Jones: Art historian Kellie Jones summarizes the contents of her exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ which chronicles the essential position of African-American artists (those more notable and those lesser known but still significant) in Southern California during the 1960s-1980s, which was time of new “social energy” due to the rise in political activism and changing demographics in the area.
Johnson: In this scathing New York Times review Johnson critiques Kellie Jones’ exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ clamming that the exhibition and the majority of its artists (excluding those such as David Hammons, who in Johnson’s mind follow the rules of the “post modern art world”) only take on what great white contemporary artists have “invented” and promote solidarity in alienating ways.
Raiford: The Black Panther Party, originating in Northern California struggled to control their image through the late 1960s and 1970s that is to convey the purpose of their organization through photography and media to their supporters but also to those living in society uninterested by racial equality and thus fearful of strong affirmations of blackness.
Reading Response
The order in which I read this weeks’ assigned readings influenced my thinking about the connections between each of them. The final article I read was the section from Leigh Raiford’s book Imprisoned by a Luminous Glare which chronicled the history of the Black Panther Party and the organization’s fight to be in command of their representation specially through photography. After I finished reading this and began to process Ken Johnson’s critique of Kellie Jones’s exhibition ‘Now Dig This!’ I realized a connection between black artists and photographers or those depicting black people, as in a photographer of the party, a former student at the University of Southern California, in the latter part of the 20th center and now, in 2013. As Raiford points out, the first issue of The Black Panther, the organization’s official newspaper caused a great deal of hullaballoo among white people of the Bay Area as reflected in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. This struck me as a direct parallel to Johnson’s comment in his review “It divides the viewers between those who, because of their life experiences, will identify with the struggle for black empowerment, and other for whom the black experience remains more a matter of conjecture.” Later in the paragraph Johnson even references the symbol of fist, the logo associated with Black Nationalism and the Black Power movement. In his review Johnson, a white male, ironically as in 1967 is threatened by and discounts affirmations of blackness. This is significant because it suggests that although African-Americans have technically been granted political and social rights, we still have to fight to control our representation in the media and resist assimilating to images acceptable to “American” or white culture