palette. It was mind-blowing, an exhibition that really tore down the meaning of the black body itself.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">While spaced sixteen years apart and on opposite coasts of the United States, what Driskell and Goldman\u2019s exhibitions have in common is that they were controversial, provocative, and pushed the white envelope. Critics had a hard time digesting the content and taking an honest look back at the marginalization of artists of color in traditional art exhibitions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-23380\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-23380\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.art-critique.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/F50526EC-E242-4B03-9163-96A404422DD2-1-1.jpg?resize=718%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"718\" height=\"1024\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Jireh<\/em>, Jordan Casteel, 2014. Photograph courtesy of the writer. This artwork is featured in the documentary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The documentary also explores the monumental importance of President Barak Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama\u2019s portraits. Art Historian Maurice Berger describes the official paintings hanging in the National Portrait Gallery as a beautiful challenge and a dramatic departure from the past presidents\u2019 boring or traditional portraits. \u201cThe stakes were different. When you have two centuries of straight, white men who were president, and then you have Barak Obama\u2013that portrait better be different.\u201d In painting the presidential couple, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.art-critique.com\/en\/2020\/01\/the-obama-portraits-tour\/\" target=\"_blank\">Artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald<\/a> wanted to portray them individually as the people they were, as private citizens\u2013a man, and woman of color, who continue to inspire people worldwide.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">While groundbreaking milestones punctuate the documentary, it also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.art-critique.com\/en\/2020\/06\/museums-need-to-confront-racism\/\" target=\"_blank\">highlights all the work that still needs to be done<\/a>. Berger reveals that in a survey of major American Museums, it was determined that 85% of their collections are made up of white artists. \u201cIf you break down the remaining artists of color in those collections (15%), it\u2019s 1.2% black. If the people sitting around the curatorial table are all white, you are going to have a problem.\u201d <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Clearly, having exhibitions that feature black artists is not enough. Their artworks also need to be acquired by these cultural institutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The role of universities also requires fundamental change. As an art history student in the mid-2000s, I experienced how a limited scope can be damaging to our understanding of art history as humanity\u2019s collective creative experience. The slides running through our art history survey classes\u2019 projectors reinforced the interest in white male artists. This reigning group of people even dominated our photography, modern, and contemporary art classes.\u00a0<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">I hope that this academic approach has shifted across the United States, given the cultural reckoning we now find ourselves in. Students from across disciplines can also have agency in asking themselves critical questions around whose voices and work are missing from the narrative they\u2019re being taught. They can challenge professors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The historical footage, expert interviews, and vignettes of artists at work merge to effectively and beautifully communicate how vital the representation of artists of color is in cultural institutions and the importance of enabling them to tell their own stories while also elevating their history.\u00a0<\/span><em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Black Art: In the Absence of Light<\/span><\/em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> will stream on HBO until March 17, 2021. You can also visit the website to experience a thoughtful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hbo.com\/content\/dam\/hbodata\/documentaries\/black-art-in-the-absence-of-light\/curriculum\/hbo-core-curriculum-FINAL.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">curriculum<\/a> and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hbo.com\/content\/dam\/hbodata\/documentaries\/black-art-in-the-absence-of-light\/curriculum\/hbo-art-Making-Appendix-FINAL.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"> art activities<\/a> inspired by the film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recently released documentary,\u00a0Black Art: In the Absence of Light, simultaneously explores the challenges Black Artists continue to face in reaching mainstream audiences and the importance of their artwork in the narrative of American (United States) art history. The film takes a hard look at the significant role exhibitions, curators, and collectors play in perpetuating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-for-artists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Black Art: In the Absence of Light review - United Arts Agency | UAA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/black-art-in-the-absence-of-light-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black Art: In the Absence of Light review - United Arts Agency | UAA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The recently released documentary,\u00a0Black Art: In the Absence of Light, simultaneously explores the challenges Black Artists continue to face in reaching mainstream audiences and the importance of their artwork in the narrative of American (United States) art history. 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