A study in contrasts: The evolution of black art as social protest

There is no ambiguity in Emory Douglas' raw, provocative images depicting police as smelly, flabby pigs or a shadowy young boy raising the scales of justice high above his head.

"Art for art's sake" never entered the equation for the former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, who crafted a searing indictment of inequality in a language that even the most illiterate could understand.

Back then, art was part of a well-oiled community outreach machine, one that lionized Panther leaders to counteract their vilification by mainstream media. Art was harnessed in the march toward recognition, equality and self-realization.

A half-century later, contemporary black artists offer more nuanced, intellectualized social commentary, says Douglas, now 73. The struggle against systemic oppression perseveres, but the sense of urgency and fearlessness embodied in the protest environment of the 1960s and 1970s has diminished, he adds. Among the reasons: A lack of coordination in the Black Lives Matter movement, coupled with the waning influence of grassroots protest publications,

Though stimulating, modern social justice art "has no real substance," argues Douglas, who lives and works in San Francisco. "After the protest is over, it's not there. It doesn't exist."

To illustrate Douglas' point, consider the recent controversy over a painting on display at the U.S. Capitol, which shows pigs in police uniforms clashing with a street protester who resembles a panther near a black man dangling from a cross.  

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Rep. Lacy Clay, a Missouri Democrat, selected the award-winning painting by a high school student to hang in the Cannon tunnel that connects House legislative offices to the Capitol. In January, Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, deemed the work offensive and took it down. 

Clay re-hung it three times, after other Republican lawmakers followed Hunter's lead. Earlier this month, the House Building Commission voted to remove the artwork for good.  

Today, cultural historians view the Black Lives Matter movement as one of the most broad-based human rights coalitions formed since the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Yet artists tackling themes of structural racism or rampant police brutality have difficulty finding a market for their work, according to Faith Ringgold, an African-American artist best known for her narrative quilt paintings.

Ringgold's painting, "Die," for instance, a bloody depiction of a race riot inspired by Picasso's "Guernica," took nearly 50 years before it was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art last year.

"Artists today are freer to do what they please," says Ringgold, 86, who lives in Englewood, New Jersey. "They don't want the problem."

Younger black artists respond that intergenerational themes of social progress infuse their work, even if the presentation differs dramatically from that of Douglas, Ringgold and other representatives of the Black Arts Movement. The Black Panther Newspaper, once boasting a circulation of several hundred thousand, folded long ago, but Tumblr, Instagram and other social media platforms offer images of racial pride and spiritual solace updated in real time.

Sadie Barnette, a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, sees history repeating itself, further connecting her life and work to that of her father, Rodney, who founded the Compton, California chapter of the Black Panthers.

"It's my inheritance to tell this story," says the 32-year-old, who has four exhibitions running concurrently across the country. "I find myself not sure of how we exactly move forward. We absolutely must learn from the past."

Using her father's 500-page FBI surveillance file, Barnette adorns enlarged copies of black-and-white dossier with glitter, pink spray paint, rhinestones and splotches of black resembling bullet holes, uniting the personal with the political. Through this effort and others, she recognizes similarities between the Black Panthers' Ten Point Program of 1966 and the formal demands of the Black Lives Matter movement today.

"We have made progress, but there is a stark line between freedom and equality," echoes Brian Washington, an African-American artist and attorney from Cincinnati whose parents attended segregated schools. "Just because you are free does not mean you are equal."    

It took 13 years for Washington to complete "The Continual Struggle," a collection of 34 paintings of mixed charcoal documenting America's historical struggle against segregation. "The monochromatic is ageless and universal,” says Washington, 36, symbolizing "a timeless struggle.

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In one piece, humble Freedom Riders board a bus in the shadow of a Baptist church, under an ominous, swirling sky. In others, Washington paints utility poles to represent crosses, underscoring the marchers' sustained faith.

The celebrated collection is now touring at presidential libraries and museums around the country; former President Bill Clinton wrote the forward to the exhibition book. During a recent event at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Washington met the widow of civil rights activist the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Juanita Abernathy told Washington it was "the best rendition" she'd seen of the civil rights era.

The Civil Rights movement was about gaining fundamental rights. Now, those rights are on the chopping block, according to painter Peter Willams, a University of Delaware art professor.

The 64-year-old created a collection of paintings based on an African-American superhero named "N-Word" in reaction to the killings of black youth at the hands of police officers, whom he depicts as pigs and other beasts.

"It's sort of shoot first, die now," explained Williams, who makes a veiled reference to the blacksploitation films of the 1970s. He has similarly pushed the envelope by depicting black people as blackheads oozing from a white face. 

N-Word transfers the power of that emotionally charged word toward those who promulgate hate and oppression, Williams continued. Though April 1, his work will be featured in an exhibition at Towson University in Maryland. 

The Delaware Art Museum recently purchased Williams' "Smile," a semi-autographical, ambiguous work dealing with the super-ego, racial identity and structural inequality.  

Artists follow individual passions born from experience; rarely do they speak as a collective whole, according to Fahamu Pecou, an African-American artist based in Atlanta. Pecou, 41, challenges notions of black masculinity in popular culture, marrying the seemingly contradictory worlds of hip hop bravado and fine art. He sympathizes with Black Lives Matter's objectives but doesn't see his art as necessarily aligned with the movement.

Pecou grew up measuring his accomplishments by the "tragedies" he avoided — not dropping out of school, going to jail or fathering a child by age 18. As a result, he focuses his art on empowering black men as agents of change, not reducing them to gun-wielding thugs.     

Art laden with gruesome imagery that "fetishizes" violence is "as monstrous as the forces you're complaining about," he says.

Yet that contrarian voice should never be silenced, adds Pecou, who worries about free speech protections under President Donald Trump.

"As traditional outlets for expression disappear, he says, "art becomes one of the last bastions to express our grievances."

Contact Margie Fishman at (302) 324-2882, on Twitter @MargieTrende or at mfishman@delawareonline.com.