“The Evolution of a Black Aesthetic, 1920–1950”: David C. Driskell and Race, Ethics, and Aesthetics

This article considers David Driskell’s catalogue essay, “The Evolution of a Black Aesthetic, 1920–1950,” in the context of the author, the times, and exigencies behind the exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art” (1976). Situated historically, Driskell’s essay manifests the dominant voices and parameters relative to race and artistic practice in African-American art at that time (1970s). Nonetheless, it is also a deeply individualistic essay, written from the perspective of a practicing artist significantly indebted to modernist conceptions of art and scholastic aesthetic philosophy¹

A work of art is immersed in the whirlpool of time; and it belongs to eternity. A work of art is specific, local, individual; and it is our brightest token of universality. A work of art arises proudly above any interpretation we may see fit to give it; and, although it serves to illustrate history, man and the world itself, it goes further than this; it creates man, creates the world and sets up within history an immutable order.

(Focillon 32)

In 1976 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted two significant traveling exhibitions: Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris’s “Women artists 1550–1950,”² and “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” Conceived largely in 1974 and before its signifying bicentennial year opening, “Two Centuries of Black American Art” emerged during a period of heightened group action by artists demanding historical recognition and visibility in the mainstream art world. These emergent voices and artistic practices, largely ignored by the Western canon, included Chicano/a, Native, and African-American artists. Feminist scholars such as Linda Nochlin, Eleanor Tufts, Cindy Nemser, and others worked tirelessly to document women’s artistic practices and call out the flawed and prejudicial nature of the art historical discourse and praxis.³ The seminal “Two Centuries” exhibition was guest curated by artist and historian David C. Driskell, then on the faculty at Fisk University.⁴ “I was looking for a body of work which showed first of all that blacks had been stable participants in American visual culture for more than 200 years, and by stable participants I simply mean that in many cases they had been the backbone,” Driskell recalls (qtd. in Fraser).

Black artists’ historical omission, invisibility, and derisory representation in art discourses are unfortunate but very real aspects of American art history. Examples of historically flawed or racially tinged art criticism relative to African-American art are easy to find; this holds true for the decades preceding and contemporaneous to “Two Centuries,” including reviews of the exhibition itself. Though several exhibitions highlighting contemporary black artists’ work emerged during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art wanted an exhibit that would index the historical achievement of African-American artists and thereby provide a context for the more recent and contemporary work. “Two Centuries” ostensibly concluded in the 1950s, excluding work by artists born after the 1920s. Nonetheless, artists who worked well into and beyond the 1950s, such as Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Elizabeth Catlett, were included. Though criticized for excluding more contemporary work, Driskell eloquently defended the chronological parameter: “1950 is not a bad cut-off date [ . . . ] it allows us to honor our ancestors [ . . . ] [and] pass on a mantle to go forth and look to that which came after them” (qtd. in Kutner).

Artistic practices and artists excluded from the entrenched canon were expected to demonstrate aesthetic viability, maturity, and legitimacy. Mechanisms for doing this included noting omissions, documenting historicity of practice and practitioners, establishing difference, and calling into question the discourse of exclusion. Exhibitions and exhibition catalogues are instrumental tools in knowledge production; they shape discourse and subsequent exhibition programming and collecting. Aided by Driskell’s quintessential assailing elegance, “Two Centuries”—the exhibition and its catalogue—significantly participated in this “rupture moment” in American art history. This paper takes up one of Driskell’s two catalogue essays, “The Evolution of a Black Aesthetic, 1920–1950,” in the context of the author and the exigencies of the era.

In his 1946 article, “The Negro...