The Importance of Art

 

In Leroi Jones’s play The Dutchman, there is a statement being made about black art. The idea proposed by Clay is that if blacks could kill whites than they would not need to create black art. Black art, especially during the Harlem Renaissance, was perhaps an outlet for suppressed anger towards whites as suggested by Jones, but it was also the attempt to build a cultural identity for blacks within a complicated world.

 

 

Artists were concerned with representing the truth through art while enforcing a positive depiction of blacks to lift blacks up in society. The art being created was meant to send a message to the black community. The art was not intended for white audiences. Black art was about breaking out of white society because within that society blacks were boxed in by stereotypes put in place by whites. Art has been such an influential means to social identity for blacks when this is not the case for most other people. It is as if when a white person creates art then it is just art, but when a black person creates art it has a deeper rooted subtext and carries more cultural weight.  The problem is that blacks are constantly being defined either by whites or themselves and are never allowed to simply be; therefor everything about them can be considered a stereotype because they as a group have been, and still are, separated by an imaginary “race” classifier which exists in a constant state of scrutiny.

 

 

It is also interesting that during the Harlem Renaissance, which was the height of black art, many blacks were trying to assimilate into the American ideals and institutions through art yet many went to France for freedom from discrimination and barriers based on skin color. It is intriguing because blacks were trying to become an accepted part of a whole they knew despised them. Much like stereotypes, even this idea of assimilation was complicated because many black artists were searching for a sense of heritage through art by bringing Africa to America. Blacks were trying to build up pride in Africa but many black Americans had no emotional connection to Africa and could not see themselves in African cultures since they were Americanized from birth.  People are not emotionally bonded with countries or land that their ancestors hailed from unless that place is still a part of everyday life. For instance, I may be Irish but there is no emotional connection to Ireland since I have never been there. For a person to feel a bond with land there has to be a relationship with it whether through living there, visiting, or older family members who pass down the traditions of that place to the younger generation. Most blacks in America did not have any contact with Africa and that was why the loyalty to Africa was weak, but many artists tried to bring that heritage out through art.

 

 

Blacks have fought for inclusion in society by not being forced into a blacks only world yet wish to have forms of separation from the equality they struggled for, but maybe this isolation is not a conflict or contradiction but rather a form of black power in that blacks will only be isolated by choice and not by force. Black art would still need to exist in order for this to happen and unlike what Leroi Jones suggests in his play, violence would never make blacks stop making art because it is about more than anger or reparation. It is about identity and a sense of community.