The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past

I am in the middle of reading this fascinating book and it just occurred to me that, aside from Alison Saar, I had never heard of any of the artists mentioned in the book before. The solutions that these artists have found to answer many of the problems in image-making as it pertains to the black female body are intriguing and profound. Sadly, I am a black woman and I graduated from a BFA program a few years ago without being taught any of this. It should be on the course syllabus for any comprehensive survey of art history.

I read this book in two sittings. Lisa Gail Collins does a beautiful job of opening up a world I did not yet fully understand. I am a southern, white, visual artist and photographer, with complicated ties to a black culture that has contributed very much to the way I think, and work, and live. Certainly my art history courses in college taught me none of this. This book illuminates the work of Renee Stout, Carrie Mae Weems, and more, and lays out the background of negative image making in the history of women of color, particularly, which, she argues is reason for the avoidance of the visual in black studies in the United States. She illuminates the value of the visual arts of black women and I came away, after reading this, with a stronger common bond to women's experience in general, and with a deeper desire to illuminate the truth in my own art.