REPRESENTATION OF RACE IN ART

I wanted to look deeper into the issue if race in art and the media, and being a black man myself I find it an important issue to talk about. I must admit it is something that I have not always been willing to face or even turn a blind eye to it and just thinking that it will go away, but a lack of equality within the creative industry is still prevalent for people of colour.

PAINTING BY KEHINDE WILEY, WHO PAINTS PORTRAITS OF BLACK MEN IN POWER OR IN A POSITIVE LIGHT

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/05/black-artists-african-american-art-museums-galleries-collections-painting/3483422002/

There is an article on USA Today, talking about how black people are rarely represented in galleries. George Morton is a life drawing instructor and uses black models as a reference for his students, as he believe that this is an area that is missing in fine art: the representation of black people.

Artists say African Americans are absent from historical art collections in some of the world's largest museums, galleries and major auctions. They insist that most of the paintings and portraits hanging on the walls of these institutions were created by white men and feature prominent white figures in American or European history.

Morton is part of a movement of black artists and curators from New York to Atlanta who are hosting exhibits, teaching classes and creating work that shines a light on black culture.

Morton states in an interview, "We have been largely overlooked, historically. We weren’t seen fit as a worthy model, unless we were ... somehow an object that has been subjugated in a painting" (Morton, 2019)

An example of this is in the portrait"Men of Progress" painted in 1862 by Christian Schussele. It shows 19 white, male scientists and inventors, but fails to show women and black inventors of that age. This kind of mentality and thinking is still ingrained in our society where black people are not represented in art unless it has something to do with slavery or oppression.

"At the National Gallery of Art, there are 986 works by black artists out of the 153,621 total works." (Ellis, 2019)

When I saw this quote I was quite shocked that only 0.6% of work is made by black artists, I believe that there needs to be a drastic range of diversity within the art community, a whole demographic of people are basically not included.

Morton is working to overcome disparities by selecting more people of color to be the subjects of live drawings in his art classes at Atelier South and engaging and training more black artists and young people in the majority-black city of Atlanta. Most of his students are white. (Ellis, 2019)

Black people, Morton says, have shied away from art because it was dominated by the white elite and wasn't considered a field where black families could make a living.  (Ellis, 2019)

This resonated with me a lot because personally I have shied away from certain things because I was the only black person in the group. I want to start creating work that helps uplift other black people so that they don't have to feel the same way.

Reference:

Ellis, T., 2019. Art so white: Black artists want representation (beyond slavery) in the Met,

National Gallery. [online] Available at <https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/

2019/05/05/black-artists-african-american-art-museums-galleries-collections-painting/3483422002/> [Accessed 18 March 2020]