Remembering bell hooks’ Impact On Visual Art As We Continue Examining The Black Gaze On Art History

By Natasha Gural

bell hooks opened her 1995 collection of 18 essays on art criticism and 5 interviews with highly-regarded Black artists, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, by telling us about one of the first paintings she ever created. She cherished the one personal visual art work she salvaged from her childhood basement and took with her when she left home at age 17. That story speaks to me—as visual art, for me, comes from, dwells in, and emanates from a deeply personal space. How I gaze at, interpret, and write about art is informed by my own emotional response and how that shapes my dynamic view of constantly evolving and always re-imagined art history.

The pioneering, wildly influential Black feminist, poet, author, and professor died early yesterday morning at her home in Berea, Kentucky, her family said in a statement. She was 69.

Her death comes a week after pioneering cultural critic, Greg Tate, died at age 64, and less than a month after visionary fashion designer and artist, Virgil Abloh, died at age 41. Losing three of our most accomplished Black cultural legends so young underscores Black precarity and the need to amplify their legacies.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks chose her pseudonym as a tribute to her great-grandmother, and used lowercase letters to draw attention to her words rather than herself. As with many Black scholars and artists, recognizing and celebrating ancestors is essential to depicting and understanding the collective Black struggle.

Contextualizing the personal painting she rescued, hooks explains “The assignment we had been given in our art class was to choose a style of painting used by an artist whose work we admired. I loved the work of painters using abstract expressionism (AbEx) because it represented a break with rigid notions of abstract painting; it allowed one to be passionate, to use paint in an expressive way while celebrating the abstract.”

“Studying the history of painting by African Americans, one sees that abstract expressionism influenced the development of many artists precisely because it was a critical intervention, an expansion of a closed turf. It was a site of possibility,” hooks writes in “Art Matters,” the introduction of Art on My Mind.

I’m grateful that my 11-year-old son shares this passion for AbEx, and we dabble together, inspired by masters ranging from Norman Lewis to Sam Gilliam. Leading Black Abstract Expressionists including Alma Thomas and Beauford Delaney, followed by Edward Clark and Howardena Pindell, were, for decades, grossly undervalued in the global art world that favored their white male counterparts such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko.

Art on My Mind: Visual Politics confronts how art is produced, exhibited, and criticized in an art world grappling with identity politics. hooks thoughtfully examines how art can be utilized to empower the Black community. Through her inimitable gaze, hooks informs us through interviews with Alison Saar, Margo Humphrey, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, LaVerne Wells-Bowie, and Emma Amos, and reviews of the work of Jean-Michell Basquiat and Felix Gonzalez Torres.

Photo credit: monicaheiser.com

It’s vital to re-examine hooks’ and other writers’ perspectives as we reconsider how Black artists are represented in art history. “It is my hope that the essays included here will, in conjunction with the work of other progressive critics, stand as acts of critical resistance that actively introduce change within existing visual politics. As we critically imagine new ways to think and write about visual art, as we make spaces for dialogue across boundaries, we engage in a process of cultural transformation that will ultimately create a revolution in vision,” hooks writes.

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Natasha Gural is a multiple award-winning journalist, writer, and editor with 30 years of editorial experience, including executive roles at The Associated Press, Dow Jones, and Markets Media. A student of literature, art history, and studio art, Natasha has learned from leading scholars at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Oxford University, Clark University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Natasha has been writing about art since 2002, for multiple publications, including The Associated Press and Forbes. She has traveled extensively to cover major art fairs and events, interviewing a wide array of world-renowned and emerging artists, as well as curators, art historians, collectors, scholars, and aesthetes. Her last contact with the global art world was covering TEFAF Maastricht in 2020. Natasha enjoys observing every level of the creative process, from inception to installation, in studios, galleries, and various spaces. Passionate about the art world, Natasha embraces every opportunity to engage key players to better understand and explain the changing dynamic. She seeks to accurately portray the art ecosystem in an ongoing process that immerses her in the art world. A first-generation American, Natasha was raised bilingual and has always been drawn to the innovators, rebels, and outsiders who break down boundaries and strive to broaden the continuum of art history. Her goal is always to fairly and accurately represent the accomplishments of artists in an effort to collectively celebrate the arts.

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