The Art of Richard Mayhew

This article employs ten years of interviews with the African and Native American artist Richard Mayhew to examine Mayhew’s artistic narrative of cultural “spiritual” commitments and ideals, his alignment with community production and performance, and his advocacy of an aesthetic individualism that embraces the overriding challenge confronted by Spiral, an artistic alliance that represented African American artists in the March on Washington and that sought to formulate an ongoing artistic response to the civil rights movement.