By :\u00a0Tanner Tafelski<\/p>\n
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Artist and art historian David Driskell is one of many talking heads in the film.<\/p><\/div>\n
In a profile last year for NPR\u2019s Morning Edition<\/em>, Kerry James Marshall said this about his paintings: \u201cThe hope was always to make sure these works found their way into museums so they could exist alongside everything else that people go into museums to look at.\u201d And they have, finally. Along with Marshall\u2019s paintings, with their signature jet-black figures, those of other contemporary African-American artists like Whitfield Lovell, Ellen Gallagher, and presidential portraitists Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley can now rightfully be found in major galleries, museums, and other art institutions. This wasn\u2019t always the case, of course, as African-American artists have often existed parallel to the established art world over the last two centuries, as recent exhibitions have sought to highlight. Tracing these artists in an alternative history that not only influences but also undergirds the works of Marshall, Lovell, Gallagher, and others is the subject of Jacques Goldstein\u2019s 50-minute documentary Black Is the Color<\/em> (2017).<\/p>\n Progressing chronologically, and after a short introduction establishing the current critical and mainstream recognition of black artists, the documentary touches upon key artists and art throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and highlights their importance using talking heads and voiceover. Black Is the Color<\/em> starts in 1867. Two years after slavery was officially abolished, Edmonia Lewis\u00a0<\/a>sculpted \u201cForever Free,\u201d which depicts two slaves breaking their chains in white marble. According to Gallagher, who interprets the piece as one of the interviewees commenting on the sculpture, by representing the figures in such a classical way, Lewis regards the slaves as equal to Greek gods. From Lewis, the documentary moves to 1890, to segregation after the period of Reconstruction and Henry Ossawa Tanner\u2019s \u201cThe Banjo Lesson\u201d (1893). And on Black Is the Color<\/em>progresses, from Horace Pippin\u2019s \u201cThe End of the War: Starting Home\u201d (1930) to Malvin Gray Johnson\u2019s \u201cSelf-Portrait\u201d (1934), from Romare Bearden\u2019s \u201cThe Block\u201d (1978) to Jean-Michel Basquiat generally, and on to Gallagher\u2019s collages and works on paper, Marshall\u2019s large-scale paintings, and Lovell\u2019s charcoal-on-wood-panel portraits.<\/p>\n Edmonia Lewis\u2019 \u201cForever Free\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n However, for a film displaying such radical, political, and invigorating art, Black Is the Color<\/em> is a conventional, one could even say stodgy documentary. It is like a visual art history textbook. It is saddled with an affectless voiceover and a generic, drum-based score that turns the documentary homogenous. As the talking heads commentate, one artwork and then the next and then the next come into focus. The viewer is shuffled along from one period, from one art object to the next without pause and without a sense of absorbing the information just conveyed. Perhaps if Goldstein expanded his documentary to feature length, he could allow time for viewers to catch their breath.<\/p>\n Despite its lackluster aesthetic, Black Is the Color<\/em> is an informative introductory survey of essential African-American artists for those in need of one. Art historians, collectors, artists, and curators all explain their importance and situate the pieces in their specific historical contexts. One leaves the documentary with renewed awareness that recent battles over inclusion, representation, and appropriation are the results of struggles that have been going on for decades.<\/p>\n Black Is the Color\u00a0is now available on <\/em>DVD<\/em> and to stream on <\/em>iTunes<\/em> and <\/em>Amazon Video<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/black-is-the-color-forever-free-720x405.jpg?resize=720%2C405\")