This course surveys the key artists and episodes in the history of
art made by African Americans, from 1700 to the present. Areas of
special attention will include the Harlem Renaissance and the
development of the “New Negro,” primitivism, strategies employed by
African American artists after World War II to negotiate a place
within the mainstream of American art, the Black Arts Movement and
protests against art world racism in the 1960s and 1970s, the role
of folk traditions, spirituality and outsider art. In the final
weeks of the semester, we will look at a wide range of work by
contemporary African American artists who deal with issues of race
through performance art, photography, the appropriation of
stereotypes, paintings that incorporate humor and parody, and
possibilities for what some have called a “Post Soul Aesthetic” or
a “post-black” art.