There is a deep well of emotional energy associated with the idea that Africa is a continent of unrivaled splendor. It seems to call out to us, inviting us to think beautiful thoughts about it, and thereby to feel at one with its beauty.
But the sad fact is that the most beautiful place in Africa is Johannesburg, and even there the standard of living has been declining since 1973. The African National Congress has recently taken over, and no one yet knows whether things will improve. But it is unlikely that they will get much worse. It will almost certainly be decades before there are any lions in Johannesburg; until then, visitors should be careful not to stumble into the cages at the zoo.
The good news is that there are other African cities worth visiting: Cairo, for example, or Lagos. Cairo especially, in my opinion. It’s very hot there now because of global warming; but if you can stand the heat you’ll find Cairo a wonderful place to visit. In many parts of town you’ll see camels wandering around as they please; sometimes they even stop traffic. And if you buy them a Coke they’re more likely than not to spit on it and try to sell it back to you at a profit. But don’t let
You may have noticed some striking paintings of African life in American art galleries. You may wonder why they are never hung in an African-American gallery. The answer is that the artists who painted them were not black.
What’s more, they were not trying to paint black people. The painters were whites who were inspired by their travels in Africa, or by missionary work there, or by the feelings they got from reading books about Africa.
The reason the paintings are so popular with African Americans is that they accurately reflect how many blacks feel about Africa — a place where they belong but which seems alien to them, a place they miss when they’re away but which they want to escape when they’re there.
The same feelings apply to many other groups. For example, Chinese Americans like Chinese restaurants not because most Chinese restaurants are owned by Chinese, but because the food tastes like home.
While there are many examples of African Americans becoming successful as painters, sculptors, and photographers, there is yet to be a widely accepted African American artist who has made a career out of painting. The recognition that would come with such an achievement would not just be for the individual artist but for Black beauty and culture as a whole.
The lack of financial rewards in this field may discourage many African Americans from pursuing it. It is the hope of this essay that these financial considerations will be outweighed by the confidence and self-respect gained through the creative process.
African American artists have made works dealing with the African Diaspora for nearly two centuries, with particular concentrations in the United States and France.
The first known work of art by an African American artist was created in 1827 by Robert S. Duncanson, a landscape painter from Detroit. In 1854, Henry Ossawa Tanner became the first African-American artist to gain international acclaim for his religious paintings. The next major movement occurred in 1926, when Charles Alston founded an art school in Harlem that emphasized African forms and techniques.
The Harlem Renaissance was centered on the works of James Van Der Zee and Aaron Douglas. By the 1950s, the Black Aesthetic movement took shape as artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden explored ways of expressing black pride and identity in their paintings.
Today, many contemporary African American artists are influenced by soul music and hip hop culture. They are creating new images of blacks that rival or exceed those created by earlier generations of black artists.
Painting is a good way to cheer yourself up. It’s even better if you paint something that makes you happy just by looking at it.
You can do this in any medium. But oil paints are particularly effective. That’s because so much of what we call “cheerfulness” consists of colors that are warm and bright, like sunlight and flowers, or dark reds and blues, like the colors of sunset or the ocean.
These colors have been used for centuries to evoke strong emotions in people. In China they were even used as medicine: red was supposed to be good for anger, green for fear, white for shock or grief.
Oil paints are made from pigments mixed with linseed oil. The linseed oil is easy to paint with; it doesn’t stick to your brush and it dries quickly when it gets wet so you can keep on working for hours without waiting for your paints to dry between each stroke. It makes your colors look beautiful on canvas, which is made from flax, a kind of plant fiber.
The best color combinations have been worked out over hundreds of years in paintings that are still admired today. Some of them have names like the “color wheel” or the “primary colors.” These colors have a deep
Art is a creative activity that can provide you with a means of self-expression. It can help you to express your feelings, or give you a way of working though problems.
Art isn’t the only way to deal with your problems. But it’s definitely one way. And it has the advantage that you don’t have to talk about your feelings with someone else in order to express them.
One thing that makes art so useful is its ambiguity. It’s not always clear what art “means.” This is because art doesn’t necessarily express something specific and obvious like “I hate my father” or “I love my country.” Rather, art often expresses things that are hard to put into words: emotions that are complicated and confusing, or ideas that are difficult to express clearly.
Art is good at this partly because it allows you to use images instead of words. Even if you don’t know how to say what you feel in words, maybe you can paint it. And even if you do know how to say it in words, maybe painting it will be more effective at making other people understand what you mean.
Art can also be more effective than words at conveying feelings because making a work of art requires effort, and the amount of effort involved is
In the United States, art is often viewed as a luxury that one can only afford if one has money. However, there are many different definitions of art. The definition of art that I view as being most important and most beneficial to society is art with social commentary. Art with this definition allows us to express ourselves in ways that we might not be able to express in words. These pieces also allow us to gain new perspectives on issues through the medium of visual expression. By looking at these pieces and analyzing their content, we may be able to gain insight into a perspective that we might not have been exposed to before.
Art can be defined in many different ways. One of the most common definitions is, “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination”. This definition encompasses everything from sculpture to poetry. It also allows for creativity in all forms such as painting, drawing and even performance art . Another type of art is called conceptual art which consists of ideas or concepts rather than physical objects or images. This kind of art does not usually present physical objects but instead attempts to communicate meaning through non-traditional media such as written language, sound or film.
This type of artwork requires a great deal more thought and planning when compared with traditional types of artwork because it can only