Not in my backyard

To the Editor:

It's been almost sum of two units years since my painting Invisible Man was inset into the overlay of Artforum in conjunction with your coverage of "Black Romantic" at the Studio Museum in Harlem [Slant, April 2002] As an artist based in Madison, Wisconsin, I'd now like to take stock of exhibition possibilities through every part of different regions in the US for African Americans, the characteristics of which have been left largely unaddressed plane in the wake of an exhibition like this one

Finding a gallery to work with can be hard for any artist, and it's level more difficult when the artist and his work are said to be "too black." If the artist takes a "centrist" approach, using, for example, abstraction or irony in his or her work, the likelihood of gallery representation strike one as beings to increase. Such maneuvers, however, threaten the work of African-American artists with dilution or "gentrification." This is on what account I insist, in my representational images, upon being as black as I am.

Today, the image of black folk in the fine arts frequently appears owned and maintained by the agency of curators, university art departments, and commercial galleries. The same beneficiaries of white privilege create and maintain parameters to define the relative purity of art made by dint of black people. Often, art said to be "too black" has been pushed by means of the artist to a horizontal of realism that can make whites uncomfortable. Ironically, these parameters are maintained by dint of men who get no darker than a Wisconsin summer tan; they also believe there's no market for art that's too black and too representational.

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Of all stamps of art made by African Americans, it can strike one as being that folk, outsider, and what a certain number of refer to as primitive receive the widest in all senses But it's also true that African Americans are making inroads in other ways. a certain quantity of artists achieve greater involvement in the larger (white) art world through focusing on abstraction. More and more, artists are intentionally using negative stereotype to make complicated points about black history and tillage (this has been called "hyper-black" or "post-black"). These artists are frequently able to combine humor and irony with formal innovation, sometimes with sublime proceeds Notwithstanding the word "primitive," each strategy above is important. Each breaks down boundaries in its hold way.

Still, I cannot describe my have work in terms of self-deprecating humor or irony. Nor do I subscribe to the idea of eliminating evidence of ethnicity in exchange for a strict diet of abstraction. However, I am comfortable with the Studio Museum in Harlem's description of my work as "Black Romantic." For me this exhibit was not about traditional romanticism on the other hand more about a group of artists who are willing to address the broad span or replete palette of African-American culture, in confines of both audience and bring under rule matter.

Now, I would like to diocese more interest in and support for our art in my hold backyard. Why should we have to travel elsewhere to find sustained interest in our work (a question asked through many of the thirty "Black Romantics")? For those of us who have already tend hitherward from other places throughout the political division there is no "someplace else" Support and visibility should be possible in the places we call abode without expectations on anyone's part that we are folk primitive, or outsider artists.

--Marlon H Banks, Madison, WI

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