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In 2023 the Noah Purifoy Foundation received a Mellon Foundation Grant to develop, with conservators, an innovative and thoughtful conservation plan for the over 100 sculptures at the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture. Located in the high desert of Joshua Tree, California, USA, it encompasses four hectares of rural art space where Purifoy lived and worked from 1989 until his death in 2004. Although Purifoy was a trained artist, his works also draw from his time as a US Navy Seabee and the tradition of Black self-taught artists from the American South. His artworks were never complete, but alive, and in an ongoing conversation among him, nature, and material. Amidst the physical challenges of addressing found material assemblage in a challenging landscape, the project also requires bringing stakeholders and knowledge bearers into conversation to determine an appropriate 'patina' of weathering for the works. To achieve this, the project involves identifying Purifoy's definition of community, reuse, and interaction with the natural landscape into the conservation plan. The project also included drone mapping as a documentation tool alongside condition surveys and photographic documentation. Being led by a group of racially diverse conservators who are centering community involvement in the work helps the team mimic Purifoy's own commitment to community engagement. This project has the potential to act as a model for the development of conservation plans for other sites of contemporary sculpture, especially those in remote locations or those focused on African American artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity Postmodern art became art to deconstruct the hidden ideologies of the discourse of power for socio-political purposes, such as the struggle against the masterpieces of art, against heroism, against gender discrimination and racism. In this period, a broad effort was done to address social issues and problems concerning inequalities related to class, race, gender, and ethnicity and... to people involved with these issues. This critical content chose different ways of expressing itself; from a realistic presentation to a copy, an eclectic work, ironic references and "Appropriation" works of art that at first glance is accompanied by humor and parody. Appropriation means using or adapting preexisting works of art and borrowing them to create a new work. At this time Appropriation for a specific purpose was an action that could not be avoided in the postmodern-centered state of contemporary art. The 1960s saw the emergence of a process that allowed artists to adapt and self-create other artists' works without modification or by slightly modifying or inserting parts of other people's artwork into their own, with the goal of substituting their own voice for another voice, thus opening a new meaning instead of the previous one. Since then, art of Appropriation has peaked in the 1980s, and today the widespread use of image capture in the creation of works of art has become commonplace. The contemporary era seems to have introduced artists to the world who were eager to reinterpret and re-represent these paintings in order to expose lesser-represented cultures and elevate excluded minorities to the center of discourse. Since the late nineteenth century, African American artists, with a return to the historical past and the use of black heroes and their epic and revolutionary ideas, and under the influence of political and social events, with their works of art to fight against racial colonialism. And painted a bright future for the black nation. But today's art is different from what we know as black art in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This study, in order to answer the question of the role of images in deconstructing aesthetics and deconstructing the power structure, focuses on postmodern art and critically analyzes the works of African American artists on the subject of "Appropriation" of famous works of art history. Consequently, among the goals of artists in this way of representation is to focus on excluded minorities, to emphasize the fine arts as something beyond nationality and race, to create a counter-narrative, to deconstruct the power structure, to empower blacks in culture. This research is based on descriptive-analytical method, and data collection is desk-based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of artist Keith Pollard in the Black arts movement and his contributions to Marvel Comics during the Silver Age of Comics. Pollard, a Black creator, worked at Marvel while also drawing gag cartoons for Black World magazine, which focused on the Black arts movement. His cartoons used humor to critique race, class, and social relationships, and he aimed to create universal messages that anyone could appreciate. Despite facing challenges and stereotypes, Pollard became a highly regarded artist at Marvel and worked on popular titles such as The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. His work, along with other Black artists, helped pave the way for more diverse voices in the comic book industry. [Extracted from the article]

In "Spiritual Moderns: Twentieth-Century American Artists and Religion," Erika Doss explores the influence of religion on key American modern artists like Joseph Cornell, Mark Tobey, Agnes Pelton, and Andy Warhol. The book delves into the religious lives of these artists, highlighting their complex relationships with religion and how it informed their art. While the work is interdisciplinary, engaging with US religious history, art history, and theory, it has been critiqued for its selection of case studies and its definition of religion, particularly in relation to race and the inclusion of artists of color in the discussion. [Extracted from the article]

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap is a genre originating from and predominantly performed by Black musicians, hence becoming complicit in catalyzing this targeted weaponization of rap music, chilling Black artistic expression, and effectively stripping the genre of its creative license. Though hardly a novel challenge for rap artists, the pending criminal conspiracy case against Jeffrey Williams, professionally known as Young Thug, prompts a renewed sense of urgency in drawing a bright line between fictional rap lyrics and probative criminal evidence. Building from notable scholarship in this field, this Note situates the law’s disproportionate maltreatment of rap music within the broader canvas of systemic racism to propose avenues for how the law may evolve to accommodate the persistent intersections between rap music and the judicial system. By delineating clear parameters for the admissibility of rap lyrics as evidence to address troubling bias in juror perceptions, this framework seeks to find a balance between protecting Black artistic expression and preserving the integrity of criminal proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Langston Hughes Eslanda Goode Robeson and Louise Jefferson were three African American artists and activists united by common ideals: the power of visual culture the value of transatlantic connections and the advocation for greater freedoms for African Americans through art. Through the detailed examination of a single photographic object this article examines the role that photography played in cultivating interwar networks that were simultaneously intimate and global personal and public. This photograph evidences the strong transatlantic friendship between Hughes Robeson and Jefferson and demonstrates how Black women image-makers merged personal and professional space within their activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article works with a definition of care that encompasses expansive models of kinship and collective and communal life. Specifically, it explores representations of such interdependencies in the liminal space of the single‐room occupancy hotel (SRO) through the literary and artistic creations of two understudied African American artists. Fiction writer Robert Dean Pharr and visual artist Frederick Weston created their work in SROs in New York City beginning in the 1960s, during a time of massive transformation of the city's built environment in the name of urban renewal. Their novels and artwork, respectively, provide some of the only uncovered (to date) literary and cultural representations of New York City's SROs. Pharr's and Weston's works memorialize rituals of survival that center care and interdependencies over and against competitive individualism and a climate of uncare. Further, both explicitly articulate this vision by working with conceptual and material waste. Trash is their literal and metaphoric medium. These artists relied upon what is seen as surplus value by the city. But as Pharr and Weston use it, trash offers a critique of negative assumptions about the lives of SRO residents. The pandemic has shocked us into awareness of our inescapable interdependencies. Therefore, it behooves us to revisit these understudied, early proponents of care—an ethics that today's mutual aid and other liberation movements often center. Pharr's and Weston's documentation and interpretation of care offer us ways to survive within our current environments in crisis without repeating the death‐making logic and history of urban renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a preview of the main events, attractions, and dining spots in New Orleans for the annual session of the AAO (American Association of Orthodontists). The document provides information on transportation options, including taxis, ride shares, buses, streetcars, and guided walking tours. It also highlights various festivals and music events happening in the city, such as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the NOLA Crawfish Festival. Additionally, the document mentions several museums, parks, and landmarks that visitors can explore, including the National WWII Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Jackson Square. It concludes with a list of recommended restaurants and historic bars in the city. [Extracted from the article]

This essay presents a critical biography of African American visual artist Mary Parks Washington, with an emphasis on her creative development from 1942 to 1979. Washington's extant art is discussed in the context of her educational background, social network, and political affiliations, as well as the history of activist curation in the wake of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. As an undergraduate at Spelman College in the 1940s, Washington was mentored by muralist Hale Woodruff, who encouraged her to continue her studies at the Art Students League of New York, Black Mountain College, and the Universidad Nacional de México. These experiences introduced Washington to key figures of the international and American avant-gardes, including Josef Albers, Diego Rivera, and Jacob Lawrence. In 1958, Washington settled down with her family in the Bay Area, where she met poet Sarah Webster Fabio, a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement on the West Coast. Washington and Fabio's collaborative friendship over two decades culminated in 1979's Offshoots of Roots Unknown, a series of "poem-paintings" that elegize Washington's family in early twentieth century Atlanta and, formally, deal with the technical (and ethical) problem of remembering and representing history. Drawing extensively on archival materials from the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, this essay recognizes Washington's contribution to post-WWII African American art and documents her unique artistic trajectory, traversing aesthetic, social, and political formations from pre-Civil Rights Atlanta to the post-Black Arts Movement Bay Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I discuss the art of Missionary Mary Proctor, a contemporary folk artist from Tallahassee, Florida, in the context of the literary aesthetics of the renowned twentieth-century anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston. In comparing these Southern-born African American women artists, I argue that both are rooted in an aesthetic praxis deriving from their shared womanist ethics. My goal in this inquiry is to highlight the faith-based aesthetic traditions of African American women and reveal the manner in which discourses of freedom intertwine with literary and visual aesthetics and faith-based practices in African American folk art and literature. To that end, I analyze the prevalence of themes of liberation within the spiritual discourses of Southern African American women artists such as Missionary Mary Proctor and theorize the manner in which a landscape of Black female liberation is envisioned within their works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Jaqueline Couti (JC): b Looking at your work, I was like, "Wow, yes, there are other ways of thinking about history, of thinking about memory in a theoretical fashion that isn't anchored in a dialectical European tradition or the Western academic world." I realized rather quickly that, yes, art was the right place for me, because if you look at the essentially Western conception of the artist, [artists are] allowed to do basically anything - and even if they screw up, you say, "Oh, that's not so bad, they're an artist." I am, to an extent, in the act of inventing my own feminism, although I'm not going to isolate myself from or break with the other feminisms, because there's this respect [for them], and because we're all essentially part of this clan of the women of the world. I can't identify with the feminism supported by FEMEN [international group of women who protest with bare breasts] who are personal friends of mine, I can't entirely agree with French feminist movements like Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive), even if they're friends too, or with movements for women's liberation. [Extracted from the article]

In the article, the author discusses how art teachers can use the life and works of African American artist Jeremy Okai Davis to teach their students about injustice, racism, comfort, healing, and self-reflection. Also cited are the importance of antiracist methods of classroom teaching when working with emerging artists, and some artworks of Davis like "Kodachrome" and "Cutis Vera."

The article explores the absence of references to the supernatural in blues musician Skip James's 1931 recordings, despite his personal belief in magic and the prevalence of supernatural themes in blues music of that era. It also mentions James's unique lyrical choices and suggests that his upbringing, self-perception, and values may have influenced this omission.

The few known African American photographers in the 19th and early 20th centuries faced significant challenges, including racial prejudice and competition from white photographers for both white and the relatively few Black customers. The New Jersey photographers examined here were no exception and this may help explain why images by an artist with a long career, William M. Dutton, are so hard to find today and why other artists, like Isaiah Burton and Levi Bankson, worked only briefly in the medium before moving on to other, more remunerative occupations. Beginning his photographic career at the end of the 1800s, Albert Thomas Moore achieved considerable success in the first part of the 20th century in New Brunswick and South River but less so in Atlantic City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A historical focus on Chicago offers a rich opportunity to explore the hopes and dreams that multiple generations of blues performers attached to their music, along with the myriad styles in which these musicians expressed themselves. From the 1920s through the 1950s, Broonzy's musical identity repeatedly took new shape, "from old-time fiddler to country blues artist to black pop artist to American folk revivalist and European jazz and blues artist" (p. 5). European promoters, as well, insisted throughout the 1950s that he perform in overalls as an old-fashioned folk-blues musician, energetically resisting any efforts by Broonzy to share the sophisticated, jazz-tinged blues music he had once pioneered in black Chicago. Broonzy is recalled today not only as a towering figure on the Chicago scene but as one of the most successful blues performers of the twentieth century. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents an instructional resource that focuses on the work of artist Brandan "Bmike" Odums, a Black American artist, activist and mentor from New Orleans, Louisiana. Topics include the key artistic interventions conceived and implemented by Odums such as Project BE, Exhibit BE and Studio BE, his first museum exhibition "NOT Supposed 2-Be Here," the transformation of space through art and the transformation of an object through art.

Copyright of EU-topías: A Journal on Interculturality, Communication & European Studies is the property of Universite de Geneve, Global Studies Intitute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Museums are essential institutions of the Western culture, extended to other areas of the world due to their supreme interest. Museums appeared in Europe in the middle of the 1 8th century with the art of the collections of kings and aristocrats. They were opened to the service of artists and from the 19th century to the public in general. The current museum is usually national, except in the United States, where it maintains the original private character attributed to the generosity of their capitalist society. The museum represents the history and art of the country to which it belongs, whose collections give splendor and are a symbol of its culture. Now museums have the specific and elevated function of showing art for education and for providing the visitor with the same pleasure produced by other cultural manifestations, such as theater or music. Museums are currently valued for being opened to figures that were excluded or vetoed in the past, as women-artists, or artists from different cultures, as in USA the African-Americans and many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital-era disruption has had a significant impact on the recording industry and the business of music more generally. Digital-era music disruption draws attention to patterns of continuity within the recording industry. Notably, despite widespread use of digital technologies for the creation, dissemination, and consumption of music, core recording industry business models largely still draw from the predigital era. Recording industry business models have long been compared to other exploitative business models based on debt, including the sharecropping business. Business models in the recording industry have been a source of dispute by a broad range of recording artists, including highly successful ones such as Taylor Swift. These models have also reflected racialized patterns of extraction that have particularly disadvantaged generations of African American artists. This Article considers the impact of racialized extraction patterns in the recording industry for the racial wealth gap. It also discusses the need for alternative business and compensation models for all artists in the recording industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Country music has historically been dominated by Caucasian artists since the birth of the genre in the early 1900s. Over the years, very few African American artists have managed to break through the color barrier of the genre and find sustained success. In recent years, however, the number of black country artists securing major label record deals and experiencing chart success has significantly increased. Many African American artists are finding a foothold in the genre and building noteworthy careers. This paper explores the historical context of black artists within Nashville's country music genre, the evolution of the country market and current black artists within the genre, and how walls are finally breaking down for African American artists to find commercial success and sustainable careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on how to address discrimination in the art sector, particularly on how to prevent the elimination of African American artists and institutions from the art education curriculum. Also cited are the key role played by African American history in the advancement of racial justice and equality in the U.S., and the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies curriculum as example.

Beginning with the release of The Birth of a Nation through the mid-twentieth century, the film industry began featuring African Americans on the silver screen. The emergence of race films—major film productions made by African Americans and featuring Black artists—were frequently reported and reviewed in the Black press. This examination of the coverage of race films in three major Black newspapers, the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and Baltimore Afro-American, traces coverage of race films by the Black press between 1915 and 1950. This study builds on literature from journalism and communication studies, as well as film studies to illustrate how the Black press fulfilled its role as an advocacy press and served its mission of racial uplift through its race film coverage. It argues that Black newspapers achieved this by giving positive coverage to race films, their actors, producers, and crew members, and by unreservedly criticizing Black members of the entertainment industry if the Black press perceived that they were acting in ways detrimental to the greater cause of improving attitudes toward the Black community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]