Abstract
This essay examines the eclectic bodies of work by contemporary artists Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, and Kalup Linzy in order to theorise whether ‘African-American art’ remains a viable category for the twenty-first century. Analysing Bradford's conceptual videos, Mehretu's abstract wall pieces, and Linzy's soap opera-inspired performances, Francis identifies brave experiments that are informed by the highs and lows of Western art history and its material and popular cultures. As this article emphasizes, both the artists and their projects speak to and through canonical authority and the currents of post-modernity as they confront the black artist's historical ‘dilemma’ of identity. Demonstrating that ‘African-American art’ describes neither style nor movement, Francis explores not the figure or figurehead of ‘the black artist’, but rather those who have questioned this figuration and its regulating racial hierarchies.
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