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Expert: Black portraiture has broken new ground
4:03 p.m., April 6, 2006--Spurred by daring artistic inroads and new technology, the evolution of black portraiture has embraced what was once seen as shocking images and turned modern pop icons into powerful art subjects, Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art History at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said at UD on Monday, April 4. Powell, who delivered the Paul R. Jones Lecture, “The New Black Portraiture,” named after the fourth chapter of his upcoming book, Cutting A Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, Powell said modern black portraiture has enriched the world of art with bold concepts that gradually have become mainstream visual art. Quoting remarks by Terence Pitts, former director of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in a catalog for the center's 1991 exhibition, “A Portrait is Not a Likeness,” Powell said photographers have for the past decade been “grappling with the traditional definitions of portraiture and expanding the repertoire with some new approaches. “We have seen an increasing number of photographers who explore the components of social identity, such as race, gender, ethnicity, class [and] occupation in the individual's relation to family and society,” Powell said. Reading from the book, Powell said the earliest and one of the “most incendiary” examples of the 1980s “assault on conditional portraiture” was Jungle Fever, a 1981 book by graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude on interracial desires, sexual fantasies and corporeal obsessions, which, he said, showed Goude's preoccupation with people of color. “Jungle Fever introduced into modern visual culture an inflammatory black subject: Real life figures whose adaptations in the portrait ritual, accentuated by these articulated airbrush fictions and uncensored scenarios, both shocked and beguiled unsuspecting observers,” Powell said. In the 1990s, rap star Tupac Shakur's iconic image was bolstered by his popular recordings, rap prose, music videos and motion pictures, all of which endeared him to audiences, who saw in him a representation of a variety of their own realities and raised his value as a marketing figure, Powell said. Powell said similarly bold portrayals of convicted rap star Kimberly “Lil' Kim” Jones and the runaway success of Michael Jordan as a marketing figure found their way into black art and marked a departure from traditional concepts. “The conceptual creations along with improved photographic and new digital technologies joined forces in the years that followed to literally transform black art portraiture from something socially intuitive and familiar to something unprecedented and seemingly capricious,” Powell said, adding that the growth of satellite and cable television helped promote blacks artists and provided more outlets for them. “We live in a mixed society, so it's important for us to be visually literate, not only about what's around you but what's around the world. We learn from images, both positive and negative, both popular and academic,” Powell said. Author of Black Art: A Cultural History, Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson and Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century, Powell has curated, written and lectured widely about art and the contributions of artists to global culture. His exhibitions include “Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow,” “Circle Dance: The Art of John T. Scott,” and most recently, “Conjuring Bearden,” currently on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Powell's research and teaching focus on American art, African-American art and theories of race and representation in the African diaspora. He also is interested in the media arts and conceptualizations of the "folk" in world art and culture. He earned his doctoral degree in art history from Yale University, a master's degree in fine art from Howard University and a bachelor's degree in fine art from Morehouse College. Article by Martin Mbugua |
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