African American Art Essay

In the textbook, African American Art and Artists, which was written by Samella Lewis, described the biography of African artists and introduced the changing roles of them. There are three aspects changing between them, their status in America, their expression of African culture, and their technique of creating arts. The first thing they had changed was their status in America. As Britain's North American colonies expanded, colonials’ demand for goods were increasing. Even though White independent slaves worked for colonials, they still needed such workers to solve the problem of the shortage of goods. Colonials figured out that at that time, numerous African slaves were available for them as cheap labors, and they could force African

During the period of colonial, a group of African immigrated to America, and they also they brought traditional techniques of their native land to America. Slaveholders’ attitude had been changed. Some slaveholders considered that African slaves of traditional techniques can make money, so they did not treat them as slaves anymore. They supported African slaves to weave and paint textiles connected with African religion. However, African gained more opportunities to spread out their culture in different field, such as, cloth, pottery, wood carving, bone carving, and so on. Then, within the first emergency of first professors, some African American artists avoided to show racial subjects. For example, Robert Duncanson was an artist of African descent to paint portrait and landscape. His ability of painting landscape better than painting portrait that Cincinnati directories recommended him as a daguerreotypist. He gained a high praise on painting The Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River and Views of Cincinnati, Ohio, but he seldom gained praise on the field of African American theme. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the only known painting by him in which connect to the Blacks. According to the textbook, it is “probably due simply to a lack of proficiency, but it may be related to puritan attitudes prevalent in America at the time, which discouraged glorification of the human form”(27). It shows that his