African American Visual Arts : From Slavery to the Present

stylizations exposed the limitations of realist or documentary modes ever to represent the distorted, marginalized, and elided facets of black culture" (p. 62). This statement is difficult to reconcile with Bernier's assessment of Tanner in the previous chapter, or of White, Catlett, or Parks in chapter 4, wherein she praises their realism for graphically depicting the difficult lives of black people in white-dominated society. As for Alston, Bernier introduces the artist as not a black artist but, in his own words, "'an artist who happens to be black'" (p. 79). She adds, "He was convinced it was futile to adopt 'a separate set of rules and qualities for Black art'" (ibid.). Alston's resistance to expectations of "black art" speaks directly to the problematic nature of such a concept. When the audience and critics insist that one's racial heritage requires one to produce a certain kind of art, then creativity is limited, stifled, or sequestered into an artistic ghetto. Unfortunately, Bernier's analysis marginalizes any influences on or contexts of the work of African American artists other than racial ones in order to find overarching formal characteristics that she can expand into a "black aesthetic." It certainly seems significant, for example, that some of the artists in the case studies lived in poverty, while others had access to art education, professional support, and relatively wealthy patrons. In the conclusion for chapter 2, there is an intriguing discussion of Douglas's disdain for and Alston's admiration of contemporaneous artists Edmondson and Lawrence, respectively. Bernier quotes Douglas dismissing Edmondson as "a person with very little education and none at all from an art viewpoint," while she credits Alston for "discovering" Lawrence (p. 87). She writes that Alston's "ability to see an African American master in a 'kid' who attended his after-school art class for impoverished black children sets the stage for recovering the lives of self-taught folk artists" (ibid.). She goes on to examine Palmer Hayden's Janitor Who Paints (c. 1939-40) as an "unflinching portrayal of African American working-class poverty," noting that Hayden was himself a janitor cum painter (p. 88). Contrasting the self-taught Edmondson, folk-influenced Lawrence, and working-class Hayden with the middle-class, art-educated Douglas and Alston demonstrates a sizable gulf between their experiences, which is then reflected not only in the artists' works, but also in the ways in which those works were received by critics and the public. Regrettably, Bernier does not address similar issues of class in other chapters. Bernier concludes with an epilogue in which she discusses how themes of slavery and the Middle Passage continue to inspire contemporary black artists, including Jefferson Pinder, Kerry James Marshall, Michael Ray Charles, Laylah Ali, and Renee Cox. She sees these "hidden histories" not only as the subject of much African American art but also as an "aesthetic approach" (p. 222). She 4 African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, Vol. 13 [2010], Iss. 2, Art. 29 http://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol13/iss2/29 describes these artists as "preoccupied as their forebears with unearthing buried stories to communicate an 'essence of black imagery'" (ibid., quoting Pinder). It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the paragraph that follows it, in which Bernier highlights the frustration of, among others, abstract sculptor Melvin Edwards "at white art world attempts to dictate the forms and subject matter in his works" (ibid.). She then asserts that "the African American artist's fight for aesthetic freedom is still ongoing" (ibid.). Bernier continues by explaining how the work of Charles subverts the expectations of black communities. She quotes Charles as explaining that "'most blacks have a perception about art by black people. That art by an African-American artist should look a certain way'" (p. 223). Thus African American artists are continually striving for freedom from the expectations of both the white mainstream and black audiences. Yet Bernier's search for aesthetic and stylistic commonalities in African American Visual Arts seems like an impediment to that freedom. Despite these issues, Bernier's book presents some compelling art work by a range of modern and contemporary African American artists spanning more than a century. She includes previously unpublished testimony and commentary from the artists themselves to elucidate their creative practices, and in the process introduces some intriguing questions that suggest further research.