What is Black Art?
Defining the function and purpose of Black art during the rise of the Black Arts Movement was a recurring source of debate for artists and art critics, both black and white. As “black shows,” art exhibitions exclusively featuring the work of African American visual artists, came in vogue in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the increased emphasis on African American artists’ racial identification in a period of heightened race-consciousness led many members of the American art world to grapple with the meaning of “Black” so frequently attached to descriptions of African American artistry. For cultural theorists and artists aligned with the cultural politics of Black Power, Black art, as opposed to artwork simply created by an African American artist, signified the only “relevant” artistic production in the struggle for African American self-determinacy. As such, Black art, in the view of Black Power supporters, necessarily rejects the “art for art’s sake theory” in favor of advancing art
