CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/3/2021

A powerful new 1971 facsimile champions Black aesthetics

Featured spreads are from Black Art Notes, a new release this week from Primary Information and a Staff Pick for Black History Month. An awesome and highly-relevant facsimile edition, this 80-page staple-bound paperback (with gatefolds) collects eight essays and an appendix written in response to the Whitney's 1971 Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition, which was famously boycotted by a consortium of artist-members of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition who had, in fact, initiated the show nearly two years prior. Edited by artist and organizer Tom Lloyd, Black Art Notes features writings by Amiri Baraka, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, Francis & Val Gray Ward and Lloyd himself. His Introduction, "Black Art—White Cultural Institutions," ends with a statement that is equally timely today. "Art, as far as possible, should be inter-connected with political and social action. Community art groups, dance workshops, storefront theatres, film workshops are springing all over the country. Artists are more and more gearing and investing all or part of their creative energies in social action agencies, mental health programs, drug addiction centers and youth organizations. This turning into the community indicates a certain awareness of others in the group—something which has been previously negated. Furthermore since many of these depend essentially on neighborhood funding there is no requirement to support the establishment values of the dominant culture.
In a society where racist institutions are inhumane and unresponsive to the free expression of other cultures the Black aesthetic will assert itself inspite of all the obstacles of alien culture."