“AfriCOBRA”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists)^[1] is an African-American artists'collective formed in Chicago in 1968.^[2] The five founding members of the group were Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams.^[3] Other early members who joined in the late 1960s and 1970s included Nelson Stevens, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Carolyn Lawrence, Frank Smith and James Phillips.

Some of AfriCOBRA's founding members had been associated with a multi-disciplinary Chicago association called OBAC (Organization of Black American Culture) that formed in the early 1960s and produced culturally-specific, pro-Black literature and visual arts. OBAC was most famous for creating the 1967 urban mural entitled the "Wall of Respect" on Chicago's South Side. AfriCOBRA members Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Carolyn Lawrence were among a larger group of visual artists who contributed to the "Wall of Respect" project prior to the founding of AfriCOBRA.

Goals of the AfriCOBRA movement

AfriCOBRA artists were associated with the Black Arts Movement in America, a movement that began in the mid-1960s and that celebrated culturally-specific expressions of the contemporary Black community in the realms of literature, theater, dance and the visual arts.

Beginning in 1968, AfriCOBRA members met regularly on the South Side of Chicago at the home and studio of Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell where they discussed ways that their art could embody a "Black aesthetic," and how their art could be placed in service of Black liberation movements.

In an interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Teresa A. Carbone (the Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum) stated, "It's difficult to draw a one-to-one correspondence between a work and an immediate social effect, but graphics from the Chicago artist collective AfriCOBRA, [African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists] really did help reshape the mindset of black communities."^[4]

When the group originally formed in 1968, they called themselves the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists (COBRA). By early 1970, as the group prepared for its first major exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, they were calling themselves the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). The final name pulled sought to create a larger sense of community positing that art-making has a collective nature. The creators wanted the works to be accessible, so they made poster art that was designed for mass production.^[5]

AfriCOBRA, worked to make African-American art a community effort. Much of the visual aesthetic of these works are focused on social, political, and economical conditions related to Black Americans. They created a manifesto entitled "Ten in Search of a Nation" in 1969.^[6]

One of the most notable works was the commemoration of black revolutionaries in the Wall of Respect that was painted by the members of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Gerald Williams, and Barbara Jones-Hogu were members originally who later on formed AfriCOBRA, as well as Sylvia Abernathy, Myrna Weaver and others.^[7] This wall also became what Barbara Jones-Hogu described as "a visual symbol of Black nationalism and liberation."

Barbara Jones-Hogu characterized the artistic expression of the AfriCOBRA movement by saying: "[Our art] must communicate to its viewer a statement of truth, of action, of education, of conditions and a state of being to our people. We wanted to speak to them and for them, by having our common thoughts, feelings, trials and tribulations express our total existence as a people."

See also

Selected works

References

1. ^{{Cite web|url=https://arts.uchicago.edu/logan-center/logan-center-exhibitions/archive/africobra-philosophy|title=AFRICOBRA: Philosophy {{!}} UChicago Arts {{!}} The University of Chicago|website=arts.uchicago.edu|language=en|access-date=2017-07-01}}
2. ^{{cite web|url=https://arts.uchicago.edu/logan-center/logan-center-exhibitions/archive/africobra-philosophy|website=arts.uchicago.edu|accessdate=November 14, 2016|title=AFRICOBRA: Philosophy}}
3. ^{{cite book|last1=Lusenhop|first1=David|title=Jae Jarrell and the Fashioning of Black Culture|date=2015|publisher=Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland|location=Cleveland|page=70}}
4. ^{{Cite journal|last =|first =|date = March 2014|title = Art and Protest|url =|journal = Art in America|doi =|pmid =}}
5. ^{{Cite journal|last =|first =|date = 2007|title = AFRICOBRA NOW!|url =|journal = International Review of African American Art|doi =|pmid =}}
6. ^{{Cite journal|last = Donaldson|first = Jeff|date = 2012|title = AfriCOBRA Manifesto? "Ten in Search of a Nation"|url =|journal = Nka|doi =|pmid =|access-date =}}
7. ^{{Cite book|title = Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists|last = Farrington|first = Lisa|publisher = Oxford University Press|year = 2005|isbn = 978-0-19-976760-1|location = New York|pages = 129}}

External links

[https://www.africobranow.com/ AfriCOBRA Official Website] *[https://www.africobranow.com/]