Jonathan Fenderson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042430
- eISBN:
- 9780252051272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042430.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter provides an institutional history of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), one of the most renowned African American artist collectives of the Black Arts movement. It ...
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This chapter provides an institutional history of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), one of the most renowned African American artist collectives of the Black Arts movement. It recounts OBAC’s efforts to challenge Chicago’s established racial order and to reorient Black Chicago’s relationship to artistic production. It argues that OBAC pioneered several community-centered projects that served as hallmark modes of artistic practice within the movement while simultaneously helping to popularize the era’s burgeoning ideas. The group made Chicago an important epicenter of movement activity, attracting artists, activists, and intellectuals from around the world. At their peak, OBAC sparked a national intellectual debate over their creative philosophy of “a black aesthetic,” effectively polarizing arts discourse as it related to African Americans. Their growing popularity and heightened national profile generated a number of internal challenges, including intractable ideological and class contradictions, and tensions between individual professional aspirations and collective community engagement.Less
This chapter provides an institutional history of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), one of the most renowned African American artist collectives of the Black Arts movement. It recounts OBAC’s efforts to challenge Chicago’s established racial order and to reorient Black Chicago’s relationship to artistic production. It argues that OBAC pioneered several community-centered projects that served as hallmark modes of artistic practice within the movement while simultaneously helping to popularize the era’s burgeoning ideas. The group made Chicago an important epicenter of movement activity, attracting artists, activists, and intellectuals from around the world. At their peak, OBAC sparked a national intellectual debate over their creative philosophy of “a black aesthetic,” effectively polarizing arts discourse as it related to African Americans. Their growing popularity and heightened national profile generated a number of internal challenges, including intractable ideological and class contradictions, and tensions between individual professional aspirations and collective community engagement.
Jonathan Fenderson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042430
- eISBN:
- 9780252051272
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042430.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This book is the first to document and analyze Hoyt Fuller’s profound influence on the Black Arts movement. Using historical snapshots of Fuller’s life and activism as a means to rethink the period, ...
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This book is the first to document and analyze Hoyt Fuller’s profound influence on the Black Arts movement. Using historical snapshots of Fuller’s life and activism as a means to rethink the period, Building the Black Arts Movement provides a fresh take on the general trajectory of African American literary (and cultural) studies as the field developed over the course of two explosive decades in the mid-twentieth century. The book argues that the Black Arts movement can be understood as a pivotal and volatile moment in the long history of America’s culture wars. Moreover, by shifting our focus from creative artists and repositioning Fuller at the center of the movement--as one of its most underappreciated architects--the book grants new insights into the critical role of editorial work, the international dimensions of the movement, the complexities of sexuality, and the challenges of Black institution building during the 1960s and ’70s.Less
This book is the first to document and analyze Hoyt Fuller’s profound influence on the Black Arts movement. Using historical snapshots of Fuller’s life and activism as a means to rethink the period, Building the Black Arts Movement provides a fresh take on the general trajectory of African American literary (and cultural) studies as the field developed over the course of two explosive decades in the mid-twentieth century. The book argues that the Black Arts movement can be understood as a pivotal and volatile moment in the long history of America’s culture wars. Moreover, by shifting our focus from creative artists and repositioning Fuller at the center of the movement--as one of its most underappreciated architects--the book grants new insights into the critical role of editorial work, the international dimensions of the movement, the complexities of sexuality, and the challenges of Black institution building during the 1960s and ’70s.
