If you go back and read Langston Hughes's essay from 1929,
I think it was, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain."
He opens it with a question from a young poet who approaches him and says,
"I don't wanna be a black poet, I just wanna be a poet."
But what does that mean, really?
In his essay, he says,
what that artist is really saying is, "I wanna be a white artist."
Because they are not burdened by the problem of race.
To not be called a Black artist seems to perform some kind of
liberating function in the minds of a lot of people.
So who needs to not know,
or who needs to not think of you as a Black artist
in order for you to become a real artist?
The painting is the painting.
Black painters have done all kinds of work all the time.
So it's not a question of whether they represent or whether they don't represent.
But it's the treatment of whichever of those forms they engage in.
That's what determines the value of the work.
Not whether you call them a Black artist or not.