Black Fine Art Month 2021 — A Discourse on Monuments, History and the Black Artist
By Patricia Andrews-Keenan
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe is credited with this quote, “until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” And so, it has been across time and history from the Greeks and Romans celebrating physical perfection to the celebration of warriors and conquerors, heroes and history makers. Every continent, every country, every city, county, parish, town, and rural burg celebrates its heroes. Yet what we know for sure is that heroes are fallible and not always altruistically driven. Monuments to enslavers, colonizers, scallywags, and profiteers exist worldwide, while Black heroes, aside from a select few, have been purposefully ignored.
Is there still a need for monumentality? And how do we deal with the past while immortalizing the present? Swiss historian and architecture critic Siegfried Giedion wrote, “Every period has the impulse to create symbols in the form of monuments, which … ‘things that remind,’ things to be transmitted to later generations. This demand for monumentality cannot, in the long run, be suppressed. Do we doubt there will be a monument to Jeff Bezos one day?
So, what are we to do when faced with the past, while contemplating the future? This is the thread that runs through Black Fine Art Month™ 2021, an initiative of Pigment International™. The history is real, whether we pull it down or vandalize it. The trauma is imprinted on our DNA whether the monuments exist physically or not. I’d posit that while destruction provides some temporary succor, what we truly want is for the lion to tell his story. We want the validation that comes from both telling our story and putting it on display for the world.
Remediation efforts are underway globally. As I write this, the statue of “confederate president,” Robert E. Lee, has just been taken down from the front of the capitol in Richmond, Virginia. Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumors of War,” has been installed in Richmond. The Mellon Foundation has committed $250M to reimagine monuments.The statue of Edward Colston, a Bristol, England slave trader was replaced after 125 years by a statue of Black Lives Matter protester Jen Reid by artist Marc Quinn.
How do we create a fuller picture of both our past and present? Chicago artist and sculptor Gerald Griffin, Griffin Fine Art Gallery, has created a bust of our country’s first Black female Vice President Kamala Harris, a maquette of the country’s 44th and first Black President Barack H. Obama, and a bust of a young abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Griffin has advocated for the creation of these pieces as monuments to tell a fuller story of American history. He, along with Wiley and Quinn, are re-writing history, serving as the lion’s historians if you will. Our Salon Talks will feature artists, activists, public officials, community, and organizational leaders all weighing in on how we shape the public square of the future. In the words of historian and culturalist David Driskell, our goal is to “see beyond the contours of time and history.”
Pigment International, LLC has partnered with artists, collectors, curators and others in the Black Art ecosystem in the U.S. and internationally to host relevant conversations — Salon Talks — about crafting history from a new perspective. Organizational partners include DuSable Museum of African American History, A Smithsonian Affiliate; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH); Diasporal Rhythms; August Wilson African American Cultural Center; Lawndale, African American Arts Alliance (AAAA); Rolling Out; Black Art in America; Public Narrative; Columbia College; Northwestern University; Chicago State University; Faie African Art Gallery; South Side Community Art Center; Calabar Gallery (NY); LaBelle Galérie (NOLA); September Gray Gallery (Atlanta); Art of Black Miami; Audley Reid; Elixir Media, Golden Galleries & Art By Golden; Hummingbird Press; Lift Up the Arts; Color Me Africa; Rivet Media; T. Ellis Fine Art; Out Front Media; Instituto Allende; San Miguel, MX and Congresswoman Robin Kelly.
Pigment International Foundation is funded by Arts & Culture Capital Lab of South East Chicago Commission; City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Illinois Humanities Council; and The Art Works Fund;
We welcome you to join us on a journey that explores how Black artists will change our view of history.
Held each October, Black Fine Art Month is a global celebration of the Black Fine Art aesthetic, an annual recognition of artists, innovators, collectors, curators and those vested in the Black Art tradition, and an opportunity to commemorate and elevate these contributions through art programming. Black Fine Art Month is an initiative of Pigment International™, LLC and Pigment International Foundation. Pigment International’s signature Salon Talks will be held live and virtually and be streamed on Pigment’s YouTube Channel and on social media. The celebration will be documented in Pigment Magazine, an Ozzie Award Finalist for “Best Design for New Magazine.” Visit Pigment International on IG, FB and Twitter.
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