GENESIS: Robert Hamilton Blackburn / December 10, 1920

 

"Bob Blackburn [was] a national treasure. He [was] an artist who gave up his own work in order to support everyone else's. It is important to preserve the legacy of Bob Blackburn [because he] constantly encouraged African-American artists as printmakers, and he opened up facilities for the support of others. In those early years, there weren't many facilities which allowed African-American artists to do printmaking."

--Richard Mayhew

Bob Blackburn and Romare Bearden. Photo from Ebony magazine (November 1975).

Ron Adams, Blackburn, 2002, Ink on Rives BFK tan paper
Image: 24 15/16 x 34 7/8 in.; Sheet: 29 1/2 x 38 x 15/16 in.
Collection of DePaul University

Artist Ron Adams created the print Blackburn as a tribute to his friend and colleague, fellow printmaker Bob Blackburn (1920-2003). Adams first became aware of Blackburn's work while working at Gemini G.E.L. Eventually they met and established a lasting friendship. Adams was inspired to create this homage because, as he says, there are "very few black professional lithographers" and because Blackburn was a "leader in the field." The piece also stands as a larger tribute to those who work behind the scenes to edition prints and are seldom recognized for their contributions to the final work.

Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Program


Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop


Robert Blackburn's Public Artwork for MTA New York's Arts for Transit 


Printmaking for the love of it (NY Times)

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MUSE: Lisa Bonet (born November 16, 1967)

Lisa Bonet photographed by Lance Staedler. 

Thursday's child has far to go before she's forgotten

BlackArtistNews | November 16, 2011

Lisa Bonet may have starred on the hit TV sitcom The Cosby Show but in real life she never got with the program. Her personal and professional choices made it very clear that she was not Cosby's kid.  And it was that uncompromising ability to lead an authentic life that made her so cool. Yeah, some wrote her off as a piece of work but Lisa Bonet was actually a beautiful, unapologetic work in progress.

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GENESIS: Black Artist News / November 10, 2010

Artwork created exclusively for BlackArtistNews by Adam Elias Hines. © 2011 Adam Elias Hines.

THE EQUATION:

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Adam Elias Hines is a participating artist in Project Onward, a Chicago-based studio and gallery dedicated to the creative growth of artists with mental and developmental disabilities. Located in the historic Chicago Cultural Center, Project Onward provides workspace, art materials, professional guidance, and opportunities for exhibition and sales to artists who have exceptional talents but face challenges ranging from autism to mental illness. For more information about the program and upcoming events, please visit http://www.projectonward.org/, or follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/projectonward.

Project Onward is a program of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in partnership with the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, and is partially funded by grants from the Dr. Scholl Foundation and the I.A. O’Shaugnessy Foundation.

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GENESIS: Kerry James Marshall / October 17, 1955

"Once you have mastered the language of art-making, then you have to try to find ways to speak eloquently with it, and do so with complete control of how much tension you are putting on the spring. You should be able to tweak it, even a millimeter, to get it fine-tuned, and you can't do that unless you are completely conscious of the devices you're using all the time."

--Kerry James Marshall

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GENESIS: Faith Ringgold / October 8, 1930

Detail of Alphonse van Woerkom's portrait of artist Faith Ringgold (Damaso Reyes photos)

"Women artists are still women and women's work, for the most part, is still undervalued and underpaid. The same can be said for black artists, and or other artists of color. Racism and sexism prevails in the arts as well as elsewhere. I think we are more knowledgeable about the inequalities we live with today, but that does not mean that they don't exist. This is a peculiar time we live in. Leadership for change is wanting, but I am a firm believer in the power of freedom of speech, struggle and perseverance in a democratic society. We shall overcome."

--Faith Ringgold

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GENESIS: Adrian Piper / September 20, 1948

Adrian Piper, Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features, 1981. Pencil on paper. 8"x 10".

"Not to be able to realize or express the self that I am in action is to die a slow and painful death."  --Adrian Piper

Quote from Adrian Piper's "On Wearing Three Hats" © Adrian Piper Research Archive 2007

Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin

MORE Adrian Piper on BlackArtistNews

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GENESIS: Jacob Lawrence / September 7, 1917

Jacob Lawrence, Self-Portrait, 1977.

"My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life - if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas." -- Jacob Lawrence

The Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Virtual Resource Center

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GENESIS: Romare Bearden / September 2, 1911

BlackArtistNews proudly celebrates the art, life and legacy of Romare Bearden

Frederick J. Brown, Romare Bearden, 2001-02. Oil on linen. 80 in. x 80 in.

"Bearden's art is not only an affirmation of his own freedom and responsibility as an individual and artist, it is an affirmation of the irrelevance of the notion of race as a limiting force in the arts. These are works of a man possessing a rare lucidity of vision." -- Ralph Ellison

Romare Bearden Centennial Tribute Site

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GENESIS: Michael Joseph Jackson / August 29, 1958

Michael Jackson holding a painting he created in 1972. via michaeljacksonart.com

"I believe that all art has as its ultimate goal the union between the material and the spiritual, the human and the divine. And I believe that is the very reason for the existence of art and what I do." -- Michael Jackson

View drawings by Michael Jackson

MORE Michael Jackson on BlackArtistNews

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GENESIS: Melvin Van Peebles / August 21, 1932

Melvin Van Peebles by Dan23. © 2009 All rights reserved.

"I started this so called life as a painter and a sculptor. What I discovered as time went on was that I didn't feel that painting allowed me to talk to the people I wanted to talk to. So I said, 'Shit, I'll go into movies.'" -- Melvin Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles Foundation

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GENESIS: Geoffrey Richard Holder / August 1, 1930

Geoffrey Holder by Al Hirschfeld.

"Geoffrey [is] like an older brother, inspiring me to work on a lot of different things. He always told me, whatever you do, do it your way — the way you feel it. Follow your intuition."

--Photographer Anthony Barboza on Geoffrey Holder

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GENESIS: David Hammons / July 24, 1943

David  Hammons photographed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

"I can't stand art actually. I've never, ever liked art, ever."

--David Hammons

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GENESIS: Kalup Linzy / July 23, 1977

Photo by Graeme Mitchell for New York Magazine

"Linzy’s role-playing is complex — part RuPaul, part Eddie Murphy, part Cindy Sherman."

 --Maura Egan, The New York Times, 2009


More Kalup Linzy on BlackArtistNews

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GENESIS: Henry Ossawa Tanner / June 21, 1859



Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Henry O. Tanner, 1900.
Oil on canvas, 24⅛" × 20¼". 
The Hyde Collection.

"When I went to Europe to study, one of the first things I did was look up Henry O. Tanner. At that time he was living outside of Paris, so I took a train to Etaples on the English Channel where he lived, and finally found him there in his studio. We spent a day together...Tanner was a real inspiration." ~ Hale Woodruff

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MUSE: Diana Ross (born March 26, 1944)

Photograph: Skrebneski

Diana Ross is celebrated worldwide for her magnetic talent and presence. The influence of the Motown recording legend permeates the furthest reaches of popular culture -- her  distinct elegance and style are referenced by creative people from singers to music producers, dj's to drag queens, fashion designers to doll manufacturers, makeup artists to photographers and of course visual artists.  With this in mind, BlackArtistNews curated a collection of inspired imagery by visual artists which -- like Miss Ross -- expands racial, gender, geographic and generational boundaries:

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GENESIS: William Henry Johnson / March 18, 1901

William Henry Johnson. Self Portrait with Pipe. Painted circa 1937. Image via NegroArtist.com

"When art reaches a certain point, you see, it returns to the more primitive, and what ever it has achieved, it will use that to move forward -- for one day once again to return to the primitive, and I think that is the way it will always be with art...it is a constant circular dance...what is modern today, is actually primitive."

~William Henry Johnson 

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GENESIS: Marlon Riggs / February 3, 1957

Marlon Riggs by Shane Evans

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GENESIS: Beauford Delaney / December 30, 1901

Portrait of Beauford Delaney, 1943, Georgia O'Keefe

"His goal was bringing together rich and poor, city and country, old and young, male and female; he also  combined a form in which abstraction and realism coexisted, a contemporary idyll that brought together people of different races and sexual identities." ~ Ann E. Gibson

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GENESIS: Jean-Michel Basquiat / December 22, 1960

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self Portrait (Plaid), 1983, Sammlung Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / VBK, Wien, 2010

"He was one of the few people I was truly envious of." ~ Madonna


Jean-Michel Basquiat online


MORE Jean-Michel Basquiat on BlackArtistNews

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GENESIS: Sam Gilliam / November 30, 1933



Sam Gilliam, Composed (formerly Dark As I Am), 1968-74, acrylic, clothing, backpack, painter's tools, wooden closet pole, all on wood door, 87x47x3.5 inches. Collection of the artist's daughters. Photo: Mark Gulezian/QuickSilver.



Sam Gilliam, Autumn Surf, installation view of Works In Spaces at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1973, San Francisco Chronicle. Photo: Art Frisch.



"Sam Gilliam's concentrated focus on painting and his belief that, as a discipline made up of objects it is essentially no different from sculpture, radically distinguishes him from his contemporaries." -- Jonathan Binstock

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