Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963 - 1983 at the de Young

Yesterday I went and saw the show Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963 - 1983 at the de Young and it was fantastic. Featuring a wide range of art in a wide range of media, made almost entirely by Black artists in response to the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s, a good deal of it in the Bay Area, the show celebrated artists whose names you might know (Betye Saar, Pirkle Jones, Faith Ringgold) and introduced lesser-known practitioners who made remarkable things in this era. 

For instance, the painting above was one of my favorites. Emma Amos' "Eva the Babysitter" from 1973. Amos, the wall text informs us, was the only woman artist in the important Spiral Group. As such she faced sexist expectations around who would handle domestic and child-rearing responsibilities -- to which she responded by foregrounding the woman, her child-care provider, whose "labor enabled her own artistic practice."

And here are more of the great many things I saw and liked:

Betye Saar

Betye Saar

Charles White

Charles White

Marie Jonhson Calloway

Raymond Saunders

Joe Overstreet

Carolyn Lawrence

Emma Amos

Alice Neel's portrait of Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold

Barbara Chase-Riboud

Barkley Hendricks

Noah Purifoy

Noah Purifoy

Phillip Lindsay Mason

Gerald Williams

Reginald Gammon

William T. Williams

Wadsworth Jarrell

Phillip Lindsay Mason

Kay Brown

Barkley Hedricks

Sam Gilliam

Richard Mayhew

Richard Mayhew

Phillip Lindsay Mason

Norman Lewis

Frank Bowling

Charles Alston

Barkley Hendricks

Ming Smith

Ed Clark

Sam Gilliam

Romare Bearden

Bob Thompson

Pirkle Jones