I have been reading Richard J. Powell’s study Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (Thames and Hudson, 1997), a book I first encountered several years ago: it’s a history of black diaspora visual culture, with a focus on African-American painting, sculpture, photography, and film, though it also comments on culture in Africa, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean. It is a remarkably detailed and thoughtful discussion of both aesthetics and politics, but I really appreciate the illustrations of paintings, sculpture, and photographs from films, such as William H. Johnson’s contemplative, handsome self-portrait (page 48); Aaron Douglas’s graphic mural in tribute to Harriet Tubman, a blue and gray communal scene in which a woman holds up a broken chain (page 65); John Robinson’s self-portrait, in which his head and shoulders are surrounded by paintings, his profile and consciousness are inseparable from, and possibly indecipherable without, his work (page 86); Rose Piper’s simultaneous abstract and representational painting, “Slow Down Freight Train,” a stark depiction in which a red-shirted, black-trousered man looks out on a dark landscape (101); Bob Thompson’s jazz celebration, the colorful and idyllic “Garden of Music” (104); Raymond Saunders’ 1972 painting “Jack Johnson,” which features the famous boxer as a figure of near impenetrable blackness, and seems to predict the future work of Jean-Michel Basquiat (123); Sam Gilliam’s large red and black work “Lion’s Rock Arc,” which could be an explosion of roses or blood—or simply paint (126-127); Edward Clark’s abstract, mathematical “Ife Rose” (134); and Barkley Hendricks’ finely controlled, realistic (and witty) nude self-portrait called “Brilliantly Endowed” (153). I like the talent, intelligence, and imagination in the work—and the same is true of the sculpture and photographs from film. Edna Manley’s sculpture, a pale solid figure with a raised arm, “Pocomania,” from 1936, again a work that combines the abstract and representative, remains impressive (page 72). Idealistic is the head of poet George Lamming in Barbadian sculptor Karl Broodhagen’s somewhat rough looking piece (88); and instantly recognizable is Martin Puryear’s work (165). I love film, so the photographs from Cabin in the Sky (page 93), Black Orpheus (111), Looking for Langston (210), Sugar Cane Alley (217), and Daughters of the Dust (219) are easily seductive. The man in a tuxedo walking toward a second naked man suggests desire, and possibly compulsion, as well as elegance and power, in the photo from Looking for Langston; and there is family and female strength and cultural pride in the group portrait of three women from Daughters of the Dust.
