Dreams Deferred
Activism and Resistance in Abstract Art
Historically, many African American abstract artists have grappled with a fundamental question: Should art remain rooted in formalist concerns, or can it also serve as a powerful tool for social critique? As these artworks illustrate, gesture, line, and form can be imbued with the energy of protest. In addressing issues like slavery, segregation, violence, and apartheid, abstract artists demonstrate how abstract art can be a form of resistance in the struggle for racial justice and equality—debunking the idea that abstraction is inherently apolitical.
As an artist, formed culturally and environmentally in the traditions of Western man, I am intensely interested in probing, exploring the problems of color, space, and form, which challenge all contemporary painters. However, as a Black American who sincerely believes in the ideals upon which this country was founded, I cannot but be sensitive and responsive in my painting to the injustice, the indignity, and hypocrisy suffered by Black citizens.
Charles Alston, 1968
I Can’t Breathe (Water Table)
by Torkwase Dyson
I Can’t Breathe (Water Table) by Torkwase Dyson, 2018.
Torkwase Dyson’s work is informed by geometry, architecture, and abstraction. She is known for creating art that explores how people of color have negotiated, and continue to negotiate, spatial order. I Can’t Breathe refers to the phrase Eric Garner desperately uttered eleven times while held in a prohibited chokehold by police officer Daniel Pantaleo until Garner fell unconscious and later died. The incident was captured on video and officially deemed a homicide. Pantaleo was not indicted.
Part of Dyson’s Water Table series, I Can’t Breathe was exhibited in her 2018 solo exhibition, Dear Henry. The exhibition was created as a visually symbolic letter/homage to Henry “Box” Brown, an enslaved African American who escaped to freedom by shipping himself to Philadelphia in 1849.
Stranger Study #38
by Glenn Ligon
Stranger Study #38 is based on James Baldwin’s 1955 essay “Stranger in the Village.” In the text, Baldwin recounts his experience as the first Black person to visit a remote Swiss village in 1951. In turn, Glenn Ligon stencils an excerpt of the text, renders it in oil stick, and then layers it with coal dust. The composition becomes dense and complicated, like Baldwin’s writing, and eventually illegible.
This disappearance of language into abstraction reflects Baldwin’s own statement that “Americans attempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro, but the very nature of these abstractions reveals the tremendous effects the presence of the Negro has had on the American character.”
Stranger Study #38. Glenn Ligon, 2021–2022.
The thing about America: liberty, justice, equality are all terms that come to mind, but for millions of Americans throughout its entire history as a nation, that has never really been true.
Hank Willis Thomas, 2021
Spiral
by Hank Willis Thomas
Spiral by Hank Willis Thomas, 2022.
In Spiral, Hank Willis Thomas combines fabric from the United States flag with cloth from decommissioned prison uniforms, visually conflating the Stars and Stripes with the bars of imprisonment. This symbolic connection alludes to the inconsistently applied promise of liberty for all Americans, beginning with the continuing legacy of enslavement to the contemporary prison industrial complex and its disproportionate impact on African American men.
The cotton in the fabric of the flags and the prison uniforms also pays homage to African Americans who picked cotton in the South.
Some Clouds are Darker
by Juan Logan
Juan Logan’s hauntingly beautiful painting is a subtle commemoration of thousands of enslaved Africans who were quarantined in “pest houses” upon arriving at Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. Pest houses were built to prevent the spread of contagious and fatal diseases such as yellow fever, a mosquito-borne illness that was incorrectly thought to come from Africans themselves.
Some Clouds are Darker by Juan Logan, 2010.
In Some Clouds are Darker, Sullivan’s Island is represented through a green expanse, while black symbolizes the souls of the people who were quarantined. Logan imagines that the pain, weeping, and sorrow of these souls were absorbed into the soil, drawn out into the atmosphere, and released through rain. He states: “Some of those clouds would indeed be darker, and some of those drops would indeed be black.”
Malik I
by Sylvia Snowden
Malik I by Sylvia Snowden, 1994.
Sylvia Snowden’s artwork is renowned for its vibrant colors, heavy impasto (thickly applied paint), and swirling designs. In 1993, Snowden’s 18-year-old son, Malik, was murdered near their home in Washington, DC. To celebrate Malik’s life, she created a large series of prints and paintings, some of which included photographs and objects from her son’s life. The personal items chart his growth from a small child to an adult, marking the important stages of a life cut too short. According to Snowden, the small circle on the left of the image references a mother’s nurturing breastfeeding and unyielding love.
Snowden resists identifying the series as mournful or grieving, instead stating: “The works captured Malik’s spirit—strength and kindness.”
Confrontation 28A and Confrontation 28AA
by Merton Simpson
Created during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Merton Simpson’s Confrontation series illustrates the sometimes violent tensions between communities at that time, including Black and white Americans. Simpson produced artworks that reflected the aesthetic sensibilities of Abstract Expressionism while addressing difficult social issues.
Confrontation 28A and Confrontation 28AA. Merton Simpson, 1966.
In describing his Confrontation series, Merton Simpson states, “I’m painting what I think I see: ugly people fighting ugly people. . . . I see wrongness on either side. I just think that it’s an ugly thing. I want to paint it as that. And I think if people can see it, and frown upon it enough, it might make them think, ‘Am I really a part of this? Then I should want to do something about it.’”
Protesting Apartheid
Many artists have spoken out against South African apartheid—the system of legalized racial oppression inspired by American segregation and Jim Crow laws. South Africa’s racially segregated caste system remained in place from 1948 to 1994. It established and maintained wealth and privilege for white South Africans while depriving the Black majority of civil, economic, and political rights.
Apartheid by Allie McGhee, 1984.
Allie McGee's Apartheid
Though mostly nonrepresentational, Apartheid also includes recognizable forms —an outstretched hand and a black jackboot. Allie McGhee states that the painting “expresses the emotional turmoil collectively experienced in that period through its aggressive, gestural marks and frenetic composition. . . . Symbols and colors carry the energy I still feel from the expressions and protests of those times.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, Allie McGhee’s artwork was politically motivated. Later, it became more abstract. McGhee identifies this piece as a bridge between the two styles that “captures the spirit of both of these convictions.”
Separate But Equal: Apartheid by Howardena Pindell, 1987.
Howardena Pindell’s Separate But Equal: Apartheid
Howardena Pindell depicts apartheid through color, words, and found objects. In Separate But Equal: Apartheid, the top section features words like Barbaric, Parasitic, and Profit. In the middle section, terms include Endless Labor, Pass Book, and 0 Votes. The lower section, ripped away and tenuously reconnected to the rest of the canvas, contains the words Malnutrition, Death, and Torture. The sections—combined with the rhinestones, nails, and painted gold frame— reveal the tension, danger, and violence prevalent during this dark era.