Post Black Art and Beyond

Undergraduate

In 2001, “Freestyle”, a survey exhibition curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem, introduced a young generation of artists of African descent and the ambitious yet knowingly opaque term post-black to a pre-9-11 pre-Obama world. This seminar utilizes the term post-black as a starting point to investigate the different ways Black Artists identified themselves through the lens of their historical contexts, writings, and politics while engaging with key debates around Black Aesthetics in exhibitions and theory. Consequently, we discuss changes in artistic styles and Black identity discourses from the beginning of the 20th century into the present. Post-black stirred much controversy 22 years ago because it was used by a generation of artists who seemed to distance themselves from previous generations, who utilized the term Black to define their practices as a form of political resistance. However, the claims that the post-black generation made, and the influence of their work is part of an ongoing debate in African Diasporic Art, which has refreshed and posed new questions for art-historical research as well as curation. Topics include Representation, Black Exhibition Histories, Black Aesthetics, Afrotropes, Afro-politanism, Abstraction vs. Figuration, Curation as an Art-Historical tool, The Black Radical Tradition and Racial Uplift, post-race vs. post-black and historical consistencies. Knowledge in the fields of History of Art and African American Studies is desirable. HU M 1:30pm-3:25pm