All language subtitles for Black.Art.In.The.Absence.Of.Light.2021.1080

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-MAN: Dear son...
-WOMAN: Daughter...

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Dear son...

MAHERSHALA ALI:
There was before you...

and then there was after.

WOMAN 2: It was only after you
that I understood this love.

ALI: And I knew then
that I must survive

for something more
than survival's sake.

I must survive for you.

-GROUP: You.
-You.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

The Black artist
in America has had to put up

with a great deal
over the years.

It's not been simply a matter
of mastering the art

while surviving as a person.

This has been the experience of
most white artists, of course.

For the Black artist,
it has also been the matter

of being taken seriously as
an artist and as an individual.

Last week, a major
historical survey of Black--

Art by Blacks in America

called Two Centuries
of Black American Art,

opened at the Brooklyn Museum
in New York.

David Driskell,
a professor of art

at the University of Maryland
and formerly chairman

of the art department
at Fisk University in Nashville,

has organized this show.

Incidentally, it opened

last year in Los Angeles
as a bicentennial exhibition,

and it drew overflow crowds.

1976, um,
doesn't seem like that long ago.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

VALERIE CASSEL OLIVER:
But it was remarkable

that David Driskell could
mount an exhibition

called Two Centuries
of Black American Art.

Because up until that point,
you really do not have

an exhibition which is
authored by a Black curator

which talks about the history...

and the contemporary
manifestations

of Black art production
in the visual arts.

It just didn't exist.

For the most part,

the general public
was not that aware

of the contributions that
African American artists

had made to American culture
in general in the 19th

or even the 20th century.

It was a surprise to most
people when you come up

with a list of 50 to 100
Black artists

who had been working
all the time.

They say, "Well, we've never
heard of these artists."

Well, of course not.

There's no publication,
there's no exhibition.

MAURICE BERGER:
What David did was he said,

"This is Black art."

It matters. And it's been
going on for 200 years.

Deal with it.

♪ (RHYTHMIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

Mr. Driskell, you take, uh,
issue with the fact

that it has been called
an exhibition of Black art,

or we have been describing it
this morning

as the history of Black art.

Why do you not think of that
as being Black art, so to speak?

Well, first of all,
when one says Black art,

it more or less isolates
the Black artist

from the mainstream
of American art.

And even though this has
happened throughout the years,

but we have critical acclaim,
historical analysis, et cetera,

the Black artist has not
attempted to set himself apart.

He has tried to be part
and parcel of the mainstream.

But aren't you setting them
apart, in effect,

by putting the show together
with just Black artists?

Only because he has not
had an audience

with a-- a majority culture
for the most part.

And because, uh,
an exhibition of this nature

gets his work before the public.

Had this exhibition not been
organized, many of the artists

who were shown here
never would have been seen.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MAURICE: The show opens

in the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art.

There was a lot of resistance,
even at that museum.

There were some who said,

"No. We shouldn't be
even involved with this."

And yet when push came to shove,
the board and the curators

agreed that Two Centuries
of African American Art

would be a good idea.

DAVID DRISKELL: I guess it was
a teaching moment for them,

at the same time that I had
a chance to really say,

"This is something
that ought to be done

because the American canon
is not complete without it."

When you understand
how difficult that was,

what a triumph it was
that it was actually done,

then you start to understand

the enormous struggle
and journey

that this country has been on
to feature and to display

and to honor the work
of Black artists.

What Driskell did
is he demonstrated,

absolutely,
that there was a lineage,

there was a history.

And that history was filled
not only with painting

and sculpture,
but also, the decorative arts.

Architecture, drawings. I mean,
it-- it-- it really gave us

this enormous sense of
the legacy of African Americans.

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

I would have been 21 years old
in '76.

Yeah. And I saw that show.

The scope of the show,
uh, the amount of work

that was available,
there was work in that show

that you had only seen
in books before.

And so, for an artist,

I mean, always seeing the work
in person,

seeing the real thing
matters a lot.

I was there.
I remember the electricity.

I remember the fact
that it was packed.

There were lines down
Wilshire Boulevard.

DAVID:
People from all over coming

for that opening and it--
it was just spectacular.

After the count was taken

and after that exhibition
closed there

and went to The High Museum
in Atlanta the next year,

they found out that more people
attended that exhibition

than any other exhibition...

originated in the United States.

So the show opens
and it travels to Dallas,

it travels to Chicago,

it travels finally
to the Brooklyn Museum.

And it sends a message.

And what it says is that
these are the manifestations

of African American artistic
brilliance over two centuries.

Artists who were
still practicing,

who were living,

Richard Mayhew, Loïs Jones,
Selma Burke, Richmond Barthé,

Charles White, Romare Bearden,
Jacob Lawrence,

when they saw all of
their work together,

it was like a homecoming.

I didn't attend the show,
I was too young.

Maybe I did,
I wouldn't remember.

But I remember the book.

The book was in my home.

It was in my sister's bedroom.

So these were images that I saw

before I could really
say the names.

They were just sort of
imprinted, um, in me.

And there was definitely
a sense of communication

and education I was getting
from those images.

Because you have to remember,
at that time,

there were very few
positive images of Black folks

that were widely available.

The artists of that time,

not only
were presenting Black people,

they were presenting
nuance, idiosyncratic,

abstract, beautiful imagery.

JORDAN CASTEEL:
I just feel a sense of belonging

when I look at this book.

My community of Black American
artists that come before me

have created the ground
for me to build on.

And that's a beautiful thing.
That's what this book

and this exhibition and what
David Driskell has done,

um, represents for me.

I grew up in a home that had
the work of Charles White...

Hale Woodruff...

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JORDAN: ...Faith Ringgold,
Elizabeth Catlett.

Those were works that
were around my, um, home,

so I felt they belonged to me.
I felt ownership of those images

because they were a part of
my intimate and immediate space.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL:
When I was
in junior high school,

I got a summer scholarship
to take a drawing class

at the Otis Art Institute.

The, uh, drawing teacher
had a book

that he put on
the opaque projector,

it was Images of Dignity:
The Drawings of Charles White.

Because prior to that, you know,

almost all of the artists
I had encountered

in our history books
were European.

When I was 15,
the first oil painting I made

was a painting-- an original
painting that I made

in the style of Charles White,
so that I could understand

exactly what it was
he was trying to do,

how he used form,
how he used color and tone,

and to try to make
an original work

that did some of the same
kinds of things that he did

without copying the work
that he had made.

You train yourself to
a certain way of seeing form

and understanding form

by copying
what somebody else did.

And at another point,
you break free from that,

because then you can
do your own thing.

When I met Charles White,

one of the things that stuck
with me that he said was that,

"Whenever you make work,
it ought to be about something,

and it ought to be about
something that mattered."

Because all of the work
I was doing

had some relationship
to the history of art.

It seemed to make a lot of sense

that it also should have a lot
in rel-- a lot to do

with the history
of Black people.

So that's what
I set myself to do.

To make pictures that had
historical relevance

in terms of the story,
the narratives they told,

but also have historical
relevance

because they had a relationship
to the way

in which the narrative
of painting

as an activity sort of
developed over time.

I think
that Kerry James Marshall has

all but redefined
the whole concept

of what Black art is about.

I would say
he had the audacity...

to concentrate on
just the Black subject

and not bring
all these other elements in.

And I think it's fascinating,
not only from the point of view

of what Black people
feel about themselves,

but it's intriguing
to whites as well.

KERRY:
In the history of painting

that we are introduced to...

you don't find many images
of Black people in pictures.

You certainly don't see
a lot of images

of Black people making pictures.

At the end of the 19th century,

and in the beginning
of the 20th century,

this notion that representation

was a useless artifact
of old-fashioned ideas

about what it meant
to make art

had sort of set in,
and people started thinking

that abstract painting is a more
advanced form of painting

than representational painting.

And that's what abstraction
sort of says, in a way,

that representing yourself
is no longer a viable approach.

But I don't look at it that way.

There's work
that needs to be done

using the Black figure
in painting as a meaningful part

of the historical narrative.

Kerry James Marshall
was a student of mine.

He made a very good sketchbook
in my class.

And he was a good artist.

One of the exercises
she had us do in that class

was to make a collage.
We did a series of collages.

You had to make a collage
and then bring that collage back

again the next week
and have it changed.

And then to bring it again
and changed again.

And then to bring it again
and changed again.

So that you never really
became too attached

to not make everything you do
seem so precious

that it can't be transformed,
that it can't be modified,

or it can't be improved.

I was very interested in, uh,
non-Western philosophies

and the spiritualism
and the images that they use.

KERRY: I had seen, uh,
Black Girl's Window before.

It was certainly an image
that was in the back of my mind.

When I looked back at that work,

it certainly has a relationship
to a painting I did in 1980

that was really transformative
for me

and it really sort of set me

on the path to doing the work
that I'm doing now.

And I made a painting called

A Portrait of the Artist as
a Shadow of His Former Self.

Which is a Black figure
against a black ground.

And it was the first time
I had used this simplified,

kind of reductive representation
of a Black figure.

And so that painting was the--
the one that established

the Black figure as a mode
of operating for me.

One of the things I was trying
to do was to embody in a picture

the concept that Ralph Ellison
had laid out

in his novel, Invisible Man.

He describes the condition
of invisibility

as it relates to Black people
in America.

This condition of being seen
and not seen simultaneously.

And that's what I think
a Black figure

against the black ground,

where if you change the color
temperature of the black,

it creates enough separation
so that you can alternately

see and then sometimes not see

the figure that's present there.

I started creating the sense
of volume in those figures

by using the grayscale.

So, uh-- You take black,
you add white to it,

you can create a grayscale,

and then you can actually start
doing modelling,

you know, with--
with values.

Black is not the absence
of color,

black is particular
kinds of color.

And so if I went
to the paint store, as I did,

and I bought black paint,

I could see I could buy
three different variations

of black paint.

So I could buy an ivory black,
I could buy a carbon black,

and I could buy
an iron oxide black,

or something
that's called Mars black.

And if you look at each one
of those colors,

they are not the same thing.

This is the full range
of the black flesh tones.

There are seven.

Every one of these tones
is on those-- the later figures.

Every one of these colors
is on there.

But, I mean,
they all look the same,

but when you stack them on top

of each other,
then the-- the variations

start to become more pronounced.

So I can end up with six,
seven, eight or nine

different colors
that are all made from black.

So that means I have a palette

that's as complex and as broad
and as ranged

as any other color
that's on the spectrum.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KERRY: I think, in general,
the paintings had been
really well received.

But there's a lingering
controversy around

the sort of unequivocally Black,

kind of emphatically
Black figures.

I wouldn't have done them
if I didn't feel it.

But I tend to think
having that extreme, uh, color,

that kind of black,
is-- is amazingly beautiful.

There's a lot of overlap
in terms of structure

between the way
artists handle color

and the way musicians
handle color

and note and tone
and all this.

Because we use the same
kind of language, basically.

It's tone, it's texture,
it's color. It's intensity.

And it's-- it's all basically
the same sort of
structural language.

I found my own sound.
I found my own tone.

Very often, something that
we wouldn't even consider major,

like a family picnic,
or the barbershop,

how we live, what we do.

He kind of popularized
the ordinary.

And in so doing, he made it
his own personal statement.

We see ourselves in
so many different ways.

'Cause he's looking at every
aspect of our being.

♪ (QUIET JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

VALERIE:
The first major exhibition

that focuses on Black art
or cultural production,

before Two Centuries
of Black American Art

is Harlem on My Mind
by The Met in 1968.

Which received a huge backlash
from the community itself.

Why? It was not authored
by anyone who looked like

the subjects of that exhibition.

It framed it almost in
an anthropological framework,

which was the sights
and sounds of Harlem

from the 1900s to 1968.

It did not take into account

the wealth of cultural and
artistic production emerging.

That was, uh, shocking.

For all of the desires
of the curators,

they are missing the mark.

REPORTER: Mr. Hoving, what
do you think of the exhibit?

-Well, I personally like it.
-REPORTER: Why?

I like it because
I think it is true.

I think
it is an honest portrayal

of a very difficult subject,
which is millions of people

living in one area,
a large area of New York City,

over a period of about 70 years.

REPORTER: Some people,
especially some Harlem citizens

have criticized the exhibition

and said it's not art,
it's all photography.

They said that Harlem people,
Harlem-born people,

were not intimately involved.

They said it's too slick,

and that it lacks sensitivity.

Well, I know some people
have said that.

On the other hand, uh,
there have been others,

that have been on
the advisory committee

and working for many,
many months

who said that they thought
it was, uh, moving,

and they thought it was, uh,

powerful
where it should be powerful

and, uh, soft and lyrical
where it should be.

Again, this is, uh, these
diametrically opposed opinions.

We're going to get
a lot of that.

And, uh, I think that's good.

Harlem as a kind of fanciful,
mystical magical subject

was fine for
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But the artists
who were doing the work,

who were walking the walk,

were somehow
irrelevant to the story.

MARY SCHMIDT CAMPBELL:
With one exception.

And that exception is that
they included the photographs

of James Van Der Zee.

The fact that they included him
turned out to be a revelation.

Because Van Der Zee's work
documented much of the cultural

day-to-day life of Harlem.

The rituals and ceremonies
of people who lived there.

And his name became
a name we all knew,

and the content of what he did
became known to people.

DAVID: My reaction was that

if The Metropolitan Museum
wanted to really

give a real depiction
of what Black artists

had been doing in the period

of the Harlem Renaissance
and thereafter,

why not deal with the art?

Doing The Two Centuries
gave me the chance

to, uh, bridge the gap
to a certain extent

between what,

uh, I thought The Met should
have been doing from day one.

MARY:
People like Romare Bearden,

Benny Andrews,
were out protesting,

as well as people
from the community,

because it was not
reflective of Harlem.

MAURICE:
Why are museums so resistant

to opening their doors
to artists of color

and particularly
African Americans artists?

For the first time,
perhaps ever,

I think people really start
to think of their museums

as being their museums,
as belonging to them

in a different way.

Faith Ringgold was a prime
agitator in this time period.

She was protesting
at The Whitney,

protesting at The Met,
protesting all around the city.

FAITH RINGGOLD:
We are Black. But we are equals.

I believe thoroughly and
completely in freedom of speech.

And no one's going
to change that.

I'll just stay out
till I get in.

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MARY: I met Faith Ringgold,

when I was in graduate school
at Syracuse.

And what I heard was this,

that she had gone to
The Studio Museum in Harlem

and tried to get a show.

And, um, Studio Museum
did not give her a show.

Um, for whatever reason.

They weren't a lot of women
back in those days

who were getting, um,
solo exhibitions at the museum.

And she had all these
big paintings

she was-- couldn't get
shown, uh, in New York.

And so she started doing
these, uh, soft sculptures.

And she would take
the soft sculptures

and she would lecture
on women artists.

Not only Black women artists,
but on women artists in general.

Because she understood
that it wasn't just an issue

about Black artists,

it was an issue of gender
as-- as well as race.

I was not invited to sit down
with the men

who were in the struggle
with me.

I realized I was really
doing the right thing

by becoming a feminist,

and trying to start a feminist
movement in the art world.

Faith Ringgold is an artist
who hasn't received

the recognition she deserves,

in part because of the form
that she decided to use,

but also because of
just how incendiary

her political style was.

Her paintings in particular.

Her political work also
had such an invective,

that some places weren't
willing to be that radical.

I did what I wanted to do,
and, uh, paid the price.

I think it's also partly
that she is...

extremely courageous,
ahead of her time.

Very fierce in her work,
loving in her work.

She doesn't accept
anyone else's leadership

about how art should be.

Which by the way, I think is
what it means to be an artist.

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DAVID: One of the great
American artists,

Richard Mayhew, was part
of Two Centuries.

His work was a continuum
of sorts.

It was in the tradition

of the great Black American
landscape painters.

Of Bannister, of Duncanson,

of others that we think of when
we say, "America the Beautiful."

RICHARD MAYHEW: My paintings
were based on mood space,

feeling of time,
and mood of the moment.

It's a joy. It's like a dance.

They look like landscapes,
but they're mindscapes.

(CHUCKLES)

So what we mean by mindscape
is it was all internalized

thinking and feeling.

I started painting
very, very young.

I-- I used to see painters,

and I used to go to the museum
and watch them paint.

And it was fascinating, watching
the magic wand as you call it,

a dip in the paint

and images come out
the other end... (LAUGHS)
on the canvas.

So that kind of thrilled me
just seeing that

and that kind of
challenged me about

the whole idea of painting.

The mystique
and the magic of it.

Well, I was drawing all
the time, constantly drawing.

How I learned to draw
I can't imagine that,

because I could draw almost
anything as in-- Very early--
very early on.

I went to study
at The Art Academy

in Florence, Italy

and I went to study at
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

I met Spiral
when I came back from Europe.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

SARAH LEWIS: In 1963,
Mayhew joined The Spiral Group,

founded by painters
Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis

in response to the civil
rights struggle.

They discussed the plight
of Blacks in America

and the direction
African American art

should take.

The, uh, legacy that
they've left is unbelievable...

and very special people.

So they weren't just artists,

these were the mentors of
the future of American society.

SARAH: Spiral began
in Romare Bearden's studio.

The fifth floor
of his Canal Street loft.

Spiral came into being in 1963

at the height of
the civil rights movement.

And in fact, they got together

because there was an idea
that, uh, there should be

a group of Black artists

who should go to
the March on Washington.

SARAH: The question became
how can artists

engage with the civil
rights movement?

Artists who were working
in abstract means

and artists who were
more overtly political.

And Spiral was trying to
find a way to create a bridge

between these two
seemingly separate worlds.

And it was really
the first major group

of Black artists that
assembled since the 40s.

And when they got together,
they really discovered

that they had an enormous
amount to talk about.

So there was Hale Woodruff,
Charles Alston,

Richard Mayhew, Romare Bearden.

I think Emma Amos
was the only woman... (SCOFFS)

they permitted into the group.

I tried to join Spiral,
and they told me no.

Didn't you write a letter
to Romare Bearden

-asking to join?
-Yes, I did. Yes, I did.

-MICHELE WALLACE: Actually,
what he did...
-Oh, actually--

-...was critic your work.
-Yeah, that's what he did.

-MICHELE: He never responded
to the question.
-Absolutely.

-It's coming back to--
-MICHELE: Basically, he said,

"You need to go back
to the drawing board,"

and the final lines were
something like,

"In time, your works will find
its own friends."

There you go, yes.

And I didn't ask them
for a critique.

I-- I-- I was-- I had
all the credentials they had
and more.

SARAH: The fact that
Norman Lewis is part of it,

for me,
is an important signal here.

Norman Lewis asked
a question of those gathered

at one of the meetings,
"Is there a negro image?"

is how he put it.

What is a Black aesthetic?
Is there one? Right?

The fact that Norman Lewis
was asking the question
for me is interesting

because if you teach
the history of modernism,

you have to teach about
Normal Lewis' work.

He becomes a kind of metaphor
for how difficult it is

to engage with
Black abstraction.

Norman Lewis was one
of the artists from Spiral.

He was involved
with spiritual painting.

You're not painting
on the canvas,

you're inside the canvas,

you're inside the painting,
painting out.

When I met this group,
it wasn't just artists.

It was composers and writers,

and those who came
and met with this group.

And that was fantastic.

Reginald Gammon was
a-- a graphic designer.

He taught Romare Bearden
how to do paste-ups,

cut out Xerox pieces
and pasting them together.

That was the first
Romare Bearden collage.

Now, the gallery saw what
Romare Bearden was doing

and they clapped and applauded

the fact that, "Oh, this is what
you should continue to do."

So he took off in that direction

and that was the beginning

of the whole collage development
that was taking place.

The story that I've heard
is that Romy, um,

brought this brown bag of scraps
to one of the meetings one day,

and he tried to get
some of the artists

interested in doing a collage.

Uh, Norman Lewis,
Emma Amos, Mayhew,

and-- and he said none of them
could really--
were really into it.

Um, he said they all were doing
their own thing.

And he didn't mean
that pejoratively,

he just meant
that nobody was interested

in this collaborative work.

So Romy continued to work
on his collages.

And one of the artists
from Spiral came

and saw the work and said,

"You know what?"
That-- it was Reginald Gammon.

He said, "You ought to
photograph that and blow it up."

And so that's how he came upon
taking those small collages

and blowing them up.

And they became his projections,
which was the work that, um,

he really-- really, uh--
It was a milestone for him.

DAVID: I started working on
this piece last week,

and, uh, wasn't sure as to
where I was gonna take it.

Bearden was the main
inspiration for my collage work.

And, uh,
I did a piece in-- in the 70s...

after he came to visit me
at Fisk.

And I called it
Homage to-- to Bearden.

And, uh, I exhibited it
in New York in 1980.

He came to the exhibition
and he saw it.

And, uh...

he said, uh, "I'm taken
with the notion that you

like what I do well enough
to kind of celebrate it."

He said, "But what you're
doing there is not David,

it's-- it's more of Romy."

And he went over to another
piece that I had done...

(CLEARS THROAT)

in which I had
torn the pieces, you know,

he cut his out a lot.
I had torn the pieces.

And he said, "Now that's--

You're using collage there,
and that's you."

He said, "That's your voice."

And, you know, only a friend
would tell you that.

Hilton Kramer,
who was the art critic

for the New York Times

has had a rather mixed review
of your show,

saying that it was not generally
of the highest quality.

-Does that disappoint you?
-No, not at all.

I expect that from
what one refers to
as a mainstream critic.

Uh, because in many cases,
these persons are not familiar

with what we might refer to
as a Black experience,

they never had the experience
of knowing what it was like

to, uh, suffer injustices, uh--
Knowing what it's like to live

in the poverty that many
of these artists

have experienced,
and consequently,

they have no real sensitivity.
No real feel

for what it has taken
for these artists

to achieve what they've, uh,
achieved at this time.

I got to throw out props to--
to David Driskell at this moment

because he got all sorts of
flak from the New York Times,

from various mainstream media.

People-- People who are
supposedly authorities on art,

who did not know anything
about African American art,

and he provides this
very, very important lesson

on looking at African American
art historically,

looking at African American art
in a more complex way...

And he fought, you know,
real resistance

on the parts of institutions

to say there is something else
that we can show.

There is something else
that we can engage with

that shows a much
more complex side

of both modernism
and American art.

No one had been accustomed
to seeing Black artists,

Black historians on television

talking about Black art.
They'd say, "Black art?

What is it?"
Even the critics, Hilton Kramer,

who was just so taken
with the notion

that we had the audacity
to be talking about Black art.

And my response was,

"Hilton Kramer?
Who is Hilton Kramer?"

It wasn't an exhibition
that was supposed

to do everything for everybody.

It wasn't supposed
to include everybody.

It was supposed to be
a cross section of work

that had been made in
the United States

over the past 200--
over the 200 years up
until that time.

The selection process
was not an easy one.

Uh, first of all, you realize
that you're gonna be

subjecting yourself to criticism
because people are gonna say,

"Why did you leave
such and such a person out?"

"Why did you choose this one
over that one?"

I mean you have to accept that

when a curator does
an exhibition sometimes,

I mean, they-- By definition,
it's gonna be limited

to the scope that
the curator has imagined.

And if it doesn't include
everything I like,

that's not particularly
problematic for me

because I expect
that there would be

other exhibitions to follow.

I think it was probably

the first major
modern exhibition...

uh...

which brought
the Black subject period

to the attention
of the American public.

I came up with the notion that
in order to do it properly

and to do it historically,

I ought to talk about
the fine arts tradition

of portrait artists, and artists
like Joshua Johnston

from Baltimore
in the late 1700s, early 1800s.

The assumption was
that Black artists, uh...

There were no Black artists,
first of all,

but those who considered
themselves artists

were not capable,
intellectually or practically,

of delivering a product

that fitted the so-called
European canon.

And so when artists
like Johnston came along,

people started buying
his portraits.

Artists like Robert Duncanson
came along

and people saw the beautiful
landscape and said,

"Oh, he's painting within
the boundaries

of the Hudson River School
tradition."

Edward Mitchell Bannister
a little later,

and they said, "Well,
he is very much like

the Barbizon painters
out of France."

RADCLIFFE BAILEY: Those artists
from the past really

influenced my work.

But I think
it's important for us,

those that are younger,
to constantly mention

and bring up the names

of those that have
opened doors before us.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

RADCLIFFE: I am an artist,
Black artist.

African American artist.

And I am an artist
just in general.

I wanted to go to collage
and play baseball.

I wanted to play ball.

Then I realized
that that was a dream.

And, um, I went back towards
where my mother guided me.

And I ended up
going to art school.

I went to art school thinking

that I was going to study
something like graphic design.

And then I heard a lecture, um,
from an artist.

And I remember...

hearing about the artist
talking about his work

and he was having so much fun
that I said, "No,

I need to make-- make art,
make objects."

And then I just went
full throttle towards it.

I see myself as a vessel
and things come through me.

I found an old piano shop
in my neighborhood,

and I just remember these guys
tearing out these piano keys

and throwing them away.

And it just struck me like,
"No, don't throw those away."

So I collected maybe about...
close to 500 sets of piano keys.

And, uh, I didn't know what
I was gonna do with them.

But I remember bringing
them in the studio

and dropping them on the floor.

And right then and there,
that was the piece.

And, uh, the piano keys
basically turned into ocean.

And-- and I was thinking about
the connections

between the oceans.

So it was a combination of that,
plus the experiences of me

as a kid going fishing
with my father.

And my father would go so far
out into the sea

to a point where
we couldn't see land.

And it just reminded me of that
experience of being lonely,

but that's also based on those

that were lost at sea, um,
during the Middle Passage.

And the figure itself
was like a bust that is, uh...

It was like a death mask.

He loves the materials
that he's using.

And it's paint and it's glass,
and it's photographs,

and it's bit of paper,
and it's fabric.

And he has an ability to

bring all of those
fragments together.

It's telling a story.
It's telling us about our past.

And it's telling us something
about where we're going.

Radcliffe Bailey, for me,
kind of represents

the wonder and joy, uh,
of an artist.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

RADCLIFFE:
This is where I pray.

This is where I think about
the future.

I think about the past,
I ask questions.

I have to separate myself
from everyday life...

when I start working.

So I have to tune out everybody,
everyone.

Um, it's usually sometimes--
it's in the middle of the night.

It's probably around midnight.

And then I kinda come in here

when I can actually hear
nothing moving around.

I just wanna create beauty.

Oil painting is about light.

The obsession with light
is at once visual,

religious and erotic.

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The fact that you could take
a hairy stick and colored paste

and through the act
of your mind and your hand,

you cook something
into being that-- that stands in

as a representative
of someone that you love.

A landscape that you like.

There is something al--
It's like alchemy.

This week,
the official portraits
of former president Barack Obama

and his wife Michelle
were revealed.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

To be the first
African American painter,

to paint the first
African American president

of the United States
is absolutely overwhelming.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

I think that canvas portrait
of Obama

in the National Portrait Gallery
is, um...

it's both-- it's both beautiful
and it's a challenge.

What I was always struck by,
whenever I saw his portraits...

was the degree to which
they challenged

our conventional views
of power and privilege.

MAURICE: There's
something about that portrait

which is really, um,
rich and full and exciting

in a way that none of the other
portrait of presidents are.

I-- I googled portraits
of presidents

and there they were.
All of them.

All of the terrible, terrible
portraits of presidents

and they were mostly really
conservative and really boring,
and--

And it got me thinking
about how really far

the envelope got pushed.

I think what Kehinde understood
was the stakes were different.

When you have two centuries

of straight, white men
who are president,

and then you have Barack Obama,

that portrait better
be different.

There were a number of issues
that we were trying
to negotiate, um...

I tried to negotiate
less grey hair.

I tried to negotiate
smaller ears.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

-BARACK OBAMA:
Struck out on that as well.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

I showed up in 2016

while he was still
in the Oval office.

Incredibly nervous.

Uh, and trying to get words out
to communicate what it is

that I could bring
to the picture that's new.

That's different
from those paintings

that you see in the museums

and that's different
from all the contemporary art

that you see today.

I think I must have
said something right

because I got the gig.

But ultimately, uh, what I tried
to communicate was that

I will be looking not only
at the presidency,

or the history
of received power,

or the evolution
of power's form,

but rather, I would be looking
at him as a man.

His physical presence
in the world.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

The first thing I did when
I found out that--

that I was chosen

was I'd go online and, like,
look at the millions of images

of Michelle
and the kind of person

that she presented to the world,
and then, you know,

wanting to capture something
really private.

It's about capturing that moment

when they're giving you
something different,

or where they're a little
more relaxed,

and that can happen
in a split second.

BERNARD LUMPKIN: Amy Sherald
did not become a household name

until she painted the portrait
of the First Lady
Michelle Obama.

Tell us how game-changing
this moment is?

I am relieved... (CHUCKLES)

that, um, I can pay back
my school loans.

You know, it's something that--

I mean becoming an artist
is not empirical,

so it's not about hard work.
I mean, you have to
put the work in,

but that doesn't mean that
you're going to make it

and then the breakthrough comes
and then you're like,

"Oh yeah, that's who I am.
Like, this is who I am. Yeah."

With that commission...

Amy, literally inspired
by the person Michelle Obama,

creates this image which is not
only deeply Michelle Obama,

I mean that is her--
You know, the whole...

Her whole gesture, the whole--
the beautiful fashion.

She created such an incredible
image of a powerful,

beautiful Black woman.

It's become a--
an international symbol.

That-- That-- And that shows
the power of an image.

Here's part of what
the former First Lady,

Michelle Obama, said at
the unveiling of her portrait.

-Sure.
-Take a listen.

I am also thinking about
all of the young people,

uh, particularly girls
and girls of color...

who, in years ahead,
will come to this place

and they will look up
and they will see an image

of someone who looks like them
hanging on the wall

of this great
American institution.

AMY SHERALD: I think for me,
little Parker Curry,

being captivated
by that image of Michelle

and seeing her
own greatness in it

and being able to go
into a space

and realize that
there were people

that existed before her,
whose legacies were so great

that they've been archived
in this institution,

and it was a woman.

Um, for her to walk away
with that sense

of being is really important.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

AMY: I see myself as
an American realist,

which maybe some people
would disagree with.

My artistic process,
the impetus of it,

is really my life.

I think
the most interesting work

that is being made

has that autobiographical
affect to it.

It's really been about writing
a visual diary of me

trying to figure out who I am
as a person, as an individual.

I consider the people
in my paintings archetypes.

They represent something
that's bigger

than who they are
as an individual.

It's important for me that

they're just Black people
being Black.

BERNARD:
There is something

which people have written about
in Amy Sherald's paintings,

which is the gaze.

Her figures are often faced

with a very strong,
fixed gaze at the viewer.

And people have written a lot
about and she's talked about

what that means
and what's happening there.

And one of things
that's happening is

she's depicting,
or representing,

in some way, the gaze that,

you know, of the--
the white, dominant culture

has on-- has on Black bodies.

That sense of always being
looked at

through the eyes
of someone else.

That sense of a doubleness
of identity.

Your African self.
Your American self.

And so I think painters
are very interested

in representing that gaze.

The eyes tell you
what's in the soul and for me,

the people that I paint,

they're no longer themselves
in the painting.

They are these archetypes
that know they are present.

These aren't passive portraits.

They're maybe subversively, um,
confrontational, if you will.

But it's definitely a response
to a lot of images I saw
growing up

where our gaze
was always averted,

or thinking about the fact

that you couldn't look at
a white person in the eye.

You know, so this is my way
of nodding my head

to that narrative, and
empowering the image in a way.

And so,
I like the paintings, um,

hung a little lower
for that reason,

so when the viewer walks up,
it's more of a...

of a--
it's a different conversation.

Like you're not
looking up at it.

It's almost looking
directly at you.

And I think that creates
a different kind of sensation.

MARY: She gives us this image
of a person.

And what's interesting
is that almost always,

they're not painted in, um,
their actual skin tone.

They may be kind of charcoal
or blueish.

So already, she's alerted you
to the fact that,

"I'm painting what appears to be
something that's super-real."

But in fact,
I am giving you clues

that this is just an exterior
that has been constructed

and that, in fact,
behind this exterior,

there is also this world.

So she puts
the exterior-interior, I think,

into kind of a real tension
on her paintings.

For that reason,
I can just stand in front

of one of her paintings for,
you know, hours. (LAUGHS)

I think a lot of galleries
are now picking up Black artists

because there is this, you know,
like, gold rush.

I say that it's because
we're making

some of the best work
and the most relevant work.

I think there is absolutely,
kind of,

something happening right now,
but I'm also--

I always really want to
not, kind of, make this moment

seem so singular and special.

Because I think we-- There have
always been Black artists.

There have always been
Black curators.

There have always been
Black collectors.

They just perhaps have not been
part of the mainstream.

♪ (HIP HOP MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ It's me, snitches ♪

KASSEEM DEAN: Art and music
are brothers and sisters.

I got into collecting
by accident.

Collect what you feel.
Collect what you love.

The Dean Collection is
promoting, uh, living artists.

African Americans
have to tell our own story.

The work is amazing.

I am definitely
not just a collector.

I love being a disruptive.
I love activism.

Coming from the Bronx

and coming into money,
uh, very early.

I got the bug.
And then what I did was

I started going around, uh,
to local galleries.

Most of the galleries used to,
uh, not take me serious.

Baggy pants, braids.

But I didn't let that, um,
deter me.

♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪

MICHELE:
I admire Swizz Beatz and Alicia.

Because Swizz has allowed
himself to be positioned

as an African American collector
of African American art.

And he and Alicia
are about the culture.

Swizz and, um, Puff Daddy

and, uh, Jay-Z and Beyoncé
are collecting now.

Um, it really, um,
elevates the game.

And there're a lot of people
who look at what they're doing

and what--
what is important to them.

Over the last few years...

uh, Swizz has built a collection
of Gordon Parks' photographs

that is unequaled
in private hands.

In fact, it is
the largest collection

of Gordon Parks photographs.

All we want to do is preserve
a piece of, uh, Gordon's legacy

for the next generation
to have access to it.

The Dean Collection
started out

as this imaginary museum
for my kids.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KASSEEM:
And then, what happened was

I started posting artists, um,
on my Instagram

that people weren't
familiar with.

And then I started getting, uh,
people writing me back saying,

"Man, I appreciate you,
thank you," this, that.

I'm like, "No,
thank you for what?"

Like, "Your work is great."
"No, my show sold out.

Galleries that wouldn't
talk to me are calling me now."

Then I started understanding
the importance

of promoting living artists.

They used to laugh at me
for collecting art.

I've been having fun with this
for 20 years.

♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪

KASSEEM: The Kaws piece
and the Kehinde piece

were the two pieces

that kinda, like, started
the Dean Collection.

Nobody ever thought that this
sculpture would be in a house.

This is the first time
a sculpture like this

is under a roof.

Well, this is-- this is
from the Laying Down series.

The fact that somebody's hand,
like the t--

A human's hand, did this,

and it looked like
he just did it yesterday.

I can't show this piece enough.

You know, we put
the Dean Collection museum

on our property, uh,
so the public can--
can see the collection.

This is Hank Willis' ball.

We have artist of all colors
from all around the world.

When someone buys your work,

it's not ever really about
the money for an artist,

it's about the vote
of confidence.

It's really someone saying,
"Keep doing what you're doing.

I'm making space for you
to make new things."

And what's exciting about
Karen Jenkins-Johnson,

Swizz Beatz, uh, Bernard Lumpkin

and many, many amazing
African American collectors

that I've gotten to engage
with over the years,

is that they have a--
a joy, a verve,

um, an enthusiasm for the work,

um, that really is affirming,

that really
gives you confidence.

I think
it's absolutely necessary

that Black people with money
buy African American art.

VALERIE:
It's important when they see

Beyoncé and Jay-Z in The Louvre.

It's important when they know
that P. Diddy

has acquired a
Kerry James Marshall.

They see the people that they
celebrate and admire doing that,

and hopefully,
that is an imprinting.

Art is to be collected.
It is to be lived with.

It's part of a quality of life.

The collectors,
or the patrons, or supporters

of really good art, really have
to have a kind of a vision.

And have to have a kind
of a mindset that says,

"I want to engage with something
that-- that may not be

universally appreciated
or loved,

but I see power in that,
I see potential in."

I'm always grateful
that people collect my work, um,

but I'm also grateful
when people give museums,

institutions, funds to bring
that work
into public collections.

Because that's the way that,
you know, I, as a young artist,

got to see the work.

Not in people's houses,
but in museums, you know.

So I think its super important
that Black collectors,

or any collectors really,
think about public institutions.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

FRED WILSON:
I go into an institution

and just absorb that place.

Uh, and for me, it's about
looking at everything

and talking to everybody.

I look at their collections
as much as I can,

and I talk to everybody from
the, you know, the maintenance

to the chairman of the board.

It's often not what anyone says
specifically, in--

in conversation,
it's what they don't say,

that gives me some, you know,

ideas about what's going on
in the museum

that creates the image
that the public sees.

I'm just using the museum
as my palette, basically.

I usually have a notebook

and I just write down things
during the period of research.

It's, you know, things that
I see, that I want to see again,

objects, images.

And so, from that,
I build the exhibition.

What you see or view
is one thing

but what people have
in storage...

you know,
can be entirely different.

It brings up questions.

Whereas the public only sees
what is created for them

and those--
those kind of incongruities

are all smoothed out.

And I'm seeing what's
not being discussed,

that may not be of interest
to the curator

or part of their scholarship.

It's the underbelly,
it's what the museum-- It is,

but it is not what they're--
they're putting out
to the public.

Museums now understand that they
need to tell a counternarrative

about American life
and about Black art.

They need to correct
what stories haven't been told

through their
collecting practices.

Through the displays that--

Through the exhibitions
that they've had.

♪ (HIP HOP MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KEHINDE WILEY:
In 1994, I was 17 years old

and I see Thelma Golden's
Black Male exhibition.

And it was life changing.

Here for the first time,
you're seeing Black masculinity

not as something on television
that's menacing,

or at arm's length,

but rather artists embracing it
as the subject matter.

Another color on their palette.

It was mind blowing.

An exhibition that
really tore down

the meaning
of the Black body itself.

GLENN LIGON: Thelma asked me
to participate in that show

at the Whitney.
It was all kinds of artists

of all races, all genders,
who were dealing with

Black muscularity
as a subject matter.

It was really, really engaged
with notions of identity,

but in a provocative way
around gender and sexuality

and race in this kind of
surreal melding and--
and fusion.

DAVID: There had been all
of this talk about

a negative aspect
of Black lifestyle,

and especially amongst men.

When an exhibition
was put together

which represented so much
of what people did not know...

about the African American male,
it was a shock.

And yet it was a revelation,

because nothing like that
had been presented

in the museum before.

To show the nuances, the beauty,

the allure and loathing,
if you will,

that comes with
the Black male body

in particular...

was very important to put that
into the larger conversation.

The fears
of otherness are so played out

most often around this notion
of Black masculinity,

that I think it's very important
that in looking at it,

we understand much of what comes
to be racism or even sexism

or even the homophobia
that exists in this culture.

MAURICE:
I think what a lot of people

don't remember,
even folks in the art world,

is that back in the early 90s,
it was still very difficult

to, uh, pull off a show
with African American content

at a mainstream art museum

mostly because the curators
in that museum

weren't interested

or, in the case of something
like Black Male,

it would engender controversy
in a very mixed audience.

It's an historical show. I mean,
it's a show that now has been,
you know,

in hindsight considered
highly historical

despite the reaction,
you know, at the time.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

There was a Lyle Ashton Harris
picture in the tutu,

which was incredibly disturbing
at the time

and alluring at once.

It-- It looked at the body
as a site of strength.

It looked at masculinity
as a site of performance.

It looked at femininity
as-- as an invention.

And it really threw open
this question of,

how does choice become
the central role of the artist?

I think people were shocked, um,

by just the-- Maybe the boldness
and the rawness of the works.

It's speaking your truth.

It's not so much trying
to make the work stand out,

as opposed to trusting
your process, your ideas,

and your inner guidance.

I think, in retrospect,
people look back at Black Male,

and realized that Thelma
was really on to something.

And what came out of it
was a really definitive work

on the meaning of Blackness
and maleness in visual culture.

♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪

MAURICE: In a survey
of major American museums,

it was determined
that 85 percent of artists

in major American art museum
collections are white.

If you break down the number
of artists of color

in those collections,
it's 1.2 percent Black.

If the person sitting
at the table
in a curatorial meeting,

or the people sitting
at that table are all white,

you're gonna have a problem.

You're gonna have a problem
of interpretation.

You're gonna have a problem
in terms of trying to figure out

what you're doing
right or wrong,

and most importantly,
you're gonna have a problem

in terms of the work
you're gonna select.

If all of the critics writing
are white,

the same problem exists...

until the institutions
become more diverse.

And it's happening.

You're beginning to see young
brilliant curators of color

assume pretty important roles
in American museums.

But until that happens
in a widespread way...

and-- or until white critics
and curators and journalists

look into themselves...

research the world around them,

and look into the past
openly and honestly

until they change,
until they're open minded,

it's not gonna change
as fast as it needs to.

I feel like it is important
for us to own our own culture

as African Americans,
because it is our culture.

And we hate the way people--
other people tell our story.

There's always flaws in it
because they didn't live in it.

Most of the--
the primary institutions,

most of the cultural
institutions have been behind.

They've been behind in film.
They've been behind in TV.

They've been behind in
popular culture generally.

They've been behind in,
you know, in museums

and sort of cultural
institutions.

They're simply behind.

There are more exhibitions

featuring
African American artists,

Black artists,

whether they're
African American or not.

Um, there are more exhibitions
featuring women.

Those are exhibitions.

They don't always translate
into acquisitions.

I always,
when I go around to museums

and I see the work
of Black artists up,

I do this little game
where I look at the wall label

and look at
the acquisition dates.

And when I look at those dates,
I find in a lot of museums

that they're very recent.

So I think institutions
do have a long way to go

in terms of catching up.

Now I guarantee you
they're selling off pieces

to get some color
in those museums

to balance that scale.

So it is only a matter of time
that greatness, uh,

will shine through.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

MARY:
We love heroes.

We love celebrities.
We love "the one."

It is just part of our culture.

It's-- It's our culture
in music.

It's our culture in visual arts.

It's our political culture.

It-- You know-- We just--
We just like superheroes.

RICHARD J. POWELL:
Jean Michel Basquiat emerges,
uh, in the art world

in the early 1980s.

This was a moment where
the art world was kind of--

they were kind of hungry

for something fresh,
something exciting,

something different,
something youthful.

He is also doing work
that really kind of grabs

at certain kind of notions
of the street,

and of the urban decline
that we're all experiencing

towards the end
of the 20th century.

I think he changed
the conversation in a big way.

He just got
a lot of publicity, uh,

from being around
the right people at that time.

The meteoric rise of his career
was un-- unprecedented for--

In terms of Black visual artist.

And this is also the moment

when many of these
younger artists,

um, like Glenn Ligon,
and Lorna Simpson,

and Kara Walker are
in art school.

And so by the time
we get to the early 1990s,

when they explode, I think
that Basquiat's legacy

and his-- and the message
he sends to the art world

is something that they are
the beneficiaries of.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MARY:
I remember distinctly going

to the Whitney to see
a Kara Walker exhibition.

I was struck by several things.

One, she has such
an incredible mastery

of that medium
of the silhouettes.

And she has that, um,
attentiveness to her materials

and-- and representation,
and the sense of space,

and design,
and dramatic scenario.

KARA WALKER:
The cut-outs I started doing

partly as an antidote
to painting.

Painting was too
readily recognized,

too quick from the hand,
too, um, gestural,

too personality-laden perhaps.

And I wanted to distance
myself from the idea

that this was me talking,
but that it was a-- a kind of,

uh, a masked character talking
about masked characters.

SARAH:
Kara Walker is a crucible

for the field
of African American art.

She's a crucible for the field
of modernism.

You know, I have
an enormous amount of respect
for her willingness

to go into that kind
of underbelly

of the neo-Confederate
narrative in American culture,

and bring it to our attention
through forms that disturb,

that command and that reshape
our understanding

about Black life

and-- and white Americans
in this country.

Love the work.
Hate the work.

You have to reckon
with the work.

If you don't,
you're not reckoning

with the history
of this country, effectively.

VALERIE: I think
what people push against...

is a sense of irreverence

about the moment
or time and space

where Africans were enslaved.

I think they push against what
they see is the perversity...

sexual perversity,
degradation of Black bodies

or complicitness
in that perversity

that she brings to bear.

So to pull on that history
and to play upon that history

is something that she does,

much to the chagrin
of the Black community.

KARA:
I'm not trying to, like,

drop a bomb
on the public necessarily,

but I-- sometimes I think
the work does have that impact.

My approach initially was, um...

decidedly tongue in cheek.

Your reality, my reality.

My fantasy, my fear,
my humanity, my clownishness,

all of that has to kind
of come to bear.

There's all these
narrative tropes,

stereotypes, mythologies
that we live with.

Some are very overt.

Some are parading around
in broad daylight.

Some are unconscious fantasies,

fears, wishes,
loathings, uh, anxieties.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KARA: In 2013, I was approached
to do a public art project

in the Domino Sugar factory.

This old, derelict plant
on the waterfront.

It was a good collaboration,

and the best kind
of collaboration is the kind

where an organization says,

"We really wanna support
what artists do.

What do you wanna do?"

And you say, "I want
to build a 40-foot sphinx...

made out of sugar."

The scale was determined
by the space.

The sphinx became a--
a kind of monumental marker.

It was such a new way of working
and collaborating

and working with the team
and working three-dimensionally.

I'm always interested
in the challenge of working, uh,

in, sort of, public space

and the challenge being
new audiences for the work.

I wanted to create
a compelling space to enter.

I got a longer historical lens
to view sugar production

that enslaved African people
who were commodified

and then segregated, excluded,
oppressed, destroyed.

It brings a lot of feeling
forward.

I think that my approach in
making art doesn't involve, um--

Or doesn't actually know
what the rules are

of what can and can't be said.

"She hasn't paid her dues."

"She doesn't know her history."

"She's selling us downriver."

Um, I mean, those are just
phrases I heard.

"She must hate Black people
as much as she hates herself."

The experience of white America

and Black America
is very different.

Because white America very often
will look at this

and find it incredibly
entertaining.

And Black America will look
at it and-- and almost, uh,

cringe at the pain
that's being depicted.

And-- And that's,
in and of itself, very telling.

I think there is something
about the Black community

that feels we have ownership

of these stories

because they come out of us.

They come through us.
They're about us.

But again, we're not
a monolith either.

And for, um, moments where
there were enslaved Africans,

there were also freed Africans.

We're a composite
of many different histories
coming together.

So, to say that
this is a monolithic reaction...

to artwork, I think, is,
at best, skewed.

And then to say that
that relationship

of how people react
should only be cast in white,

which is not a monolith,

and black,
which is not a monolith,

is also a bit skewed.

DAVID:
There are those who feel that

Kara represents certain aspects

of our history that is being
negatively portrayed in her art.

Be that as it may,

you can't say to an artist,

"You have the freedom
to do whatever you want to,

however, you can't do
such-and-such a thing.

I won't let you do this.
I won't let you do that."

Either you have the freedom
to do it or you don't.

She put herself out there,
or her work was put out there,

when she was very young.

It was very hard to digest.

Everybody attacked her,

and then some people
totally embraced her.

It must have been
very confusing.

But she stayed with her program,
and she's still on her program,

and, to me,
that's a huge inspiration.

It's not always about being
appreciated and liked.

Sometimes it's being about,
you know, about being reviled

and, um, criticized.

But it's that activity that
makes the art important.

And I think she's shown
extreme courage and, um...

strength in doing her work.
So, to me, that's inspirational.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

CARRIE MAE WEEMS:
When I came to New York

in the 60s, I was very young.

I was moving between
San Francisco and New York.

And I discovered
the Studio Museum fairly early.

Everything happened there.
It was like-- It was a--

It was a focal point for anybody
that was interested in culture.

And so I became, sort of,
instantly a part

of that group
and wanted to be

a part of that--
that group of-- of intellectuals

and artists asking questions

about the moment
in which we lived.

Shortly after leaving Yale,
I was accepted to become

the artist in residence
at the Studio Museum in Harlem,

which came as a great shock
to me.

Uh, principally because it's one
of the most desired

artist in residencies
in the world.

There's a stamp of approval
that comes

from having the artist
in residency

at the Studio Museum.

For Black art to thrive,
it's always required spaces,

fellowship, community.

The Studio Museum
has provided that

when really no other
institution did.

JORDAN:
Knowing all the people

who had come through
the Studio Museum

in Harlem program,

being a part of that space,

that is clearly-- There's magic
that must exist there.

Uh, knowing what that magic was,

was something I wanted
to be a part of.

I knew that
that was a moment of real,

potential change in my life.

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JORDAN: This is a painting that
I am working on currently.

I spend time looking at
the image and really trying

to parse out from it
an emotion or sense of feeling

that I think is going to be the
aura of the painting as a whole.

I'm pulling colors that
I think are most vibrant

or most important
that I want to make sure

that I include in the painting.

As it comes to life,
I get really excited.

I always start with their faces
and their eyes.

Um, it's an opportunity
to really connect with them.

And then I can make
everything else happen

once I've done that.

BERNARD: I mean,
what can I say about Jordan?

She's amazing.

You know,
she is working in the tradition

of African American portraiture.

You know,
in a realist tradition.

But she's bringing to it
her own unique perspective

as a woman and, I think,
as a young person also,

depicting young people today
in their everyday realities

in-- in their everyday lives.

JORDAN:
I made the decision

to explicitly represent
Black men and boys,

in an effort to push
against the narratives

that I felt were
kind of dominating

the public sphere at that time.

And my, um, initial decision
in representing them nude

was featuring Black men, um,
centered in their homes,

trying to capture them
in their most vulnerable

and intimate spaces.

♪ (FUNKY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JORDAN:
I wanted to treat the Black body

with, um, as much care
and attention as possible.

When I started to decide

that I wanted
to make these paintings,

the scale was really important.

I wanted them to feel like they
could step out of the canvas

and be participants
in our day-to-day lives.

♪ (FUNKY MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

JORDAN: I also wanted them
to feel like they're pushing

against the confines
of the canvas itself.

When I was a resident at
the Studio Museum in Harlem,

I had the opportunity to have
a studio visit with Thelma.

And she came into my studio
and she, uh, made a comment

that my work reminded her
of landscape painting.

And I remember thinking that
that felt very far fetched

and-- and distant
from what it was

that I was identifying
around this work.

It was like,
"I'm a portrait painter,"

was probably how I was, um,
recognizing myself.

And the fact that
she said landscape

really resonated over time,

specifically thinking about
the landscape

in the full breadth of
the environment that we occupy,

and the spaces
that we move throughout.

I look at my body of work
and I see

a scrapbook of my life,

that there are various
moments in time

where I've been somewhere
and met someone

and then they've been invited
to participate in my practice.

Being at the Studio Museum
in Harlem brought me home.

All the resources
within that institution

would be at my fingertips,

and the prospect of that
I knew was immense.

There's an oasis for me there,

and a place
to always go back to.

There is a real community
of people who care about me,

still, and are invested in me.

And that investment
can take you, you know,

beyond anything
you ever imagine,

when other people believe in you
from the beginning.

SARAH:
The Studio Museum has created

this extraordinary program,
called

the Artist in Residency Program.

It gives artists studio space,
time, a community

an exhibition of their work
at the end.

Mentorship along the way.

From that, we have some of our--

What you might call
"art stars" today.

KERRY:
I was an artist in residence

at Studio Museum in 1985.

You can understand
from experience,

the value of places like that

for creating what people
understand to be community.

So it's the place
where you can go

and if you wanna meet people
who are in the art world,

you can only meet them
at The Studio Museum.

That matters.

I mean, it matters that there's
a place you can go and do that.

And it mattered,
that there was a place

that was run by Black folks,
that was owned by Black folks

in which a whole lot of people

who came through there
were all Black folks.

That all still--
That mattered too... (CHUCKLES)

you know, it mattered.

The Studio Museum had always
been a beacon.

It was one of the places that
appreciated and showcased

our work at a very,
very early point

in the conversation.

And I was very honored
to be invited to New York City

as a Studio Museum
in Harlem resident.

That's how I moved
to New York City.

The people who funded the arts
and who supported the arts,

some of them thought that what
we were doing was laughable.

Why do you need
a Black fine-arts museum?

You have MoMA, you have Met,
you have the Guggenheim.

You know, why do--
why do you even need a museum?

So the fact that people
were asking that question

was a clear evidence that
we really did need that museum.

I am still at the Studio Museum.
(LAUGHS)

I mean,
assuming the Studio Museum is...

is still the focal point

of, uh, African American
culture production

and artistic production
in the country

if not... on the planet.

It is one of the most
important institutions

that we-- that we have.

And what Thelma, uh,
is doing there, um--

What she's done there.

Uh, the way she's led
the organization

into the 21st century is
absolutely extraordinary

and, uh, and really important.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DAVID: I don't see
The Studio Museum

as the only place for funneling

Black talent
into the mainstream,

if there is such a thing
as the mainstream.

I think it's one
of the major places.

I think Black colleges
and universities

still play an important role

in that kind of definition of
who one becomes as an artist.

Without the work of historically
Black colleges and universities,

we wouldn't have a repository
of African American art

that we could draw from.

DAVID:
The HBCUs have not been given

the credit that they are due.

When nobody else was out there
championing in these artists,

HBCUs were there claiming them,

showcasing them,
putting them up on the wall,

teaching about them.

RUJEKO HOCKLEY:
When we think of Clark Atlanta,

when we think of Spelman,

when we think
of Fisk University,

when we think of Howard,

these are all spaces in which
Black artists and Black art

has flourished for, you know,
hundreds of years.

They were the patrons
of African American artists.

So that's why these institutions

now have some
of the most important works

by those, uh, kind of
important historical figures.

I think one of the most exciting
things about

the progression of contemporary
African American art

and the artists that are working
today inheriting that tradition

is that they said,
"Hey, you know what?

My artistic forebearers,

as it were,
have paved the way for me

to make work of a whole
different range of topics

in a whole different
kind of way."

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

THEASTER GATES:
Being a clay guy

isn't about a tea bowl
or a tea pot.

It's about having a sense

that a thing
that is under-fashioned...

lesser understood, unbuilt...

dirt, that with skill
and a knowledge of form...

one could then take this stuff

and turn it into
something useful.

And that the only limitation
between dirt

becoming a useful form,
or just dirt, is ability.

And so, this idea that we could
be, uh, active participants

in the reshaping of nothingness

is super important to me.

And that the actors,
the makers of the 60s and 70s,

were all too aware of the truth

of the complexity
of nothingness.

♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪

When I was an undergrad
studying ceramics,

I was studying all the greats.

There were, like,
all these amazing makers.

None of them looked like me.

I, like, read and read

and found the story
of Dave Drake.

And I just thought,
"Finally, uh,

an individual in the history
of American making

that I can root myself in."

And so I-- I remember
trying to embody Dave.

SARAH: Dave Drake was one
of the most proficient potters

in the United States at the time
in which he was making his work.

And he was subversive
with his practice.

He would inscribe, at a time
when it was, you know, illegal

for a slave to know how to read,

he would inscribe messages
on these pots

to declare his own mastery.

And he was a master.
An artistic master.

David Drake was in Two Centuries
of Black American Art.

And what it also reminds us
is that

the arts were a way
to exert power,

even in a moment of slavery,
you know?

This is an artist
who even defied
what the term master meant.

He was a master at his craft.

Introducing Dave's story would
mean there was a--

there was a name that people
didn't know from the past.

And that by bringing him up,
maybe it wouldn't mean

anything to anyone,

but I at least had
a Black potter

that I could identify with.

It was the beginning of a kind
of hopefulness within Blackness

that I could be myself
in this craft

and know that there were some
part of it that had a legacy.

When I was only making pots,
when I was just working in clay,

I reached a point
in the material

where they were other things
I wanted to say

and-- and they couldn't be done
through the material.

So I graduated, if you will,
into using whatever.

So I went from being a potter
to being a conceptualist.

It didn't matter what
the material was, I was open.

But I needed the right material
to tell the right story.

Here is one of the earliest
civil rights tapestries.

It's basically, uh,
um, fire hoses

that had been discontinued,

um, sewn together and framed.

And this body of work grew
out of me

starting to have
a conversation about

the history of protests
and the use of the fire hose

in places like Selma
and Birmingham.

Then there were moments
where the material form--

the material world couldn't
say certain things for me.

Then I was back to
the first route,

which was the immaterial form,

the spiritual form.

And that's when voice
became super important.

-Speech acts, choirs, music.
-♪ (SINGERS VOCALIZING) ♪

(SINGING) ♪ Oh, I wanna
Cross the ocean of illusion ♪

♪ (SINGERS VOCALIZING) ♪

THEASTER:
Sound had its own material form.

Its own ability
to transform space.

Its own ability to resurrect
the soul

and that-- that there
was something that I didn't want

to leave behind in the story
of my people...

that I felt music could do

in a way that some of
these objects couldn't.

He sings.

And to a certain extent,
he preaches.

He had that whole vernacular

of understanding the definition
of what Black culture is about.

Here's an artist
who studied ceramics,

but also studied urban planning.

So utilizing his artwork
to really expand...

expand modes
of how one produces,

how art could spearhead
economic vitalization.

Theaster Gates is--
is one of the beacons

of this kind of change.

He has done this through
The Rebuild Foundation,

with his actual spaces.

He has done this through
the creation

of the Black Artist Retreat.

He's done it through
his own practice,

his own art making practice,

and he has done it through
the fellowship

that he offers and provides
to other artists.

Going to a Black artist, uh,
retreat in Chicago

was the first time
I was ever able to meet

my contemporaries.

Um, because I didn't
live in New York,

so I wasn't going to openings.

And it was
a magnificent experience.

It was, um...

I mean, I think we all left
there changed and invigorated,

and we all support each other.

You can get people involved
in art on many, many levels,

knowing that art plays
a significant role

in the wholeness of life,
not just one aspect of it.

You don't have to go to
the museum to see it.

You can be part of it
in your own community.

He has really revolutionized
the whole concept of art

more than any other artist
I know.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Are you a artist?

Yes, I'm the artist
who made these pictures.

You can see, of course,
that I was greatly influenced

by Romare Bearden.

Enamored by his work.

-I wanted to integrate
the painting...
-VIEWER: Mm-hmm.

...and make
the painting primary.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DAVID: I devoted my life
to teaching,

through collecting,
through curating.

But I saw the need
to participate

in the cultural awareness,

helping to revise
and redefine American art.

In my opinion, David Driskell's
presence in the art world

is-- is the significance of him
sending the elevator back down.

He was a trailblazer for--
for all of us.

And when there were
no Black voices

in the art world,

um, for him to assert himself
in the way that he did,

helped move us forward, um,
during a time when we were

still fighting for space
in museums and, um,

and in galleries.

You know, traditionally,
there was a moment

when, you know, there were not
many images or representations

of African Americans in
paintings, in the visual arts,

in our collective
visual culture.

And now, thanks to
Two Centuries of Black Art,

the world was given
these amazing portrayals

and images about Black culture.

And they became seared
in the collective imagination.

And I think we-- we're part
of a continued renaissance.

It's been happening.

What I'm most excited about
is...

do we have the capacity
to be great makers

in the absence of light?

And if Blackness
has something to do

with the absence of light...

does Black art mean
that sometimes I'm making

when no one is looking?

And for the most part,

that has been the truth
of our lives.

Is there a light? Yes.

But until we own the light,
I'm not happy.

Until we're in our own houses

of exhibition, of discovery,
of research.

Until we've figured out a way
to be masters of the world,

then I'd rather work
in darkness.

I'd rather work in darkness,
because at least I know

that I'm working.

That I'm-- That--
I don't want to work

only when the light comes on.

And my-- my fear,

is that we're being trained
and conditioned

to only make
if there is a light.

And that makes us
co-dependent upon a thing

that we don't control.

Are you willing to make
in the absence of light?

There has been an awakening,
an awareness.

But that's enlightenment

through education,
through desire...

to want, to know,
to improve.

And I think
a lot of that's going on.

On the other hand, in the words
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

"We haven't reached
the promised land.

We've got a long way to go."

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC FADES) ♪

♪ (RHYTHMIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪