Original African American Art

African American paintings are in high demand, we know that for sure. The mixture of the two cultures combined into one form of art is truly beautiful, but what are the artists really trying to portray? Moving from somewhere you know as your home and landing in a foreign country is hard enough. Learning the language is achievable, and art is similar to that of a language. You need to learn to adapt quickly to a new way of life and remember that it is not just a language, but a culture as well.

Artists realized that once they moved they would have to adapt their current practices to enable others to understand exactly what they were doing. It even came to the point where the artists understood that they might even have to mask their current beliefs and take up others to ensure that their art was popular and understood. Of course, African American paintings have a great history, and it is one that needs to be understood if you really want to understand African American art.

The hardest time for an African American was certainly during the times of excessive slavery. If you were lucky enough to be a good artist, then you might be assigned to families. To begin with you might be making quilts and cushions or similar items, but the future would offer so much more. Eventually the African American artists became known as simply painters for white families. Whilst this was downgrading and the artists were not ever treated correctly, what they didn’t realize is this could be their ticket to freedom; their art was worth more to families than the artists themselves.

As slavery became less and less popular in certain regions and people became to stand against it, artists were able to make their move. The quality of African American paintings at the time was highly valued by many families. So much to a point where some artists were able to break free by offering families a collection of their best work, and the families let them go!

Of course, the next step for artists was getting through the civil war. Whilst African American artists were become more and more recognized, black culture in the USA was still separated from white culture. The white man dominated the streets and constantly downgraded other cultures. Of course, artists used this to their advantages and portrayed their feelings or lives through their artwork. Of course, many people didn’t understand where the idea originated from their work, or what it meant. That didn’t matter to the artists producing the African American paintings though as it was this emotion that allowed them to produce such quality work!

In fact, the African American art community became so popular that their work was displayed through the country. Museums and studios proudly displayed their work. It was only slightly after this point that their work was considered as similar to that of European artists.

Of course, the reasons African American paintings were so popular was because they were extremely unique. If they were suddenly being compared to work in Europe, then they didn’t really stand much hope of being the biggest and the best. The artists need to come up with something that would distinguish them from artists across Europe and for that matter, the rest of the globe!

The Harlem Renaissance definitely managed to achieve this. It allowed African American art to be once again distinguished as popular and unique. Over the years the artists in the community build on each others life’s experiences and the past of their ancestors and the future of their families. Of course, the new found inspiration for the art meant that African American paintings became more and more in demand. The same supply and higher demand meant that they had to increase the prices of their work and were soon out pricing European artists!

Of course, even to this date African American artists still look back on their ancestors work or lives for inspiration. This allows them to portray emotion and doesn’t let anyone forgot what happened and what shouldn’t happen once more. Emotion is the best form of inspiration and this is why African American paintings are such high quality!