Exhibition: The Bearden Project

To mark the centennial year of Romare Bearden’s birth, begun in September 2011, the Studio Museum in Harlem has initiated The Bearden Project: an exhibition which celebrates the profound influence of this great artist on successive generations of art-makers.

Each contemporary artist represented in the show was asked to produce a work of art inspired by Bearden’s life and legacy. The artists mined a wide range of ideas and themes associated with Bearden’s career, including Modernism, urbanism, jazz and, of course, the medium of collage. The majority chose to make new works for the exhibition, while others submitted earlier works that honor or were inspired by Bearden.

There is an innovative online element to this project: Each week 10 featured artists from the exhibition will be highlighted online and high resolution images of their work will be available to view alongside their narrative of inspiration through Bearden’s work.

The Studio Museum Harlem’s exhibition is unsurprisingly not the only event to be celebrating the work of this twentieth century American master. More information about the variety of exhibitions being held across North America to celebrate can be found at beardencentennial.org, alongside information about events, and images of 100 of Bearden’s artworks each selected by contemporary artists and made available to view online.

A Voodoo Memory

Here’s your second Video of the Week installment. This week an in-depth documentary via culture unplugged.com : A Voodoo Memory. This weeks video documents the Collection of Voodoo Objects acquired by Port-au-Prince resident Marianne Lehmann during a period of  more than 30 years and was directed by Irene Lichtenstein.

“Born in Kirchberg in the canton of Bern (Switzerland), Marianne Lehmann settled in Port-au-Prince in 1957 after marrying a Haitian national. She started collecting voodoo objects in 1970, out of an early fascination for this culture and in an attempt to prevent them from being sold abroad. Over the years, she has built the most important collection in the world. A voodoo heritage reveals the beauty and signification of these pieces, highlights the link between voodoo and the emancipation of the Haitian people, and draws a unique portrait of this 70-year old woman still imbued with a youthful spirit.” (description via culture unplugged.com)

Click the image above to watch this documentary in full at culture unplugged.com

A Salon des Refusés for the 21st century

A Cape for Neg Mawon created by the Queer Arizona Crocheters for the 2nd Ghetto Biennale

What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed? The second edition of the Ghetto Biennale tests out this hypothesis. An event initiated – by the sculptors of the Grand Rue and London-based photographer and curator Leah Gordon  - in 2009 was again held in a  downtown neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince in November and December 2011. The second edition of this unique and dynamic answer to the blockbuster biennial format is once again a collaborative effort curated by Leah Gordon along with artist and founder Andre Eugene, artist Celeur Jean Herard, and assistant curators Marg Duston and David Frohnapfel.

Well-established biennials all over the world promise utopian possibilities of surpassing the inequalities of international economic and political relations. Yet these huge events seem to remain structurally centered around presenting art as a luxury commodity and continue to be as far away as ever from providing a platform for social change globally. The Ghetto Biennale counters this inherent flaw in events organized by the elite of the arts sector worldwide – relocating the biennial franchise to the Grand Rue neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, embedding it in the life of the local community where the context of this biennial event can reframe the functions and possibilities of art practice.

More information about this exciting new landmark event on the art world’s global biennial map can be found online at the 2nd Ghetto Biennale’s Official Site.

Reviews and information about participants involved in the 2011 edition can be found by clicking on the links below:

http://www.mutualart.com/OpenArticle/Making-Art-in-the-3rd-World–Haiti-s-Ghe/22E9F035C126AC4F/Events

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carine-fabius/creating-and-bleeding-in-_b_1174804.html 

http://kwocheayiti.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/yarn-bombing-neg-mawon/

http://goo.gl/ccQKJ

Video of the Week!

We here at the Black Atlantic Resource are happy to announce a new feature: Video of the Week. Each week we will aim to bring you an interesting video – posted here within our debate space – which we have found freely available online. We are doing this to highlight the amount of potential research material which is now digitized and accessible by a click of your mouse!

Here’s your first Video of the Week: Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher

Cab Calloway and His Orchestra’s hit jazz song Minnie the Moocher is used here as the soundtrack to a Fleischer Brothers’ 1932 Betty Boop cartoon. First we get to see Calloway’s signature dance moves while he conducts his orchestra, the video then cuts midway through the cartoon to a dancing ghost walrus voiced by Calloway and sporting his moves! Cab Calloway was a hugely talented American bandleader, singer and dancer who performed regularly at Harlem’s Cotton Club in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance era and later. Click here to find out more about Cab Calloway.

Aside from this the content of the cartoon, which at that time would have been produced as entertainment mainly for an adult audience, provides an interesting comment on American society of the 1930s. The cartoon’s representations of capital punishment – in light of the Powell v. Alabama ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court associated with the Scottsboro Boys case of 1931 – or what it’s depictions demonstrate about animators and audiences associations with jazz music are all telling…

If you have any suggestions for a video of the week please leave us a comment or post us another video in reply – we look forward to hearing from you!

BP British Art Displays: Thin Black Line(s)

Image via http://www.colourcode.info/

Currently showing at Tate Britain is a special one-room Focus Display entitled Thin Black Line(s) devised by artist Lubaina Himid MBE, Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire, with curator Paul Goodwin.

This display focuses on the contribution of Black and Asian women artists to British art in the 1980s. Taking as its starting point three seminal exhibitions curated by artist Lubaina Himid in London from 1983 to 1985, the display charts the coming to voice of a radical generation of British artists who challenged their collective invisibility in the art world and engaged in their art with the wider social and political issues of 1980s Britain and the world.

This exhibition is free to enter and on display until March 18 2012.

More information about this Focus Display can be accessed online at Color Code and Making Histories Visible.

New Publication: Jack Johnson Rebel Sojourner

Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line by Theresa Rundstedtler is a new publication by University of California Press now available to order online.

In his day, Jack Johnson—born in Texas, the son of former slaves—was the most famous black man on the planet. As the first African American World Heavyweight Champion (1908–1915), he publicly challenged white supremacy at home and abroad, enjoying the same audacious lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, masculine bravado, and interracial love wherever he traveled. Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner provides the first in-depth exploration of Johnson’s battles against the color line in places as far-flung as Sydney, London, Cape Town, Paris, Havana, and Mexico City. In relating this dramatic story, Theresa Runstedtler constructs a global history of race, gender, and empire in the early twentieth century.

“Theresa Runstedtler traces Jack Johnson’s fabulous, furious, iconic life across five continents and through four paradigms (race, masculinity, imperialism, and popular culture), setting a formidably high bar in the emerging genre of transnational biography. Jack Johnson: Rebel Sojourner is a groundbreaking achievement.”—David Levering Lewis, author of When Harlem Was in Vogue

“This is a brilliantly researched and original study of the transnational career of the black American boxer Jack Johnson. In lucid and engaging prose, Theresa Runstedtler traces Johnson’s travels across multiple continents, showing how Johnson’s life serves as a cultural compass for the intersecting worlds of American, British, and French empire and ideas of race at the turn of the last century. This marvelous contribution to the burgeoning literature on the popular culture of imperialism and transnationalism will find a wide and appreciative audience among scholars of empire, American history, and African American studies.”¬—Kevin Gaines, author of American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates in the Civil Rights Era.

For more information on this exciting new publication click here.

To order a copy of the book online you can visit the University of California Press or order on Amazon.

(Information via University of California Press)

30 Americans at the Corcoran Gallery of Art

Get on down to the Corcoran – only one month left to see this brilliant exhibition. There is also a 2 day symposium Inner Visions Full Circle to be held in collaboration with Howard University at their Blackburn Center beginning 20 January – registration is now open online.

30 Americans is a wide-ranging survey of work by many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades. Selected from the Rubell Family Collection, the exhibition brings together seminal figures such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Hammons with younger and emerging artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Shinique Smith. Often provocative and challenging, 30 Americans focuses on issues of racial, sexual, and historical identity in contemporary culture. It explores how each artist reckons with the notion of black identity in America, navigating such concerns as the struggle for civil rights, popular culture, and media imagery. At the same time, it highlights artistic legacy and influence, tracing subject matter and formal strategies across generations.

For more information about 30 Americans exhibition click here.

For more information about Inner Visions Full Circle Symposium and registration click here.

Independence and After Conference Podcasts Online

LC-USZ62-125505 (b&w film copy neg.) Publication may be restricted. For information see "New York World-Telegram ...,"

To mark the centenary of the birth of Dr Eric Williams and in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of independence in Trinidad and Tobago, a one-day conference INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER: DR ERIC WILLIAMS & THE MAKING OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO was held at the Institute for the Study of the Americas on the 27 September 2011. This conference explored the shaping of Trinidadian politics and society under the Williams’ administration and the legacies of this period today.

The conference was filmed and all panels are now available to view on:
http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/videos-podcasts-and-papers/independence-and-after-dr-eric-williams-the-making-of-trinidad-tobago.html

Programme below. We are grateful to the Eric Williams Memorial Collection
Research Library, Archives & Museum at the University of the West Indies,
Trinidad and Tobago for thier generous funding of this conference.

PROGRAMME

10.00-10.05 Welcome and Introduction

10.05 – 11.15 Dissecting the Man and the Myth

Paul Sutton, Reader Emeritus, Hull University, Ryan on Williams: An Appreciation and Critique

Selwyn Ryan, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Response

Colin Palmer, Schomburg Center, Response

11.30 -1.00 Politics & Ethnicity

Colin Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Oxford University, Reflexions on Race, Religion and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago either side of Independence

Brinsley Samaroo, University of the West Indies, St Augustine. Dr Williams’ Academic East Indian Concerns

Humberto Garcia Muniz, University of Puerto Rico, The Pan-Caribbeanism of Eric Williams

2.00 – 3.15 Politics & National Culture

Teruyuki Tsuji, Kwansei Gakuin University, Villaging the Nation: Eric Williams and the Engineering of National Culture

Jacqueline Nunes, London School of Economics, Voice of the oppressed or the oppressor’s tool? A quantitative analysis of the relationship between calypso and the PNM

3.15 – 4.30 Personal Reflections on Political Times

Raoul Pantin, journalist and writer, Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams: A Personal Reflection

4.50-6.00 Legacies of the Williams Era

Matthew Bishop, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, The Legacy of Eric Williams and Contemporary Trinidadian Politics

ROUND TABLE followed by open discussion: Reflections on the Williams Era Including:

Colin Palmer, Schomburg Centre, New York
Selwyn Ryan, University of the West Indies, St Augustine
Brinsley Samaroo, University of the West Indies, St Augustine

To view the above talks online click here

Via: H-Caribbean @ h-net

New Moroccan Publications at ABC

A special selection of recent titles from two new publishers at the African Books Collective: Editions du Sirocco and Senso Unico Editions. Both are from Morocco and mostly publish illustrated books on the Art and the History of Morocco and the Mediterranean but some literature is also available. Many of the books are high quality hardbacks in colour and the photography collections are of particular note. Downloadable spreads are available on the ABC site for a look inside which is highly recommended.

Included among the titles are:

Elisa Chimenti, Anthologie: 

“Her works can be compared to brilliantly polished stones… she is without question one of the greatest figures in Moroccan folklore literature.” On the fortieth anniversary of her death, Elisa Chimenti’s works are gathered together for the first time and reissued in this Anthology, which pays homage to the moving humanism of this “donna mediterranea”.

Yasmina Filali, les passagers de l’oubli:

“In a sad, rainy day, a young woman accepts a dinner invitation reluctantly. Nothing makes her expect that her destiny is taking shape…”

“Yasmina Filali’s talent and great sensibility bind us to the story of an intense life flash and make us share it. Her words, filled with poetry, are thousands of mirrors reflecting emotions that mark our memory like scars.”

Amina Aouchar, Rabat. Une Dame pour le Bouregreg:

“Rabat is a city which aims for modernity but refuses to be subjected to it. The secrecy of its stones and back- alleys preserve the city history and traditions. … mainly a photographic book, words are nonetheless important: images and words have a mutual power of elation when the eyes of the photographer and the author meet. “

Toni Maraini, Dernier the a Marrakech:

“Toni Maraini recounts her life in Morocco, her reflections on the country traditions and her meetings with the most remarkable Moroccan artists and intellectuals between 1960 and 1980. This major work pays beautiful and insightful tribute to the country, written in a brilliant and poetic way.”  Toni Maraini (Antonella Maraini), is an art historian, a writer and a poet.

To see full listings click here: Moroccan_Titles

AUBREY WILLIAMS: ATLANTIC FIRE

Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire by Leon Wainwright is now available to read in full at the Black Atlantic Resource:

The paintings of Aubrey Williams are islands of fire that have scorched their way across a range of different stories of art. One story is about the evolution of British painting in the twentieth century. Another is a story about the way in which Caribbean people have struggled and pressed for their freedom and sparked with modern creativity. Yet another story has passages on Britain and Guyana, Jamaica, South America, and the United States, pulling in all those settings around the Atlantic where Aubrey Williams lived and worked, and where he exhibited his art. It is a story about how Williams had an ability to be in several places at once in the history of art. Williams’ legacy is framed within a brilliant composite of narratives; and there his art works have remained, smouldering continually, their heat slowly building. His life story and his art cannot be located in a simple geography, either physical or cultural. Williams painted with fire, and the path that he cut is a hard one to follow…

To view the full article at the Black Atlantic Resource now click here

To view Aubrey Williams’ artist page at the October Gallery, with images exhibited at the Atlantic Fire exhibition click here

Leon Wainwright, ‘Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire’, in Reyahn King ed., 2010 Aubrey Williams: Atlantic Fire National Museums Liverpool and October Gallery, London, pp. 46-55. ISBN: 978-1-899542-30-7. Exhibition catalogue essay. Republished here with permission of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and The October Gallery, London.