{"id":5088,"date":"2014-08-19T14:48:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T18:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/?p=5088"},"modified":"2014-08-20T17:52:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T21:52:39","slug":"a-treatise-on-black-art-in-the-age-of-the-machine-the-dematerialization-of-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/a-treatise-on-black-art-in-the-age-of-the-machine-the-dematerialization-of-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"A Treatise on Black Art in the Age of the Machine & the Dematerialization of It All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author | Daniel AnTon Johnson
\nFeatured Image: “Be of our Space World” by Robert Pruitt<\/em><\/p>\n

For a lot of black artists, choosing how to define oneself, whether to accept or reject the prefix, is an existential rite of passage. Since the disbandment of the Yes Black People Have an Official Decision Making Club Club in the late 60s, black Americans in the art world have been playing it fast and loose. The loss of the one true galactic black\u2014Sun Ra, may he rest in space\u2014in 1968 stirred a wildness that had been percolating for years (few know that Sun Ra<\/a> actually left for space and not Pennsylvania in 1968 as cited by Wikipedia). Without the presence of any strong capable leaders or a clear mandate about what black art<\/a> should be, the art made by black Americans has been unfocused and contradictory, repetitive even.<\/p>\n

\"J.<\/a>
J. D. \u2018Okhai Ojeikere: Sartorial Moments and The Nearness of Yesterday<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now let\u2019s face it, I\u2019m probably the only person smart enough to fix everything. So I became the founding member of Black People Once Again Have a Committee for Official Decisions on Matters of Race and nominated myself as the official spokesperson. For my first public address, I\u2019d like to offer an edict pertaining to the limits of black art. I wrote this edict as a poem because white people<\/a>, like myself, recognize the importance of literary rigor, precise language, and grammatical correctness.<\/p>\n

Black art must be cool mother fucker.
\nBut not too cool motherfucker.
\nBlack art must be
\nOoooooooooooh
\nAaaaaaaaaaaaah.<\/p>\n

Black art should also know its limits, which is why I ended the poem so quickly because why beat a dead horse? It\u2019s simple really. Black art should cater to the tastes of whites. Because The Stylistics<\/a> and MJ<\/a> were actually wrong, and people don\u2019t make the world go round. It\u2019s actually money<\/a>, and white people are basically money. $o let\u2019s face it; we\u2019ve all got lives outside of this, and we all know that there is a terrible tragedy in life outside of whiteness. We\u2019ve seen the commercials. So there\u2019s no need to remind anyone. The work should be easily digested. It shouldn\u2019t make people feel too much.<\/p>\n

\"Toyin<\/a>
Woman with Shirt by Toyin Odutola<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which reminds me, once, while being outrageously witty, I said, \u201cBe black like an Oreo<\/a>.\u201d Do not let the appearance of difference limit you. We\u2019re all the same on the inside. Let the terribly humdrum crunch of that black cookie crumble under the colossal crushing authority of those beautiful ivory teeth so fair and hungry to liberate that soft sweet whiteness that we all know is inside of you. And why not wash it down with that pure tall glass of white white milk.<\/p>\n

Because why does black art have to be so black anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author | Daniel AnTon Johnson Featured Image: “Be of our Space World” by Robert Pruitt For a lot of black artists, choosing how to define oneself, whether to accept or reject the prefix, is an existential rite of passage. Since the disbandment of the Yes Black People Have an Official Decision Making Club Club in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1251,1250,1259,1255,1256,1260,1258,1253,135,43,1257,1252,307,1254],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-black-art","tag-daniel-johnson","tag-gary-simmons","tag-glenn-logon","tag-hank-willis-thomas","tag-kerry-james-marshall","tag-michael-ray-charles","tag-motherfucker","tag-posture","tag-posturemag","tag-sanford-biggers","tag-sun-ra","tag-visual-art-2","tag-witty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Robert-Pruitt-Art-Women-Art-01.jpg?fit=700%2C700","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6QBV8-1k4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5088"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5120,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5088\/revisions\/5120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5088"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}