Skip to main content

Black Artists’ Group

During the nation’s political turmoil of the 1960s, African American collectives formed to envision and enact a self-determined Black identity. Established in 1968, the Black Artists’ Group (BAG) in St. Louis was one of the nation’s most interdisciplinary in its goal to “make Black people more aware of their creative potential,” in the words of leading member and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. Its aim was to change “our people’s frame of reference from white to Black.” BAG’s creative output merged an exploration of African art and thought with the European avant-garde and local neighborhoods’ immediate economic and educational concerns. True to BAG’s goals, performances drew from all artistic genres, ranging from jam sessions to pageants, and were brought to residents directly on the sidewalks or in community buildings.

BAG expanded in 1969, adding five artists-in-residence in music, theater, dance, film, and visual art. Until it disbanded three years later, it offered free classes, temporarily filling the gap left by the closure of the People’s Art Center in 1967.

Selected Works of Art

Looking Prompts

  • Explore the shapes of this painting. On a paper, draw different shapes that you find in the painting.
    • Notice simple shapes.
    • Notice complex shapes.
    • What happens when you combine shapes?
    • Explore positive space by finding the objects that appear in the front or feel the most dominant in the composition.
    • Explore negative space—the shapes that appear to be in the background or are created in the space around those in the front.
    • Take the shapes that you have found and drawn on your paper. Cut them out. Trace them to create more of these shapes and then cut out these additional shapes. Arrange them in different patterns to create your own designs inspired by this painting. Add color to your image if you like.
  • Claps, pats, foot taps, and other sounds can be created with our bodies and can be organized in a way that creates music. Look at this painting for 30 seconds. Then translate the rhythms and patterns of the artist’s design into your own sounds.
    • What shapes inspired your choices?

  • A band of black-and-white patterns melds geometric abstraction with generalized African shield and mask forms. These two interests express the merging of European avant-garde and African art at the heart of BAG.

    Emilio Cruz, a New York Afro-Cuban artist, came to St. Louis in 1969 as BAG’s visual artist in residence. He participated in the group’s performances and taught at its center and in the nearby Pruitt-Igoe housing project. He also led college workshops and neighborhood art projects, embracing the opportunity to “work with Black people [on] our own way of saying things.”

 

Looking Prompts

  • What do you notice about the colors in this painting?
    • How do you imagine the painting would feel to you if the artist used warm colors, such as reds and yellows?
    • What do you imagine the painting would feel like if the artist used only black and white?
    • If the painting were hung upside down, how would your observations change?
  • What associations come to mind when you look at this painting?
  • What sounds do you imagine this painting would make?
  • What movements might you see if this painting were to come to life?
  • If only one element had the ability to move in this painting, what part would move? Why?

  • Machinery and human form merge in this image. Much of Manuel Hughes’s work contested damaging stereotypes while celebrating Black culture. As he explained: “Everyone was focused on the political struggle during the late 1960s and early 70s. . . . I was doing Black imagery to reinforce what Black people were feeling at that time.”

    Curious from walking past the People’s Art Center on his way to school as a child, Hughes enrolled himself in a class. Later, several musician friends introduced him to BAG, and he worked and exhibited with other members.

 

Looking Prompts

Use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to explore this painting: 

  • What’s going on in this picture?
  • What do you see that makes you say that?
  • What more can you find? 

Alternative prompts 

  • What aspects of the painting help us understand its mood?
  • As a class, build a list of things that you find in this image, such as colors, shapes, and imagery.
  • Using the list created collaboratively as a class, build a narrative (individually or as a group) inspired by the elements discovered from the painting.

  • Oliver Lee Jackson participated in BAG events, but his greatest influence on the group may have been his engagement with pan-African concepts, which he had honed as an instructor in the Southern Illinois University’s Experiment in Higher Education program (EHE). Partnered with dancer Katherine Dunham’s Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, EHE was an incubator for the emerging field of Black studies. The apex of BAG-associated events was Jackson’s Images: Sons/Ancestors, a multimedia, pan-African “concert-ritual prayer” held in 1971 at the newly renovated Powell Hall that challenged the exclusion of African-centered artistic forms from such traditional venues. The following year BAG dissolved, as its core musicians left to find a foothold in the New York jazz scene.

    In Painting II a striking red mask looks out over an abstracted image of a box. Representations of figural elements and body parts are on view in different parts of the image. This imagery questions conventions of Western figure painting, such as its dependence on the illusion of three-dimensional form, by abstracting the body and incorporating non-European masks.

  • Image Credits in Order of Appearance

    Emilio Cruz, American, 1938–2004; Untitled, 1972; acrylic on canvas; 40 x 62 inches; The John & Susan Horseman Collection 2021.7; © Patricia Cruz / Estate of Emilio Cruz

    Manuel Hughes, American, born 1938; Untitled, 1971; oil on canvas; 36 x 36 x 1 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift in memory of Saul A. and Dorothy Pearlstein Dubinsky from their children 616:1998; © Manuel Hughes

    Oliver Lee Jackson, American, born 1935; Painting II, 1969, 1969; oil-based pigments and mixed media on canvas; 66 1/2 x 66 1/2 inches; Courtesy of the artist 2021.12; © Oliver Lee Jackson

Scroll back to top