Spike Island Study Day Session I framing the Black Atlantic

In this session we will examine the framework of the Black Atlantic and interrogate the ways in which it might come into play in our discussion of visual art. We will begin to trace the development of the Black Atlantic from the late 19^th to the mid-20^th century and interrogate the ways in which the creative production of black artists has been historicized.

What is the Black Atlantic?

Was the Harlem Renaissance the first Black Atlantic moment of the 20^th century?

To what extent are avant-garde primitivism and the Black Atlantic entwined?

To what extent did Negritude offer an anti-colonial modernism?
Figures to consider:

Aaron Douglas, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Man Ray, Josephine Baker, and many more.

In this session we will look the ‘black arts activities’ (Chambers, 2012) of 1980s Britain that have come to be known as the British Black Arts Movement. Our interrogation of the ways in which black artists have been sidelined as ‘followers’ of modernism will continue as we re-position artists from this period as participants in national and international aesthetic debates.

Can we disentangle politics and aesthetics in building an art history of the 1980s?

Why have the artists from this period, like so many before them, been written off as ‘single-issue’ artists?

How should we position identity politics within art history?

Themes to consider:

Abstraction

Painting