Black Aesthetics

Rutledge M. Dennis
George Mason University
rdenni1@gmu.edu

Kimya N. Dennis
Salem College
kimya.dennis@salem.edu

Abstract:
Questions related to the definition of art, the function of art, and the role of creative artists (in
music, painting, sculpture, and literature), and the population to whom the works of art are
directed have been the subject of much debate, and the focus of criticism from Plato to the
present. The concept of Black Aesthetics addresses and delineates the meanings, interpretations,
goals and objectives asserted by black artists engaged in the process of creating and producing.
The aesthetic idea also focuses on the meaning and interpretation of cultural works when
received by the intended audience. The concept of Black aesthetics considers not only how and
why cultural works are produced, but the cultural, political, and economic contexts within which
the works are produced and the issues and events prompting such creative works.

Main text:
Black aesthetics address questions and issues related to the cultural values and practices in the
everyday world of Black Americans; such questions and issues expressly focus on, and define a
people, a group, and specifically address issues pertinent to identify: who they are, their social,
cultural, political, and economic wants and needs, and the ways they differ from both the larger
dominant society and the host of adjacent sub-cultures with whom they must interact. In this
sense, black aesthetics demarcate the differences and similarities between group histories and
sociologies so as to help explain the unique social and cultural history of a people. That
aesthetics also probe how and why Black Americans have produced their unique cultural
products, but also the significant meaning these cultural products have for blacks in their varied
historical and geographical settings and contexts. This is why Black aesthetic movements, past
and present, therefore, generally raise and address three central questions: 1) What are the social
functions of black arts and black artistic creativity? ; 2) What are the cogent features of life, art,
and culture which should be uncovered, promoted, and emphasized?, and lastly, how has this
creativity promoted and changed the individual and collective behavior of blacks in divergent
settings over time? These questions support Adam David Miller’s ([1970] 1972: 539) concept of
aesthetics in general and Black Aesthetics in particular. The former he describes as “a way of
viewing and sensing and the results of what is viewed and sensed.” The latter he asserts
addresses questions related to“…how have we blacks seen ourselves, through whose eyes, how
do we see ourselves now, and how may we see ourselves.”

A critical assessment of Black Aesthetics should, of necessity, begin with an historical sketch of
the individuals and artistic products of social significance. For blacks, these impulses developed
and were nurtured within the world of segregation. However, suppression and exclusion, rather
than dampening creativity, may instead, provide fuel for literary and artistic creativity and
productivity. Davis and Redding (1971) discussed the evolution of black creative ingenuity from
the late eighteenth century to the middle 1960s (Davis and Redding, 1971; Bardolph, 1959).

The first period which illustrated a limited movement toward a Black Aesthetic expression is
reflected in the writings of Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), George Moses Horton (1797-1883),
and David Walker (1785-1830). Wheatley’s poems are full of images of Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia,
Pagan Land, dark abodes), Christianity (Jesus’ blood, Son of God, angelic train, the cross, a God
and a savior), and the virtues of America (America excel, Zion, dear Americans). Horton was a
self-taught poet who wrote love and comical poems. His poetry also reflected unfulfilled desires
and yearnings for personal aspirations (“My genius from a boy has fluttered like a bird within my
heart), and freedom from slavery and oppression (Alas! And am I born for this, to wear this
slavish chain?) David Walker in his David Walker’s Appeal(1965)denounces slavery and black
servitude and makes the case for revolt and revolution citing white Americans as “tyrants and
devils” (Davis and Redding: 50). Walker, like future rebels Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner,
was inspired immensely by the victory of Toussaint L’Overture over the French in Haiti. For
each individual in this period the ideas of freedom and liberty remained individual as well as
collective goals. However, Wheatley’s freedom meant a freedom, and flight, from Africa and
from paganism to Christianity. In the early period of black literary creativity there is the quiet air
of acceptance and joy expressed by Wheatley, coupled with bewilderment and anger, especially
by Walker (1965).

The second wave of the black aesthetic movement, a major wave, occurred towards the end of
the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century with the writings of Du Bois,
Charles Waddell Chestnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson (Margolies,
1968). In the mid-nineteenth century, however, the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass
(1817-1895), the novels and African expeditions of the physician Martin Delaney (1812-1885),
the novels and plays of William Wells Brown (1814-1884), plus the slaves narratives had already
demonstrated the vast array of literary themes and formats generated by individuals in search of
their own personal freedom and the collective freedom for their people (Robinson, 1971). If the
individuals of this era displayed a great thirst for freedom and willingness to fight for their
rightful place in the American racial and ethnic mosaic, they also pointed to a growing and
manifest individual self-consciousness attached to an individual search for self- identity which
was primary, and the first stage in any quest for a collective identity. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s
poems,” Ode to Ethiopia”,” An Ante-Bellum Sermon”, and “We Wear the Mask” (Davis and
Redding 1971: 206-212) reflect both a look towards Africa and an emerging concept of a Black
Self visible in the United States.

The period known as the Harlem Renaissance represented the apex of Black America’s literary
and artistic achievement. It represented a third wave. This era would define and refine the idea of
Black Aesthetics. Scholars and creative artists, gathered around the intellectual leadership of the
chief proponent of The New Negro, Alain Locke (1925). Individually and collectively they
created new images, myths, unearthed forgotten and neglected black cultural heritage, and
interpreted, defined, and re-analyzed the legacy of the African past, in Africa and the New
World, so as to connect aspects of that past to the New Negro present. Discovering Africa and
linking it to the Old Negro and New Negro was made possible by a series of events: Du Bois’
leadership in a series of Pan-African Congresses in the late 1890,s and the turn of the twentieth
century; the earlier Berlin Conference of 1885, the rise of European imperialism and colonialism
in Africa, the beginning of the mass migration of southern blacks to the North, the creation of the
Negro Business League by Booker T. Washington, Du Bois’ role as one of the founders of the
NAACP, the creation of the Urban League, and the influence of Marcus Garvey’s nationalist
organization, UNIA. These events and activities all had varying influences on the growing black
educated and intellectual classes in America, and for some members of the working class (Du
Bois, 1968). In his Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois had already triumphantly ushered in the
era of the New Negro when, grounding his analysis in both sociology and psychology, he
juxtaposed rural and urban blacks in the South and compared Northern blacks (proud and free) to
Southern blacks(humble and subservient). He applied a similar logic in his discussion of rural
and urban whites, North and South. In addition, Du Bois praised the formation of this New
Negro as he sought to construct organizational and networking strategies towards a theory of The
Talented Tenth. A creeping economic depression, a withdrawal of funds from upper class white
sponsors and supporters, and the fact that the Renaissance itself was not rooted in the
community, crippled and led to its demise. While it existed, however, the black social and
cultural landscape provided a rich source from which creative artists and scholars drew themes
for their novels, plays, poetry, histories, paintings, sculptors, jazz, folk songs, spirituals,
histories ,and sociology. Here the full scope of a burgeoning black individual and collective self -
consciousness as reflective in artistic creativity can be seen and assessed. It is during this period
of heightened artistic creativity that discussions emerge concerning the role of artistic creativity
and the artist as creator, their responsibility to the art object itself, the responsibilities of artists as
creators, and the responsibilities of artists and their creative products to the black public
(Huggins, 1976). The issue of artistic creativity, the art work as object in its own right, and the
public to whom creative works are presented, were central themes related to whether art works
were simply objects of beauty in themselves, serving no public function, an art for art sake
theory (Clark, 1974), or whether, as the counter argument claimed, art and scholarly creations ,
especially among the oppressed, should be objects, themes, and ideas to advance the public’s
social, political, and economic welfare (Huggins, 1976).

The leading scholars and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Jean
Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Kelly Miller, Charles S. Johnson,
Roland Hayes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Paul Robeson, and James Weldon Johnson exemplified
and represented the highest and first stage of collective genius in Black America. The works of
each, in prose, poetry, or song, threw down the gauntlet to the nation’s racial policies, practices,
and assumptions. Their writings and speeches were addressed to both black and white audiences
and periodicals, but James Weldon Johnson and Hughes, more so than the others, in their
sermons, novels, short stories, and poetry, rooted their themes, stories, and essays essentially
within the contours of a black folklore tradition.

The last, most prominent, and highly community-based aesthetic movement, like the previous
movement, developed from many sources. It was called The New Arts Movement and was
launched by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal (1968). This new movement has to be
seen in conjunction with a host of subsequent ideas and events: the decolonization process which
was occurring throughout Africa, Asia, and South America; the rise of Black Power and Black
Nationalism (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967); the continual existence of the idea of Pan-
Africanism; the slow pace and the continuing opposition to school desegregation, and the slow
and disappointing pace, the deep and sustained opposition to social, educational, economic and
political integration in the larger American society, and the urban unrest and riots in American
cities beginning with Watts(Addison Gayle,Jr.,1970). Arthur P. Davis (1973) compares the mood
of this movement to that of the Harlem Renaissance, and depicted the New Arts Movement as
one exemplifying hate, due to its stridency and the politics of confrontation. Larry Neal (Davis
and Redding: 1971:798-799) on the other hand, juxtaposed what he projected as a new and
necessary black aesthetic to the existing western white aesthetic, and concluded there had to be
“a cultural revolution in art and ideas … [and asked] whose vision of the world is finally more
meaningful…whose truth shall we express, that of the oppressed or of the oppressors?” Neal
threw down the gauntlet and challenged both Western aesthetics and the then existing black
aesthetics, which he viewed as ineffective, lacking roots in the community, and more seriously,
not representing the interests and concerns of blacks. He made the case for a new Black
Aesthetics which would emerge organically out of the creative communities and enterprises
across the country. Inherent in such a process would be the concomitant destruction of abstract
Western aesthetics. Given these objectives, it is understandable their rejection of the art historian
Kenneth Clark’s (1974) view of art, the purpose of artistic creation, and the life of the aesthete.

The New Arts Movement emerged almost simultaneously with the Black Power Movement,
where the slogan Black Is Beautiful prevailed, and when scholars, composers, writers, and poets
sought variations on that theme. In addition to the prose and poems of Baraka and Neal, many
others contributed to the movement: scholars such as Chancellor Williams, Harold Cruse, Lerone
Bennett, Addison Gayle, Jr.,and John Henry Clarke; novelists, playwrights and poets John
Williams, John Oliver Killens, Paule Marshall, Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Ed Bullins, Sonia
Sanchez, and Haki Madhubuti; the graphic artist Murry DePillars; singers and composers Nina
Simone (Young Gifted and Black), James Brown (I’m Black and I’m Proud), The Impressions
(We’re a Winner), and others – Oscar Brown, Jr. and Leon Thomas, Stevie Wonder, Ray
Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye, and the continuing presence of the music of Billie
Holiday, all helped to create the new mood – of struggle and a desire to transcend the present,
and work towards the achievement of a future black empowerment , and all the possibilities
inherent in the idea (Southern, 1971). Though instrumentalists such as Archie Shepp, Sonny
Rollins, Jimmie Smith, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane added new sounds and emphasis,
and a bit of urgency, to the era, there was still the presence of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis
who continued to produce new and innovative music, especially Ellington, who continued to
view his compositions as works rooted in the everyday world of the joys, sorrows, and the
spiritual strivings of blacks.

The philosophy and tactics of the New Arts Movement were attacked by two of the leading
literary critics and novelists of the period: Ralph Ellison (1964) and Albert Murray (1970). They
attacked the New Arts Movement on two fronts: 1) They accused the leading members of the
movement of spending, and wasting valuable time denouncing whites and Western aesthetics.
Instead, they should highlight and affirm the beauty and continuity of black cultural life which
continues to thrive despite the problems of racial and class inequity. Furthermore, they claimed,
by emphasizing an anti-white message, they’ve made the movement highly ideological, thus
diminishing its aesthetics values. Lastly, they contended that artistic works designed, or used
primarily as artistic propaganda tools dilute and destroy the products created, thus rendering
them third-rate, or useless. 2)The early experiences of Ellison and Murray exposed them to a vast
array of European and American writers and musical composers, hence, they believed American
music and literature were replete with themes, sounds and textures of black life. They saw no
reason to deny the positive presence of black elements in white American music any more than
denying the ways in which white authors, Twain, Faulkner, and Hemingway, though not fully
portraying blacks positively, at least introduced black themes and characters in ways not
presented before by white writers. They both understood the process of cultural borrowing and
cultural fusion, viewing it as the mainstay of culture and civilization. Indeed, both Ellison (1952;
1964; 1995; 1999) and Murray (1970; 1971; 1997) drew many of the symbols, techniques, and
themes used in their books from the writings of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, Elliot, Pound, and
Joyce. Unlike Neal and Baraka, both Ellison and Murray generally ignored whites and sought to
explicate the many layers of black life via folklore, the blues, spirituals, and jazz. Also, both
sought to answer the question of how and why blacks survived the American experience: Both
answered that affirmation of black life by blacks was a key variable in this survival. Being
conscious of this affirmation via folklore and music, and how they give meaning to black life and
thought, were crucial in understanding their role in crucial areas of economics and politics.
Baraka sought to forge such a political and economic link when in the early 1970s he disavowed
the nationalist movement as static and began to focus on political economy. Later, he declared
himself a Marxist-Leninist. The New Art Movement collapsed shortly thereafter.

Currently, no aesthetic movement or school exists similar to the Harlem Renaissance or the New
Arts Movement. Aesthetic ideas as expressions of black life and creativity, however, continue
unabated: the continued popularity of the orchestral, theatrical, and sacred works of Duke
Ellington; the poems of Gwendolyn Brooks; the new dance styles and techniques of the Alvin
Ailey Dance group replaced what was then the revolutionary dance groups and theater of
Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus; the novels , short stories, the blues, jazz, and literary
critiques of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray; books on blues and jazz by Baraka; the plays of
August Wilson; the novels of Toni Morrison; the soaring sounds of Mahalia Jackson, Albertina
Walker, and Aretha Franklin; the continuing popularity of Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk in
colleges and universities, and the changing format of hip hop and rap music (Darby and Shelby,
2005). These familiar themes and sounds coupled with new music, art, and scholarship
introduced by African, Caribbean and Latin American immigrants may suggest the rise of new
types of black aesthetics. The richness of previous waves of Black Aesthetics may be followed
by aesthetics rooted in both the local and the global. That this possibility exists reflect not only
changes in the global community, but also the many emerging divergent strands within black
creative artists and their dialectical relationship with many segments of a changing Black
America; black creative artists will continue to seek creative ideas and emotional sustenance
from black communities and the larger global society; this interactive process will likewise entail
a reconfiguration of such ideas , and a re-funneling of them in new ideas, themes and projects
back into segments of local, national, and global communities.

SEE ALSO: Harlem Renaissance; pan-Africanism; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Jazz; Hip
Hop; Rap.

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