Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Long-Overdue Justice for Black Artists

Norman Lewis, an underappreciated black artist (died in 1979)
A revolution is on the rise for the justice of black artists across the nation, past and present. We are finally heading towards a time where works of art are judged on the content of the work rather than who created it and the race and heritage of that person. Norman Lewis, an artist who passed away in 1979 predicted that it would take 30-40 years for his work and the work of other black artists to be appreciated with race-blinded eyes. Today, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (Manhattan) and the National Gallery of Art (Washington) are more inclusive of artwork by black artists. This creates a more even and diverse playing field in the field of contemporary art for new and upcoming black artists, a field that was previously dominated in the public by white artists. Norman Lewis and similar black artists may now rest peacefully.

http://nyti.ms/1YBgImI
In the video attached to the link above, Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015), a black painter and printmaker speaks about his life and career as an artist of black decent. Cortor who died at the age of 99 this Thanksgiving worked in New York for many years and was ignored by museums for much of his life, until recently. He got see his work presented in the inaugural show of the new downtown Whitney Museum. Due to the ignorance of the art world for the majority of Cortor's life he still owned many original works and began donating them to various museums. "It's a little late now, I'd say. But better than never" the artist stated in a recent interview with the New York Times.

"Southern Landscape" a painting by Eldzier Cortor





2 comments:

  1. 1. I wrote this post because I came upon it on the New York Times website and I was intrigued once again. It embodies some of my favorite topics- black history and art history.

    2. I did not experience any writing difficulty.

    3. I hoped by writing this I could inform people about a specific person from the Harlem Renaissance using ethos.

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  2. Good work Kevin! This is a really interesting topic to discuss, and appears to speak to a hopefulness within the art world of an enterprise which may be becoming race blind.

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