The phrase
"black figures" typically refers to people or objects that are completely black in color or have very dark shadows.
Full definition
To be sure, the mode
of black figure representation I employ is a clear departure from most popular treatments of the black body.
Her own images, too, seek to examine and challenge the
way black figures have been depicted throughout art history.
The way to think of it is that
black figures in the Change column are traders getting «longer» and red figures are traders getting less long or shorter.
And her insertion of fictional
black figures within a mostly white tradition of portraiture is a political gesture in itself.
An urban pastoral scene
featuring black figures engaged in golf, croquet, waterskiing and boating, three figures gaze directly at the viewer in the foreground while lyrics by The Temptations and Snoop Dogg flow from two boom boxes.
Johnson himself is known for his photography, films, sculptures and installations that often draw on the identities of
black figures from recent history such as Don King and Sun Ra, as well exploring his own upbringing.
After attending Cooper Union in New York, he moved to Los Angeles, where he became known for his melancholic portrayals of blurred
black figures against barren or shadowy landscapes — paintings that often teetered precariously into the unreal.
Kerry James Marshall's exuberant works
depict black figures in everyday situations, in order to subvert stereotypes and challenge the predominately white Western canon.
A few profiles of
prominent black figures in contemporary art circles — like curators Thelma Golden and Franklin Sirmans — are arranged below some of the artist's compositions, which stand like portraits or tributes to their practice.
The historical depth to these paintings and the political importance of a show that so deftly depicts and
places black figures within art history, simply can't be overstated.
Vedovi: sold Basquiat's 1984 «O.M.R.A.V.S.,» showing a lone
black figure among electricity pylons on a plain white background fort less than $ 5m.
Works like his 1974 oil What's Going On, titled after Marvin Gaye's smooth 1971 protest album, often
show black figures, en vogue or nude, against flat, bright monochrome backdrops.
Billy Graham's Luke Cage, Hero for Hire comics provide a springboard into many of the contemporary works by making
black figures not as inferior sidekicks to white companions, but heroic protagonists in their own right.
Marshall has long said that he paints unapologetically
black figures using black paint in order to push the Western canon of art history in a more diverse and representational direction.
In her bright, bombastic multimedia canvases from the 1960s and»70s, Auxiliadora exalts
black figures often under - represented in the history of Brazilian art, like manual workers and laborers, and even herself
His Black Monoliths, a series of abstracted tributes, memorialize
important Black figures such as James Baldwin and Barbara Jordan.
In its deft sketch of the deep philosophical divide between two
leading black figures of the early 20th century — Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington and intellectual firebrand W. E. B. Du Bois — the film illustrates how obstacles toward full - fledged higher academics at HBCUs gave way to an unstoppable enterprise to achieve just that.
Marshall has been vocal about his goal of getting
more black figures into museums, starting with his own work, and many of his most important paintings are held by institutions.
Best known for large - scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring
powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth - century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition.
His large narrative paintings feature
only black figures — defiant and celebratory assertions of blackness in a medium in which African Americans have often been invisible — and his exploration of art history stretches from the Renaissance to twentieth - century abstraction and beyond.
In her bright, bombastic multimedia canvases from the 1960s and»70s, Auxiliadora
exalts black figures often under - represented in the history of Brazilian art, like manual workers and laborers, and even herself — she worked as a maid for many decades to support her family.
Drawing on sources such as Jacques - Louis David's 1793 masterpiece The Death of Marat, carved and inked
black figures emerge from swarms of writhing, fish - like eyes, with decorative woodcut prints and drawings collaged onto incised wooden panels.
Brussels - based dealer Vedovi sold Basquiat's 1984 «O.M.R.A.V.S.,» showing a
lone black figure among electricity pylons on a plain white background.
Billy Grahamʼs Luke Cage, Hero for Hire comics provide a springboard into many of the contemporary works by
making black figures not as inferior sidekicks to white companions, but heroic protagonists in their own right.
Below are four of our favorite clips with the artist, who shares his thoughts on representing the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the magic of Tupperware, the shades of black he uses to paint his black subjects, and the importance of depicting
confident black figures in his work.
The final product is a brilliant reinterpretation of pastoral scenes in which aristocrats frolicking in Europe are replaced with
black figures relaxing on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago: sailboats, crew shells and parasols are substituted with motorboats, water skiers and boom boxes: a summer breeze is swept aside by lyrics from Motown and Snoop Dogg.
Laura's soulless oil -
black figure slips into the skin of a human female like a ballerina putting on a leotard.
For the past quarter century, primarily with his paintings but also, as a recent exhibition title put it, «other stuff,» like photographs, videos, sculptures, and installations, he has been
getting black figures onto museum walls.
The five paintings reimagine public housing projects in Chicago and Los Angeles (where Marshall grew up with his family in Nickerson Gardens),
casting black figures at the center of romanticized pastoral scenes inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings.
The exhibition, on view at Kunsthalle Basel, identifies many of her signature themes: a figurative painter, her luminous canvases are filled with
mostly black figures notable for their unbeknownst ambiguity.
He was the veteran of increasingly outdated show business traditions trying to stay relevant; he frequently found himself bracketed by the bigotry of white America and the distaste of black America; he was the most
public black figure to embrace Judaism, thereby yoking his identity to another persecuted minority.
This bundle contains 27 ready - to - use Black History worksheets that are perfect for students studying Black History month, the Civil Rights Movement, or prominent
black figures like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X.
But she can not ignore the sense that she's being watched, the reports of
malevolent black figures, and the pervasive smell of death.
«There needs, at some point,» he said in his MCA talk, «to be a critical mass of images in the museum that have
[black figures in them], so that when you go there... [i] t's not something that is the exception to the rule, it's part of what you always expect to see.
His groundbreaking images of
black figures influenced a new generation, including artists Amy Sherald, Rashid Johnson, and Kehinde Wiley.
At once traditional in her approach to form, line, and color, and decidedly contemporary in her self - reflexivity about her medium, the British - Ghanaian writer, poet, and painter represents a bold and beautiful cast of
black figures culled from the haze of memory, projection, and fiction.
Depicting two
nude black figures running beyond a dense, overgrown field surrounded by a light flurry of birds and butterflies, the pair may be fleeing peril or pursuing bliss.
Sherald showed new work in a group show at Monique Meloche's New York outpost in March or her signature style:
black figures facing the viewer, pictured from the knees up before a saturated monochrome or subtly patterned background.
Kehinde Wiley, for instance, has long been a stalwart of the genre, juxtaposing the European tradition with sitters drawn from urban life, in a simultaneous gesture of appropriating the canonical while
elevating black figures to a near - hagiographic kind of beatitude.