Category: Art
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Artist a Day Challenge (15): James Baldwin
James Baldwin, 1945. Portrait by Richard Avedon. Photo Credit, National Portrait Gallery Yesterday’s post about Dawoud Bey took a close look at his 2013 Birmingham Project, a photographic examination of church bombings and deaths that took place in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. Bey’s work was an attempt to reconcile the present through an examination…
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Artist a Day Challenge (14): Dawoud Bey
As an eleven year old growing up in Queens, Dawoud Bey came upon a copy of a book published by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee called “The Movement”. With text by Lorraine Hansberry accompanied by photographs from numerous artists, the book captured the pain, political vitriol, emotion and hatred that swirled around Civil Rights workers in the early…
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Artist a Day Challenge (13): Carrie Mae Weems
The other day at Arcana books in Culver City, I was able to thumb through a rare copy of The Sweet Flypaper of Life which featured photography by Roy DeCarava set to the prose of Langston Hughes. This photo caught my attention, not only for the moment of tenderness it captured, but also because it reminded me of…
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Artist a Day Challenge (12): DeCarava and Jazz
“In between that one-fifteenth of a second there is a thickness.” Roy DeCarava Roy DeCarava’s photos of jazz musicians are some of my favorites in his body of work. Photographers who are also musicians in their own right, capture what the rest of us don’t see in the moment. “Jazz I think approaches the visual experience…
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Artist a Day Challenge (11): Roy DeCarava
Photography has always been used as a powerful tool for social change. From Frederick Douglass’ early adoption of photography a medium for countering negative images, to Sojourner Truth’s use of Cartes de Visites, W.E.B DuBois’ curated images at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, to James Van Der Zee’s documenting of the black middle class during the Harlem…
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Artist a Day Challenge (10): W.E.B Du Bois, Writer, Scholar, Artist?
“It’s a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eye of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk In yesterday’s post we placed a spotlight on Theaster Gates…
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Artist a Day Challenge (9): Theaster Gates at Regen Projects
Theaster Gates puts viewers to work when they experience his art, and this is precisely what drew me to a particular group of paintings at his current show Regen Projects in L.A. The exhibition titled But to Be a Poor Race is an homage to W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk, the seminal series of essays…
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Artist a Day Challenge (8): The Unknown Collective of Eleven Associated
I mentioned in my first Artist a Day Challenge post how instrumental the Hammer’s digital catalog for Now Dig This! was in documenting many of the incredible artists that came out of the black arts movement between the 1960s’-1970’s. The curator for the show, Dr. Kellie Jones and her team uncovered some interesting themes, one of which was the…
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Artist a Day Challenge (7): William Pajaud
William Pajaud was a New Orleans based artist who lived in Los Angeles and specialized in design and watercolor. He was also the first appointed art director for Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. During his tenure as art director and later as a public relations director he amassed a collection of over 200 works…
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Artist a Day Challenge (6): The Disrupters
Change is not always an organic process, sometimes it needs a little nudge. When it came to diverse cultural representation within Los Angeles museums in the 1960s, LACMA in particular needed a few nudges… and a good push toward progress. One late December evening on Wilshire Boulevard in 1968, a curious crowd formed around the Ahmanson’ building…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 