African sculpture

African Art has historically been focus on the power and beauty of the body. The pieces of art that remain today lack much of the purpose as they meant to be used not displayed in glass cases. This is true for items such as the Buli Master’s stools and the headdresses of the Bamana and Mende peoples. These items, though aesthetically pleasing were meant to be used in either a leader’s home while entertaining guests or for ceremonies of seasonal change or children becoming adults. The headdresses…

The African-American culture is made up of a group of individuals that have resided in the United States for the last 400 years or so. Most of them have descended from slaves who were forced from Africa to work on plantations in the South. Most, if not all, of them have faced a type of discrimination at some point ever since arriving to the United States. Despite the challenges African-Americans eventually moved to big cities like Detroit to thrive and live better lives. While residing in…

Kara walker is a contemporary artist working mainly with black and white silhouettes made of paper. She invokes themes of African American racial identity in the majority of her works (artsy.net). The majority of her works are particularly heavy in meaning and are meant to invoke emotion, some may make you cry or even laugh. I’m also a contemporary artist who works mainly with traditional art such as sketching, inking and then coloring with markers. My themes vary from piece to piece and usually…

nothing more unnerving than carrying feelings of undesirability, isolation, struggle, and desolation. As early as the 1600’s African Americans have had to fight for their voices to be heard, for the definition of equality to be understood, and for the barrier between the oppressed and the oppressor to be shattered once and for all. Despite the plethora of adversities that African American people had to face during previous years, a motif was apparent, not giving up. In the words of Frederick…

167). Translated Modernist works that were previously unread in the US were now being published from the native languages. The increase in the uptake of these works was partly driven by the growing market of black authored books on Negro topics. African American magazine editors fueled the efforts by organizing literary prize contests that showcased black literary talent. Charles Johnson, an editor of Opportunity Magazine, for instance, organized such events in the liberal Civic Club and…

1915, he was one of the dominant leaders in the African-American community. He was the last generation of African-American leader that was born into slavery and later became the voice of the black population after the Civil War. Washington won the wide support from the black community in the South as well as the support of the liberal white, especially wealthy Northern whites. His lifetime goal was to end the disenfranchisement the majority of African-Americans in the South. In 1895, Booker T.…

Frederick Douglass, the famous African American abolitionist, was once quoted as saying “[He] who would be free must himself strike the blow.” This quote is particularly relevant in the figurative and literal sense when it came to African American soldiers fighting in the Civil War. All African Americans had an uphill battle to fight when it came to getting the chance to prove themselves as adequate soldiers, and an even tougher battle to get recognition for what they had achieved. The first…

defying social norms connects directly to the period of time in which Their Eyes Were Watching God was written - the Harlem Renaissance. During the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans were fervently trying to promote, define, and otherwise show off their culture through various art forms - art (as in, paintings and the like), music, sculpture, and the one shown here: writing. Overall, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a brilliant, expressive novel that shows the good that…

In their study the Clarks presented African American children with Black and White dolls and asked them a series of questions, such as which doll was the prettiest, smartest, dumbest, and dirtiest. They found that African American children consistently attributed more positive traits to the White dolls and negative ones to the Black dolls” (Mio, 205-206). This experiment was so…

dominated by art and created and consumed by African-Americans. In his childhood, he watched Blaxploitation films like Shaft, Mandingo, and his personal favorite Foxy Brown; he also enjoyed Soul Train and the 70s music African-Americans were playing at that time. Growing up in a dominant African American culture has helped sculpture Tarantino taste in music, characters, and stories he installs in his movies. One would expect that his depiction of African-Americans in his movies would be based of…