This qualitative study is designed as Africentric research to fill a gap in the historical narratives on African American art and visual culture. Specifically, it focuses on the historical and cultural significance of the art and visual culture of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These visual artifacts, known collectively as Black Art, are directly linked to the Black Power concept and the Black Liberation Struggle.
Why Black Art has been overlooked in Art Education and how it can benefit the field as a site for enhancing racial literacy are the questions that drive this research. This study looks at this dilemma as indicative of reductive bias due to a lack of knowledge about Black Art and persisting racial discourses associated with Black Art and its time. And this study explores the epistemological base, i.e., the origin, nature and intent of Black Art, as well as the movement’s influence on art-making, and arts influence on it. Considered an art form itself, the movement was at the epicenter of the historical and cultural nexus that birthed the Black Studies Movement, multiculturalism, identity politics, culturally-relevant education and Africentricity.
The Black Arts Movement is one of the most productive and artistically inventive periods in American history. However despite this, Black Art is stilled maligned and misunderstood. Critical race theory breaks through the racialization and reductive bias blocking interest in Black Art; optimal theory weighs the efficacy of its visual codes. Black Art is thus reCognized by exploring the nexus between its historical and cultural content and intent.