Create the art, promote the art, sell the art. I'm buying it if I like it.
This article certainly presents a host of new barriers for anyone in the art community. As a white, male collector I cannot no longer own the art unless I am accepted by the artist as an culturally vetted owner. I can no longer sell the art as I cannot tell the untainted story of the artwork's creation, and I cannot purchase this art at any given price as it is not fully supporting the black artist and will certainly be viewed as an exploitative price five years from now.
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I’m an artist of non European/non white ethnicity, and with a very ethnic name. When I sell a piece I’m glad for myself. My ancestors, to the degree that I credit them for my perspective or intelligence, are to be credited as individuals, the same way I see myself. My art is not tribal. Tribes, skin color, religion.. I freed myself from all that when I became an artist.
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This article belongs in the Business section. It is not about the meaning or significance of the art works it refers to, but their monetary value.
Oh, the outrage, the outrage, if the number of non-black people who make money in a way that depends on art created by black people exceeds the number of black people who do? Are we outraged that Herbert von Karajan made money conducting works by Italian composers?
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Whining because one doesn't make enough money from art has long been a trope of the post-romantic artist, but don't be mad once you see that he want it.
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What is ' black art' ?
The one and only biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
Ancient Egyptian Dynastic history began with the unification of Upper Egypt by it's Pharaoh Narmer by military conquest of Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt had long deep inextricable and intertwined pre-and post dynastic ethnic cultural connections with black Kush aka Nubia.
Ancient Egyptian painted themselves brown, Sub- Saharan Africans black, Europeans white and Middle Easterners and Asians yellow.
The Macedonians under Alexander arrived 3000 years after Narmer. And the Romans under the Julius Caesar came centuries later.
Most modern Egyptians look like Barack Obama. They don't look like Donald Trump. And the futher South aka Upper Egypt you go they look like David ' Big Papi' Ortiz aka Nubian.
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Who Owns Black Art? Thanks Colonialism.
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On one level, anyone who buys a piece of art owns it. On a deeper level, however, no one or everyone owns an artistic piece as long as the public can see or hear it. I can get just as much from the Mona Lisa being in the Louvre as I would were it in my living room. The same is true for any artwork, it is truly owned by all in the world who appreciate it.
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"religious goddess" -- as opposed to a secular goddess?
There are no laws that prohibit black people from opening galleries or buying art. And does this racist mentality imply that white artists create culture only for whites, indigenous artists for indigenous people, Asian artists for Asians?
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Seems to me, as with some many issues involving race, it would help to make two interconnected but distinct points:
1. There is an inherent tension between the creation of "Art" and the monetizing of it. Subjects and creators are pretty frequently not the ones who reap the financial rewards that come with art that finds a lucrative market. "Ownership" of art is an especially sticky wicket, practically and philosophically.
2. Certain groups -- and I would include women as well as people of color here -- have traditionally experienced the disconnect from Point #1 in much greater and more egregious ways. So it's appropriate to think about the ways amends can be made/systems can be changed. I always think about the Cotton Club in the 1920s, and how black performers entertained all white audiences. Everyone loved jazz, yet its creators experienced blatant discrimination. There are innumerable examples of such situations, many far more exploitative. Still, for point #2 to fly as persuasive logic, I think one has to acknowledge point #1.
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Confusing, contradictory points. Do your art, get it to market. Know the market; you may have to paint outside the lines. Don't worry about buyers feeling your pain. That's ridiculous. They have their own pain. Give them joy. In terms of gallery ownership, I agree. Work on that.
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The artist owns it until they sell it at which point the buyer does.
Yep.
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Has art, or anything else for that matter, ever been or will ever be truly colorblind?
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@Guido Malsh Not as long as their is a power group that ensures racism remains front and center even when it's nearly background noise of human nature. There are zero legal impediments towards art with respect to race, sex, sexual preference, intelligence, attractiveness or any other intersectionality nonsense you can pretend is real.
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"Who owns black art"?
as, with ANY art
The entity that pays for it.
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“Art”—is not synonymous with “objects to be sold.” This is probably a truism to most people who call themselves an “artist,” but it also at least reminds us of another, pretty much cliched, phrase: “it takes a village.” There is no singular “art world” constituted by art works and their markets. There are only art worlds, constituted by everyone involved, from gallery owners to art supply providers to art teachers and historians to journalists like John Eligon to museum curators and, of course, to art makers themselves, etc., etc.
Is there racism in these worlds?—you betcha. Is that all there is?—nope.
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There are social problems; there are economic problems.
Then there is Art. Conflate them at your peril.
When I look at a painting, or hear a song, do I own it? No, I don't. Collectors, producers, and increasingly, corporations own these things. Art will always, and can only, belong to all humanity.
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Nobody owns art. Nobody owns anything. Ownership is an illusion; a construct designed to foster a false sense of permanence. We’re all just visiting and thus we’re all renters.
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@Stephen Hume No, ownership is as real as liberty, justice and equality are real, as real as nations and money. Even on death, your will controls where your property goes. Even art will return to nature, but that doesn't mean it's not real before then.
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David, courts overturn wills all the time. Somebody’s successfully contesting a will even as we exchange points. I recall, many years ago, meeting two young Inuit hunters whom I asked about land claims. They laughed at me, in a nice way. “”You kabloona,” one of them said. “You think we want to own the land. We can’t own the land. The land owns us.” You and I are going to be gone soon, me sooner than you possibly, and any instructions I have from the grave will be strictly up to somebody else to carry out or ignore. Nope. T he e notion of ownership is an illusion. At best we are custodians and, hopefully, good stewards. I understand the desire to control but it’s illusory because it’s so temporary.
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I am trying to understand why Blacks, or anyone, question who should own "Black" art and why there is or even should be a distinction. Art is Art. The belief throughout the art world and the public in general has always been that once created, art belonged to the public, with the only value attached being that which would be paid by whomever wanted physical possession of it. I am beginning to realize that we will never achieve the oneness that we should all strive for. The conversation always seems to devolve into "White" this or "Black" that, "Asian" or "Latino" etc. Yes, we all have a heritage and an ancestral bloodline but it needs to end there. It should not define a person. We are all so much more than simple labels.
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@Hi Neighbor I kind of get your point about “oneness”, but in this article, the story is about artists who are black, who simply wish to be accepted into the larger art world — one that is typically and historically led & curated by non-black people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting the “culture” that has been created by Black people, credited to black people.
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@Alish
If the world started in the last twenty years, and everything was already here--just "hogged" and dominated by non-black people, then, yes, that would be the point.
But it wasn't. Until recently, centuries of Art as an entity, activity, and commodity (removed from strictly religious or body-adorning functions) were the exclusive creation and province of Europeans and Americans of European descent.
That was/is, after all, the growing complaint during the last eighty years or so, which, though the situation has evolved and broadened, continues to this day.
The gradual acceptance of female and non-white artists into the larger Art World is a positive thing. But separatist thinking, moral arguments for factional "ownership," and demands for recognition have always fallen flat for anyone.
The Art World that this curator wants to be a "special" player in is the same one that picks its own winners and losers, for its own uses.
Maybe her marketing talent will prevail. When will we know?
The day that there is a line of paying black art lovers stretching around the block to attend exhibitions of and purchase artworks by black artists would be the day you get anything other than the obvious answer to the (rhetorical) question being asked here.
1
So the critical issue is whether the authors and the artists cited in the opinion piece actually want an honest answer to the question posed by them.
The only people who own so-called "black art" are those who value it enough to purchase it. That's it. Same rules for black artists as the artists of every other ethnicity.
Calling out the dearth of black-owned galleries is just another example of ... what? That owning a gallery is a sure way to financial loss? Or is it only the top tier 1%er galleries that the author is referencing? What prevents black people from pooling their capital to take a chance on funding an art gallery? Common sense? or is it the deep state of racism that pervades every aspect of every activity wherein blacks do not achieve comparable outcomes? Clearly the latter is consistent with the editors' agenda and with most of the opinion writers in the NYT who weigh in on race.
Look, 98% of all artists don't make enough money to earn a living wage. That has nothing to do with racial bias. It has everything to do with our cultural standards which are pretty low when it comes to art and music.
Finally, one of the more absurd themes in this opinion piece is the implication that whites appropriate black creativity and make money off of it. Really. Well, sometime go to a museum or to a symphony and decide for yourself whether white art and music owes its existence to black creativity.
This really is an IQ test.
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@TDurk great points, and I respect a perspective, even when it’s very different than mine. It sounds like the art or “culture” being referenced here is outside of your scope of reference. Your comment (opinion) is literally wrapped in privilege.
2
I’m surprised this article doesn’t mention the grotesque exploitation of the quasi-homeless African-American artist Purvis Young. Wealthy Miami gallerists and collectors (alas, not only white and male...) grabbed as much of his work as they could, paying him a pittance and then (styling themselves smugly as “woke”) sold his work for much, much more. I know it’s the way of the art world, but Young’s exploitation was particularly egregious and has been shoved under the rug of history because so many of his collectors are prominent Miamians.
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@Colibrina
Albert Barnes (Barnes Foundation) wrote to a colleague, crowing about how he visited the artist Soutine in his studio, finding him ill and destitute, and bought out the contents of his studio "for a song." And he wasn't black!
3