...Lydie Diakhaté This article aims to introduce Melvin Edwards’s career and explore, through his work in public art, his ongoing dialogue between his global black consciousness and conceptual art. Edwards is a pioneer and prominent artist in the history of contemporary African American art...

... Melvin Edwards is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. This interview relates his career as a black internationalist, a pan-Africanist, and a prime witness to modernist innovations in the New York scene, from the era of abstract expressionism to the current...

...Rebecca Wolff [email protected] Copyright © 2022 by Nka Publications 2022 Assembling 106 Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art 50 May 2022 DOI 10.1215/10757163-9729162 © 2022 by Nka Publications Pan-Africanism in Melvin Edward s Homage to the Poet Léon Gontran Damas Rebecca...

... Jokin; 1987-88. Courtesy of the artist. Fall 2006 Nka • 137 Melvin Edwards, Because of Struggle, 1994 welded steel, 13x11 x 7 inches...

... ago [April 21, nature of your collaborative relationship in terms of thinking 2013], Melvin Van Peebles was at the house. You know my about film and different artistic practices as well as in terms block is a violent block. It’s been a violent block. When I of creating a site of black...

... abstract yet often car- Speaking generally, it is difficult to miss the ried explicitly political overtones. Melvin Edwards’s political content that adheres to a work of art that Lynch Fragments blended African masks, abstract features a cross, skulls, and an American flag. Other expressionism...

... on one and the stringed instrument held Singing Saints, ca. 1938 – 40. Lithograph, 12½ × 9¼ in. by the other.11 The “guitar” that one saint plays was Courtesy Melvin Holmes, San Francisco an instrument that Johnson taught himself to play. 40 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art...

... fit- ting visual language for the job. His language and approach to visual communication employed the many vernaculars he used verbally and visually. African American abstract artist Melvin Edwards (b. 1937), like Euell, was influenced by the complex way Lewis spoke. In an interview, the sculptor dis...

... Bourne.) Courtesy of William Greaves Productions. Kirsten Johnson, Melvin and Mario Van Peebles, Black Feminism. Chiz Schultz, Sam Pollard, Woody King Jr., and the are two questions to ask...

..., folk wit, and phi- losophy and elevated them into a new, suddenly contemporary meaning of black. Melvin Van Peebles, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, That was for me a signature event, opening new 1971. 35mm...

... to the continent—John Biggers, Mand Its Diaspora symposium, organized by Amelia Jacob Lawrence, Melvin Edwards, for example—for Goerlitz for the Smithsonian American Art Museum firsthand encounters with its peoples, cultures, and in Washington, DC (October 4–5, 2013). That sym- arts, the experience yielded...

...• Powell also bases his ecumenical nity has defined itself, including often Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee, nized chronologically and thematical- approach upon the works of three ignored analyses of graphic arts, video...

...• ars, including Okwui Enwezor, Melvin Edwards, Thelma Golden, Manthia Diawara, Stanley Whitney, Sally Berger, Sandra Jackson, Christine Kim and George Lewis, who were joined by Senegalese colleagues such as Viye Di'ba and Souleymane Keta to discuss the work of the participating artists and other...

..., a concern that preoccupied many artists til, as she wrote, “Black Chicago, along with Black of the Black Arts movement. In contrast to abstrac- America, exploded. ”12 tion or formalism, black art, in the words of critic Although school remained in session on Fri- Melvin Dixon “seeks to step beyond...

...: On the Blackness of Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2012), 287. Young offers insight into Romi Crawford is a cultural theorist whose research Melvin Van Peebles’s interpretation of the block in his novel Ain’t...

... voice to the often silenced history of Blackness in the United States. Alongside sculptural installations by Kevin Beasley (Strange Fruit [Pair 1], 2015) and Diamond Stingily (Entryways, 2016 and 2019) on the third floor, Melvin Edwards s wall-based works from his ongoing series Lynch Fragments hang...

.... Meanwhile, and his choice of characters. The Melvin Van Peebles...

... current of acceptance of global artists. In regard to filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles strolls along the these contemporary artists, their transcultural streets and into Baltimore's George Peabody influences reflect not the deauthentication of their Library and Walters Art Museum. As the two pro...

... frame- fourteen African American women organized a work. The works of David Hammons, Melvin landmark exhibition at the Acts of Art Gallery in Edwards, Elizabeth Catlett, Dana Chandler, and Greenwich Village, “Where We At” Black Women others exemplify the richness and diversity of the Artists...

... lower the from out looks she as viewer, the to up held palms star- her with girl a of a figure as such scenes painted are which on object Saar,an is by Hammons. David and Hassinger, Maren wards, Ed Saar, Melvin Betye by here shown work early inthe than apparent more...