I thought that, since today (Monday, January 15, 2024) is set aside to remember the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, I would look on the interwebs to see if any of his many quotes addressed Art or creativity. While I wasn’t rewarded by discovering he was openly or even secretly an Art lover, I like many people I’m sure was impressed with the clarity of values that he demonstrated on so many occasions. I think the following probably resonated with me strongest (in the context of thinking about Art specifically:
“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence”
MLK Jr
If any of you, readers, are interested in spending some of your time away from laboring for the man today trying to rebalance your own knowledge of Artists inside and outside the canon to be more comprehensive, I hope you’ll take a look through this list of black artists (I use hashtags to put broad and admittedly not nuanced categories around my posts, mostly as a tool to help me find the artists again later on this site). As an abstractionist I hope, if you are here to learn about new artists, you will look into some of my personal favorites; Stanley Whitney (literally my favorite painter), William T. Williams, Leonardo Drew, and Julie Mehretu (the first artist I ever blogged about on this site). I also can’t say enough about Sanford Biggers who isn’t an abstractionist and has made non-figurative work. I’m also very much looking forward to what Jeffrey Gibson will produce for the next Venice Bienniale.
Painting After Art is Dead 