Black is, Black Ain't: A Historic Prelude

THE USEOFTHE " A " I NSTEAD OF THE Carl P ope , Exhibition poster, 2008, 24 x 18 in. Courtesy o f the artist. Jour nal of Cont em p or ar y Af rican Ar t BLACK IS, BLACK AIN'T A HISTORIC PRELUDE Amy Mooney P osed through the language of Ralph Ellison, the recent exhibition Black Is, BlackAin't at th e University of Chicago's Renaissance Society queries th e extent to which art and its engageme nt with racial discourse have become cauterized. I Through some twenty-seven works by a diverse gro up of artists, the allusive visu al poetics of identity are probed and parsed. Yet, in thi s gathering, th ere was a break with the staid and expec ted. Curator Harn za Walke r addresses th e contemporar y co nsciousness of race, revealing that for many artists, th e concept of race is delim ited and ambiguous. Works in the exhibition challenge the tendency to posit blackness as an obj ect to be conside red along two preapproved and contin gent tra cks. Seeking expressions of black pride, on e strategy simply counters the other approach that engages depictions and discourses of victimization . The works selected for this exhibition, however, resist such a sim plistic reduction. Instead the viewer is poi sed to consider "a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneo usly rejected and retained .V Given our current political moment, Walker exa mines how "the cultural production of socalled 'blackness' is concurrent with efforts to make race socially and politically irrelevant'-' The curator engages in dialogue with his University of Chicago colleague Darby English, seeking works th at ex pand th e "interpretative paradigms" employed when considering black art. Walker's careful vetting of works in the exhibition presents th e "contradictory and contested means by wh ich racial blackness is conceptualized and represented ."4 This does not mean that the histo ric realiti es of black experiences are ignored or denied by artists in th e exhibition. Quite the opposite occurs. Instead, the works represent a plurality of histories, composed by artists who do not subscribe to myopic views of self or society. Certainly, the frau ght history of race and art in Chicago contributes to th e framing of thi s show. Nearly twenty years ago, th e deeply seated expectation of art to play an affirmative role in black representation led city aldermen to sto rm the annual MFA exhibition at the School of th e Art Institute to demand the removal of a portrait depicting Chicago's first African American mayor in drag. The 1990 Chicago Show sought to celebrate multiculturalism, but jurors selected onl y six nonwhite artists out of th e nin ety included in the exhibition, defending th eir selection on the basis of "quality." Since curator Ed mund Gaither challenged art critic Hilton Kramer's dismi ssal of the 1970 exhibition Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, "quality" is hardly an objective criteria . As Michael Brenson reminds us, "When quality becomes a loaded word, identity is a pressing issue."> Fast-forward to 2003 wh en th e Art Institute of Chicago purportedly celebrated A Century of Collecting Africnn American Art, airi ng rarely seen works such as the stunning portrait by Afri- Cobra painter Nelson Stevens, yet failing to S ze Lin P a ng, Fetichito, 2006. Mixed media, 22 x 16 x 4 2 in. Courtesy o f the artist. locate a seminal sculpture by the nineteenthcentury neoclassicist Edmonia Lewis.6 For decades, institutions such as the DuSable Museum and South Side Community Center have countered oversights and exclusions, yet these venues have specific mandates and finite resources. Concurrent with the Black Is, Black Ain't exhibition , Blake Bradford of the Hyde Park Art Center staged Disinhibition: Black Art and Blue Humor, presenting artists whose work addresses racial prejudice through stereotypes employed in popular media. Through critique and confrontation , audiences of this community-based alternative exhibition space left confounded. Between the two shows, expectations of a "black" art were unhinged. Where were the internationally acclaimed...