In the mid-1960s, as the revolutionary fervor of Black Power intensified, an Afrocentric aesthetic movement was brewing. Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka opened the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem in 1965, seen as a nucleus for the emergent Black Arts Movement. In his 1968 essay of the same name, considered a manifesto of sorts for the crusade, Larry Neal touted the “need to develop a ‘black aesthetic’” to oppose White hegemony — a distinct visual language to distinguish a new class of politically minded artistry. For Neal, “The cultural values inherent in western history must either be radicalized or destroyed, and we will probably find that even radicalization is impossible. In fact, what is needed is a whole new system of ideas.”
In October of 1969, tucked away on Bedford Street in the West Village, Acts of Art opened its doors, displaying the work of Black artists. It was the first gallery of its kind in the neighborhood. Founded by Nigel Jackson and Patricia Grey, it operated for only six years but exemplified the spirit of a subversive and consequential period in Black art history. Acts of Art in Greenwich Village at Hunter College’s Leubsdorf Gallery offers an overview of the gallery’s history, featuring 14 of its frequent collaborators. The showing is diverse, from Frank Wimberley’s collaged, torn-paper portals and Harlan Jackson’s collages intertwining Abstract Expressionism and allusions to West African sculpture to Ann Tanksley’s stirring portrait of Jonah, a biblical allegory for the transatlantic slave trade. The selection illuminates Black artists’ mutual preoccupations at the time — diaspora, autonomy, spirituality and religion, community, jazz — through their shared references.
Leading visitors into the gallery, Ben Jones’s “Stand/Funk Elegance” (1975) sets the scene for this experimental ethos. Dancer Larry Sanders, nicknamed “the Lion,” stands in contrapposto at the center, flanked by two versions of himself. He wears only a pair of black briefs, his cooly confident gaze directed straight at the viewer, a sensual ode to strength and beauty. On either side, his arms conceal his chest à la the “Venus pudica” pose; above him, a rainbow semi-circle fans out like the half-shell from which the goddess emerged. Throughout the work, multicolored birds mingle with Sanders’s three bodies, along with three African big cats rendered in gold. The scene is encased by three stripes in the colors of the pan-African flag: red, black, and green.
Birds also traverse the canvas of Dindga McCannon’s “Pat Is Pregnant” (1977). Paint smeared with thick, relief-like brushstrokes melds with bits of patterned fabric. McCannon depicts photographer Pat Davis with flushed cheeks, her head tilted down, eyes shut. Her thighs open around her swollen belly, draped by a beaming, bright orange tunic. A sliver of the full silver moon peeks into the frame through the window, mirroring her pregnant stomach. Sinking into a sofa, Davis recalls an odalisque; however, the artist’s caring gaze toward this collaborator and fellow artist reflects a sense of autonomy and peace, refusing the sexualization or exoticization characteristic of the canonical Euro-American painting trope.
The succinct selection of artworks on view is accompanied by an encyclopedic timeline displaying reproduced ephemera from the historical gallery’s past shows and quotations from contemporaneous art criticism and reportage, situating Acts of Art as a dynamic venue of the Black Arts Movement. In his missive, Neal cites poet Etheridge Knight’s statement that “the Black artists must create new forms and new values, sing new songs (or purify old ones).” While not all of the artists on view ascribe to Neal’s conceptual “black aesthetic,” Acts of Art captured a zeitgeist and aggregated the varied chorus of a worthy artist community.
Acts of Art in Greenwich Village continues at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College (132 East 68th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through March 29. The exhibition was curated by Howard Singerman and Katie Hood Morgan, with curatorial fellows Eve Arballo, Kelis George, and Nicolas Poblete, and the assistance of MA and MFA students.
Founded in 1969 by Nigel Jackson and Patricia Grey, Acts of Art exemplified the spirit of a subversive and consequential period in Black art history.
