BLACK ART – Richard J Powell

Black Art reassesses the meaning of “blackness,” or black culture, through artwork, writing, and social movements from the past two centuries, from DuBois to Black Lives Matter. The author Richard J. Powell addresses the problems regarding the forms of representation of “black culture” inherited from colonialism, such as the reproduction and normalisation of stereotypes about black identity both by white artists and by the black community itself. The book navigates the changes that “black art” has gone through, from being a channel for the representation of white perceptions of other people to becoming a means for the claim and exploration of “black identity” in the new millennium. These changes, Powell asserts, have allowed the African diaspora to rescue, and innovate on, pre-colonial artistic themes and techniques that are giving them back control over the narrative of their own identity. However, the author emphasises that even today there are internal differences about what black culture is and even about whether such a phenomenon really exists.