WEBVTT

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I mean if you go back and read Langston Hughes' essay from 1929,

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I think it was, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain."

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He opens it with a question from a young poet who approaches him and says,

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"I don't wanna be a black poet, I just wanna be a poet." But what does that mean, really.

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In his essay, he says, what that artist is really saying is "I wanna be a white artist."

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Because they are not burned by the problem of race.

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To not be called a black artist seems to perform some kind of

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Liberating function in the minds of a lot of people.

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So who needs to not know, or who needs to not think of you as a black artist

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in order for you to become a real artist?

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The painting is the painting. And black painters have done all kind of work all the time,

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So it's not a question of whether they represent or whether they don't represent.

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But it's the treatment of whichever of forms they engage in.

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That's what determines the value of the work. Not whether you call them a black artist or not.