Current Art Shows Feature Black Art
• How does one define black art? Is it art that portrays black people, or art made by black people to manifest their experience? Scrutiny, or self-expression? A handful of current art shows take varying approaches to the question. At the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, three shows tackle the aesthetics of blackness in wildly different ways. The Black Figure in the European Imaginary collects 19th-century European depictions of African men and women. It’s a room full of objectively beautiful work that is, nevertheless, squeam-inducing in its fetishization of the “exotic other.” AfroFantastic, on the other hand, condenses modern African-American narratives into a protected utopia in which imagination can sweep away all limits. And Reframing the Picture, Reclaiming the Past bridges the …
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