{"id":4753,"date":"2019-01-28T13:25:47","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=4753"},"modified":"2019-01-28T13:30:02","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:30:02","slug":"measuring-the-pervasiveness-of-popular-black-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=4753","title":{"rendered":"Measuring the Pervasiveness of Popular Black Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Measuring the Pervasiveness of Popular Black Art<\/span><\/h1>\n
By Shantay Robinson <\/span><\/pre>\n
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Blue monday by Annie Lee<\/p><\/div>\n
According to Noel Carroll in his article \u201cThe Ontology of Mass Art,\u201d \u201cMass art is meant to command a mass audience. Thus, it is designed to be user friendly. Ideally, it is structured in such a way that large numbers of people will be able to understand and to appreciate it virtually effortlessly. It is made in order to capture and to hold the attention of large audiences, while avant-garde art is made to be effortful and to rebuff easy assimilation by large audiences.\u201d Popular black art is mass art. Popular black art can be found in a variety of commercial and easily accessible spaces. They are those familiar reproductions of paintings that can be bought at street festivals, in collectibles stores, and from poster distributors on line. Many of the artworks depict black people in idealistic states whether it\u2019s a jazz scene, black people in love, women at church, or loving families. Popular black art builds on narratives that have already been established, and much of the artwork operates in familiar themes. They are not successful for their originality in subject matter, but the familiar sentiments they evoke. These aren\u2019t, for the most part, actual portraits of black people. They are images imagined in the mind of the artist, and the body images are often times unreal and manipulated for effect. While they are very accessible, and do induce compassion on the viewer\u2019s part, the Western art establishment doesn\u2019t particularly deem them valuable works of art. <\/span><\/p>\n
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Still I rise by (WAK) Kevin Williams<\/p><\/div>\n
Art connoisseur, Robert Bain explains, \u201c<\/span>My thought is that Popular Black Art appeals to its clientele when it first recognizes that clientele and then addresses the emotional elements of that clientele visually. \u00a0Also, given the broad base at that level of consumption, the works need to approximate\u00a0their wallet. \u00a0Not to be overlooked, if we were to step back into the period of the 60’s and 70’s, we would find that much of Popular Black Art was decidedly political in that it depicted the mood of the urban Black community; examples would be depictions of afro- dashiki-wearing clenched fist modeling to AfriCobra’s Murray DePillars Aunt Jemina print hanging in many hundred\u00a0tenement apartments in Chicago. \u00a0Later, works began to incorporate kente designs and other African patterns. \u00a0In other words, Popular Black Art either leads or follows the current mindset of the Black community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Funeral procession by Ellis Wilson<\/p><\/div>\n
Popular black art is mass produced and marketed to ensure its reach, while fine art, on the other hand, is valuable for its scarcity and uniqueness. Similar to prints, popular black art is produced and distributed by mass technologies. Prints, although they are also reproductions of paintings, are produced with a particular number of copies created in editions of a finite number and you can be certain that only a fixed number of reproductions exist. Prints are typically worth less than paintings, but they do hold a certain amount of value for their scarcity. According to James Tarmy in a <\/span>Bloomberg<\/span><\/i> article, \u201cIs the Fastest Growing Segment of the Art Market the Cheapest?\u201d he writes, \u201cPrints have been around since the Renaissance, and have always occupied a slightly uneasy place in the art market. They\u2019re designed by an artist and often signed by the artist, but they are, by definition, reproductions.\u201d Many artists create prints that can be purchased in editions, and once they are sold out, the only way to gain access to a print is on the resale market. But posters can be purchased in perpetuity or until the creator ceases to offer them. They don\u2019t hold resale value. According to the Tarmy article, some art dealers look at prints as the gateway drug to buying actual paintings. Many people buy prints because they are less expensive, and they can actually afford to have an artwork by an established artist or one of their favorite artists. But popular black art posters that you can find at the mall or at art fairs are not prints.<\/span><\/p>\n
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