African - American Art

The motifs, materials, and symbols used by African American visual artists during the sixties and later were chosen consciously to represent the African cultural and aesthetic legacy. The infuence of the African aesthetic legacy on visual artists was felt throughout the seventies and continued into the early eighties.

David Driskell writes that African American art is "often image-oriented" and that black artists as "image makers" have sought "to define the African presence in American art by creating positive images that refect favorably upon the legends and life style of African Americans." While black Americans in general exerted little or no control of their image as presented by television, radio, or film, as Driskell indicates, black artists did have control over the images they presented in their work. Thus, in compliance with the politics of the period, the writer was enjoined to become the "myth-maker of the people" and the visual artist the "guardian of the image."

The essential context for this perspective includes a complex of interrelated components: Morrison's own expressions on the importance and vital role of the ancestor in her fiction; the signal importance of the child in relation to the ancestor; and the relationship between sacrifce, ancestor, "life force, " and the concept of communion as it informs African religious thought and spirituality. First, from her own analysis of contemporary African American fiction, Morrison concludes that the absence or presence of the "ancestor" is "one of those interesting aspects of the continuum in Black or African American art."

On the cover of a recent issue of the International Review of African American Art, a new work by Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Busy Bee (1997) appears above the title for the issue: "Stereotypes: Subverted or For Sale?" Articles and interviews inside the issue address the new national conversation on race and the intense debate on the artistic use of racial stereotypes and derogatory images.