{"id":9767,"date":"2018-12-28T13:18:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T18:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=9767"},"modified":"2019-01-02T23:34:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T04:34:49","slug":"time-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/12\/28\/time-is-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Original Black Power Mural And A New History Of African American Art From Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August 1967, a group of 14 African American artists began painting a 60-foot-wide mural on the side of a run-down tavern at the corner of 43rd Street and Langley Avenue on Chicago\u2019s South Side. They called it the \u201cWall of Respect\u201d<\/a> and their artwork would inspire hundreds of Black Power murals all across the United States.<\/p>\n

Sylvia Abernathy drafted the overall design. Each artist was given a section of the wall to paint and a theme\u2014Black heroes of music, sports, politics, activism, religion, acting, writing. They portrayed H. Rap Brown, Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Nat Turner, Elija Muhammad and members of the Nation of Islam, W.E.B. DuBois, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Sidney Poitier. The mural was a living thing, evolving as portraits were added or removed. Martin Luther King Jr. was left out; not radical enough.<\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/a>
Barbara Jones-Hogu, “Land Where My Father Died,” 1968, Color screenprint on gold-colored Japanese-style laid paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions and The James M. Wells Curatorial Discretion Acquisition Fund, 2016.13.1.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The project is designed to help give Black people a more distinct sense of identity, as well as beautify the neighborhood,” muralist William Walker told the Chicago Tribune<\/a> shortly after the artwork was dedicated in August 1967.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018Wall of Respect\u2019 was a revolutionary act, made without city permits or permission from the building owner,\u201d write the organizers of \u201cThe Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago\u2019s South Side, 1960-1980,\u201d<\/a> an amazing and inspiring exhibition at the University of Chicago\u2019s Smart Museum of Art through Dec. 30. \u201cCreating art for the people, affirming a new Black consciousness, and beautifying a working-class South Side neighborhood, the OBAC artists sparked a public mural movement that quickly spread to other American cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mural and the artists who created it are at the heart of \u201cThe Time Is Now!,\u201d which highlights the effort of Black artists across the United States in the 1960s and \u201870s for self-determination\u2014to define their own image, to create their own autonomous institutions, to define what Black art is. It features more than 100 artworks\u2014mainly by Black artists, but also some of the North Side White Chicago Imagists who were nurtured by the South Side\u2019s Hyde Park Art Center\u2014ranging from anguished Expressionism to vibrant protest graphics to utopian sci-fi imaginings.<\/p>\n

\""The<\/a>
“The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago\u2019s South Side, 1960\u20131980” at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. Foreground: Douglas Williams plaster sculpture “Sky Watchers,” circa 1970. Background: Jae Jarell\u2019s suede and leather outfits \u201cDahomey Ensemble,\u201d 2018 recreation of 1973 original, and \u201cGent\u2019s Great Coat,\u201d 1973. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Time Is Now!\u201d\u2014along with \u201cSoul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,\u201d<\/a> organized by the Tate Modern and on view at New York\u2019s Brooklyn Museum through Feb. 3, and \u201cWe Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985,\u201d<\/a> which was organized by the Brooklyn Museum and appeared at Boston\u2019s Institute of Contemporary Art<\/a> last summer\u2014is one of the landmark exhibitions that have appeared in the wake of Black Lives Matter to revise the history of Western art to include artists of color frequently ignored because of White art world racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Time Is Now!\u201d is also part of \u201cArt Design Chicago,\u201d<\/a> an exploration of Chicago\u2019s art and design legacy initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art with presenting partner The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. The project echoes the Getty Foundation\u2019s \u201cPacific Standard Time\u201d<\/a> initiative begun in 2011 to explore Los Angeles\u2019 art history, which successfully sparked renewed interest in California art across the country.<\/p>\n

\"Pauline<\/a>
Pauline Simon\u2019s painting \u201cTattooed Weight Lifter,\u201d 1973 (left), and Richard Hunt\u2019s welded steel sculpture \u201cWinged Hybrid Figure No. 3,\u201d 1965 (right), in “The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago\u2019s South Side, 1960\u20131980” at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chicago has long been a major center of Black culture. It was one of the prime destinations of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South after the Civil War. But those who made a home in the \u201cBlack Belt\u201d centered on Bronzeville on the city\u2019s South Side found another form of White racism and segregation. A 1967 study by University of Chicago found 65 percent of Chicago Whites \u201cstrongly or moderately opposed any additional action toward civil rights of African Americans\u201d and 42 percent \u201cexpressly asserted that housing discrimination should continue,\u201d exhibition curator Rebecca Zorach reports in the catalogue.<\/p>\n

The University of Chicago led urban renewal programs that drove Black residents and businesses from its South Side Hyde Park neighborhood. Meanwhile restrictive covenants (real estate agreements in which White property owners refused to sell to Blacks) and segregationist violence prevented African Americans from settling in other neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

For example, Lorraine Hansberry<\/a>\u2019s 1959 play \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d\u2014written after she left her native Chicago for New York in 1950\u2014was inspired by her own family\u2019s experience moving into Woodlawn, a primarily White neighborhood just south of the University of Chicago, and working-class Black folks who rented from her father. When Hansberry was 8, her father, Carl Hansberry\u2014who founded a bank and ran a successful real estate business\u2014worked with White realtors to secretly buy a brick three-flat at 6140 S. Rhodes Ave.<\/a>, despite a racist restrictive covenant. After the family there in May 1937, Whites threw bricks through the family\u2019s windows. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the restrictive covenant, but the U.S. Supreme Court eventually reversed the decision on a legal technicality, opening the area to Blacks.<\/p>\n

\""The<\/a>
“The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago\u2019s South Side, 1960\u20131980” at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Time Is Now!\u201d overlaps with the reign of Richard J. Daley, who was elected mayor of Chicago six times, serving for 21 years between April 20, 1955, until his death on Dec. 20, 1976. Daley, known as \u201cThe Boss\u201d of Chicago\u2019s Democratic Machine, was a White Irish Catholic who lived his entire life in Bridgeport, a White Irish Catholic neighborhood just west of Bronzeville.<\/p>\n

After Martin Luther King\u2019 was assassinated in April 1968, uprisings in Chicago left nine Black men dead and large parts of the city\u2019s West Side burned. At a press conference a few days afterward, Daley infamously announced: \u201cI said to him [the police superintendent] very emphatically and very definitely that [he should issue an order] immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill<\/a> any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand in Chicago because they’re potential murderers, and to issue a police order to shoot to maim or cripple any arsonists and looters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daley later insisted, \u201cThere wasn’t any shoot to kill order.\u201d But his clear approval of violence\u2014with strong support from the White community\u2014was manifested in the police riot that attacked Vietnam War protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August that year. This is also the city where on Dec. 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, the charismatic 21-year-old Illinois Chapter chairman of the Black Panther Party, was murdered by Chicago Police<\/a> during an early morning raid of a West Side apartment at 2337 W. Monroe St. that was home to Panthers.<\/p>\n

\"Darryl<\/a>
Darryl Cowherd, “Blackstone, Woodlawn, Chicago,” 1968, Gelatin silver print. Collection of the artist. Art \u00a9 Darryl Cowherd Sr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the context in which the \u201cWall of Respect\u201d was painted. “It was a guerrilla mural,” Jeff Donaldson, one of the muralists, said in 2003<\/a>. “It was a clarion call, a statement of the existence of a people.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Time Is Now!\u201d includes a 1967 oil sketch of Miles Davis by Donaldson for the \u201cWall of Respect.\u201d The show also exhibits actual surviving pieces by Eddie Harris and Eda (Eugene \u201cEda\u2019 Wade) painted for the \u201cWall of Truth,\u201d which was created on an apartment building across the street from the \u201cWall of Respect.\u201d There\u2019s also a panel from William Walker\u2019s \u201cWall of Love,\u201d painted at Chicago\u2019s Museum of Contemporary Arts for its 1971 exhibition \u201cMurals for the People\u201d and then displayed on the upper floors of the African-American-run South Side Community Art Center.<\/p>\n

The center, which First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated in 1941, is an example of the autonomous institutions Black Chicagoans created to have their own bases of economic and political power. (The Nation of Islam, which has been headquartered in Chicago since the early 1930s, is another example.)<\/p>\n

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago had long been integrated, but Black artists graduated to find themselves often segregated out of the city\u2019s White-run art world. So outdoor art fairs\u201457th Street Art Fair, Lake Meadows Art Fair, Englewood Concourse Art Fair\u2014became key places for African American Artists to exhibit.<\/p>\n

Artist and educator Margaret T. Burroughs founded the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art in her home and it grew to become the DuSable Museum. Artist Yaound\u00e9 Olu\u2019s launched the Osun Center for the Arts in South Shore neighborhood in 1968. \u201cThe whole purpose for me having the gallery, outside of showcasing the worls of African American artists,\u201d Olu said, \u201cwas to help encourage the community to rise to another level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Yaound\u00e9<\/a>
Yaound\u00e9 Olu, “Mother of Worlds,” 1975, Pen and ink on illustration board. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, 2018.1.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A number of the \u201cWall of Respect\u201d muralists were affiliated with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), cofounded by Jeff Donaldson. He subsequently helped form COBRA (Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists) in May 1968 to protest the \u201cArts and the Inner City\u201d conference at Chicago\u2019s Columbia College. \u201cWe object,\u201d artist Jeff Donaldson said, \u201cto the assumption \u2026 that White people can interpret the art of Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that year, Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell and Barbara Jones-Hogu\u2014who had helped paint the \u201cWall of Respect\u201d\u2014along with Jae Jarrell and Gerald Williams reclaimed the name COBRA as a Black Power arts collective, which before long became known as AFRICOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). Carolyn Lawrence, who painted the newsstand at the \u201cWall of Respect,\u201d soon joined.<\/p>\n

\"Carolyn<\/a>
Carolyn Lawrence, “Uphold Your Men,” 1971, screenprint on wove paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of David Lusenhop in honor of the artist, 2013.7.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1970, AFRICOBRA had grown to 10 members who created psychedelic Black Power art in bold \u201ccoolade\u201d colors. (Some of the best examples are currently on view at \u201cSoul of a Nation\u201d in Brooklyn.) They critiqued racist America\u2019s attacks on Blacks, while also presenting positive images in support of Black families and the African American community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is Nation Time and we are searching,\u201d the group said on a poster for their June 1970 exhibition (\u201cTen in Search of a Nation\u201d) at New York\u2019s Studio Museum in Harlem. \u201cIn the spirit of Nation-ness we are examining the roots and branches of our African Family Tree for the seeable which is most expressive of our people\/art. We are trying to make images inspired by sublimely SuPerreal African people\/experience in the U.S.A. Images that all African people can dig on directly. Images that jar the senses and cause movement. Poster art. Images designed for mass production. Inexpensive. We want everybody to have some.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cWall of Respect,\u201d intended to be temporary, was lost after a suspicious 1971 fire in a TV repair shop in the building led to the building\u2014and the mural\u2014being razed shortly after.<\/p>\n

AFRICOBRA\u2019s Chicago base crumbled after Donaldson left the city in 1970 to become chair of the art department at Howard University (members Napoleon Henderson-Jones and Nelson Stevens ended up in Massachusetts), but the collective added members around Washington, D.C., and continues to this day.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Gerald<\/a>
Gerald Williams, “Messages,” 1970, Acrylic on canvas. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, The Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, 2017.8.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In August 1967, a group of 14 African American artists began painting a 60-foot-wide mural on the side of a run-down tavern at the corner of 43rd Street and Langley Avenue on Chicago\u2019s South Side. They called it the \u201cWall of Respect\u201d and their artwork would inspire hundreds of Black Power murals all across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[495,74,496,198,38,87,493,494],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9767"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9850,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9767\/revisions\/9850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}