Nikki Giovanni's Ideas Of The Black Arts Movement

(Millhouse, 2011) In the 1980’s Pollock’s Feminism “critiqued the essential myths of individualism, the artist, and the social constructions of femininity and masculinity that define bourgeois culture”. While the 70’s feminism movement aim was to stand next to the existing masculine dominated culture. “Feminism's encounter with the canon has been complexed and many-leveled: political ,ideology,mythological,methodological and psycho-symbolic” (Pollock, 1999). The 1970’s movement was followed by the immediate task which was “the need to rectify the gaps in historical knowledge created by the consistent omission of women of all cultures from the history of art” (Pollock, 1999). The only art that was put on display was significantly male dominated work, if you wanted to see work created by women, you would have to view them “in a basement or storeroom of a national gallery” (Pollock, 1999). Female artists are only known in their own category of female artists while male artists don’t require a separate category . Art that is created by females have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art. The evident of

Nikki Giovanni gained most of her fame during the 1960s and 1970s, when she was expelled from her college and started exploring and investigating the world. She is well known for her more militant and violent poetry during that time period, but now she has become a more personal poet. A quote said by her could relate exactly to her themes in poetry and life. “A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.” As of today, she is seen as one of the most influential African American women in the world. Some may say that Nikki Giovanni’s change in style and themes in her poems from militant and harsh, to emotional and family-oriented were linked to the emotional changes in her life.

This paper examines the feminist thoughtsas depicted in the works of black female writers, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Both carry the common theme of describing the black woman and their sufferings in their novelsBeloved and I know why the caged bird sings. Both the writers handle a common feminist criticism. The silence, passivity and resistance of women protagonists are seen active of the feminist criticism.

Nikki Giovanni was a poet and a writer that was born within as Yolande Corneila Giovanni Jr., Giovanni was a prominent poet and writer that had first caught the publics attention as a being part of the Blacks Arts Movement back in the late 1960s. Giovanni was also a civil rights activists and a television personality.

This essay will discuss the lack of Black female artists in feminist literature and how their artwork is a personal experience available for public political discussion. The scope of the essay show how Black Feminist visual artists use their artwork to identify, develop, and communicate feminist issues. I will explore the editors’ structure of the Feminist Theory Reader selection of poems and essays in the book. The significance in this essay is the theoretical framework produced from visual art. I will examine how Black women artists create a counter-narrative to the stereotyped images seen in the art world. I am concern with feminist theorists excluding Black women visual artist or selecting a few token artist to pretend there is a cooperative feminist practice. I argue the images Black feminist female visual artists create are also the main tool exhibiting consciousness-raising lens, feminist perspectives, feminist practice, and feminist

The black power struggle and subsequently the black arts movement has is origins in the north. Civil rights were generally seen as having southern origins but in 1955 It was propelled into the national spotlight when a young boy named Emmet Till was murdered. Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago, was murdered by two white men, while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. Till was dared by some friends to go in and talk to a white female who was working in a store. He did so and later on, when her husband found out, he and a mob of people took Emmett from his relative’s home and brutally murdered him. A picture of Emmett’s beaten corpse was shown in a magazine and the nation was outraged. The country watched the case closely

In the 1970s Black people were facing many troubles because of the White race .For example, Blacks were working as servants for them, and they were living in miserable conditions along with the violence against them and many other encroachments .So that many Afro- American were struggling in order to get back there dignity and their civil rights through establishing movements, including Black Arts Movement and Black Power Movement.

As these women eagerly told their story, interestingly, they looked at Faith Ringgold and her feminism as a black artist. Ringgold was one of the first black feminists to open the doors for black female artist in the sixties by demanding that their work be taken seriously. Ringgold describes her rejection from a major art gallery in New York. As she walked into the gallery, the owner asked, “Do you know where you are?” Ringgold replied, “Yes” the gallery owner told her, “ “You,” she said, placing a stress on the word you, “cannot do this.” I knew what she meant…” (Ringgold, 2005) During this time, Ringgold was desperately needing someone to talk to as she attempted to join a black artist’s group of what she defines as “old men of black art” (p. 150) and was rejected. In the 1970’s Ringgold became involved with the white women’s art movement but soon realized that she was not going to get the support she needed. Nor was she going to receive this from black men in her community who considered her a “traitor to the cause of black people… “Women’s Lib is for white women’” (p. 175). After becoming fully aware how difficult it was to be out there as a black female artist, in 1971, she was one of the original founders of a black women’s art group called, “Where We At” (p. 261). Ringgold became a mentor to artists

Throughout history black women have been stereotyped and put into many different roles in society. Black women, it seems, have become the scapegoat for many issues and problems and have been misrepresented usually by men, mostly by white men. Through the creation of the mammy, the sapphire, the Jezebel, the strong black woman and more, black women have been misrepresented and portrayed in negative ways in society. In a response to this labeling, black women have begun to tell their own stories and speak out for themselves. Through their writings, black women writers have been able to dispel the stereotypes of black women by showing the truth, the true story of the women, told by the woman. Doing this, they have been

Nikki Giovanni started her career as a poet by writing about the rage and sadness that lived inside her. Her sadness from her grandmother's passing in 1967 along with the rage she felt regarding the racism and unequal treatment of black people that ran rampant throughout the nation fueled her early poems (Harris). Later on in 1972 when Giovanni published “My House” she had begun to distance herself from the violence that was prevalent in her earlier works and write about the reality that exists outside of the freedom marches and protests (Juhasz). She uses “My House” to write about the revolution that occurs in the mundane and quotidian. This poem “shows a significant transformation in her thinking.

The feminist art movement that emerged in the 1970s aimed to change the established narrative in art and give women a more prominent voice. The overall goal of this movement was to revolutionize the nature of art in a way that would transform society. Art produced during this era focused on experience and meaning over form and style. Thus, feminist artists wanted to include more representation of the female experience, as it was so severely left out of art, and recognize it as different but equally as valid as their male counterparts.

African American women have the talent to write their poems about political topics using the art of the language. According to Samuel (2011), African American women since 1970s have proved that black poets can write works of art with pure creative energy. The 1960s poetry marks the change in attitude and takes a militant posture with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement and the Black Arts Movement that brought in cultural nationalism. For many, it seemed that poetry that was written during that period, was purely political and social. The poetry was written by African American women in 1970s and thereafter influenced by the Feminist Movement proved that Black poetry could be both didactic, political, and art

When it came between the times of the 1950-1960 not very black artist were being taken seriously as artists. But they play an important role in The Black Arts movement which was a artistic side of The Black Power movement. With Poetry being their center point of creativity and expression. Memoir written by black female activist like Anne Moody and Angela Davis were influenced by an autobiography of Malcom

Feminist art or female art in general was widely overlooked or ignored until the late 1960’s. A huge factor for the upraise of feminist art was the general equalization of women in society and the political changes

Previously, art was a male dominated profession, as it was considered taboo for females to be artists. By the turn of the 20th century, an increasing amount of females were introduced into the art scene. By the 1960’s, the feminist art movement had begun, and throngs of artists were starting to question the pending social issues that had been presented to them since birth. Being a female gave these artists a different viewpoint on society and the culture that they were surrounded with. Feminism, a controversial ideology for many still today, was something that was dealt with in the visual and literary journals that Kahlo and Iannone