Black American Art and its Valorization, Effacement & Rupture in France

Please join the Newcomb Art Department and Tulane Africana Studies Program for the final lecture of the 2020-2021 lecture series Representation and Resistance: Scholarship Centering Race in Western Art, “Black American Art and its Valorization, Effacement & Rupture in France,” a lecture by Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University.

This talk explores how modern French culture interfaced with numerous black American visual artists, among them mid-nineteenth century printmaker Jules Lion (1810-1866), fin de siècle impressionist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), jazz age painter Archibald Motley (1891-1981), 1960s expressionist Bob Thompson (1936-1966), and contemporary photographer Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953).  These encounters between a celebrated European destination and several African American sojourners resulted in work that, while of major art historical significance, hardly registers within the French cultural context, underscoring both the critical rifts and, paradoxically, the aesthetic confidence and freedom that such Franco-American liaisons have engendered over time. 

Representation and Resistance: Scholarship Centering Race in Western Art is a virtual lecture series organized by Mia L. Bagneris and Michelle Foa of the Newcomb Art Department and co-sponsored by the Africana Studies Program.

Zoom: https://tulane.zoom.us/j/96841589553?pwd=dGl1WGdaU012TEFCYjc2RnpUcUZ1QT09 Meeting ID: 968 4158 9553 Passcode: 428296

image: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Daniel in the Lion's Den, Los Angeles County Museum of Art