Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics

by Margo Natalie Crawford

A 2008 cover of The New Yorker featured a much-discussed Black Power parody of Michelle and Barack Obama. The image put a spotlight on how easy it is to flatten the Black Power movement as we imagine new types of blackness. Margo Natalie Crawford argues that we have misread the Black Arts Movement's call for blackness. We have failed to see the movement's anticipation of the "new black" and "post-black." Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of twenty-first century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic.

Genres: Art, Race

280 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 12, 2017

Reviews

[Vinay Khosla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the chapter on black post-black abstraction

[Hollis]

This is an incredibly well-written text by an author who deftly manages attention paid to the reading of primary texts as well as archival sources providing contextual leverage for her readings. The study historicizes the Black Arts Movement while also managing productive theoretical claims concerning the aesthetic processes developed out the movement. Furthermore, Crawford's scope is ambitious, given the commitment to reading 1960s/70s art from BAM creatives as well as 21st century artists who Crawford reads as influenced by the BAM. For all the ground covered, it is a welcome surprise for the text to round out at a dense 230pp length. While I read the book from front to back, and would recommend the same for those interested in the BAM, there are some chapters worth highlighted. It would be simple to situate the BAM as the 'Black' to the 21st Century 'Post-Black,' but Crawford, in conversation with scholars like Fred Moten, instead attempts to find a Black Post-Blackness across the two periods in a constant state of becoming. She reads the mobilization of this becomingness in a couple ways, for example, as a practice of anticipation for Chapter 1 (which also makes room for the Harlem Renaissance) or strategic abstraction from Chapter 2. Chapter 6 highlights a concept of Black Public Interiority as it relates to wall murals, public art installations (by Kara Walker amongst others), and other medias that exceed the literary. And while most connect the BAM to New York City, I appreciated how Cjapter 4 focused on the BAM in the Southern US. In general, Crawford's study is a strong contribution to the study of BAM aesthetics in their historical frame as well as the continuing influence of BAM multi-media experimenting that continues to be felt in our contemporary.

[Mills College Library]

700.411 C8996 2017