Art and the Black Experience: From Oppression to Expression
Why Black Art Still Hits Different
Greetings Warriors!
Let’s get something straight: Black art isn’t just “art by Black people.” It’s blood on canvas. It’s rhythm on wood. It’s survival turned into brushstrokes. It’s history that never had a seat at the table — so it built its own damn table, carved it out of trauma, and painted it with truth.
To look at Black art is to see centuries of resistance, brilliance, and cultural rebirth. And it still hits different — because the weight it carries wasn’t born in theory, it was born in shackles. It was born on auction blocks, in cotton fields, in ghetto streets and jazz clubs and barbershops.
This isn’t just about the past. It’s about the present. It’s about the fire that Black artists are still breathing into a world that constantly tries to erase their name from the credits.
So today, we go deep. From early pioneers to modern-day giants, we’re diving into the art, the rage, the beauty, and the legacy of the Black experience — expressed through creation.
Kara Walker, Fons Americanus - 2019
BUY MY ART🖤
Henry Ossawa Tanner: The Beginning of a Fight
Let’s start at the roots. Before Basquiat. Before Kara Walker. There was Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Born in 1859 — a time when America was still learning how to spell “freedom” — Tanner became one of the first internationally recognized Black artists. He studied in Philadelphia but had to flee to Paris to escape America’s racism. Over there, his talent was undeniable.
His masterpiece “The Banjo Lesson” wasn’t just a painting — it was a reclamation. The banjo, once a symbol of minstrel mockery, was reframed as Black wisdom, family, and generational love.
Tanner painted humanity into Black life. He took what society called “less than” and gave it light and dignity.
He was our first warrior in oils. The first to say, “We are not caricatures. We are art.”
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson - 1893
The Harlem Renaissance: A Cultural Earthquake
Fast forward to the 1920s. Harlem was on fire — not in flames, but in Black brilliance.
This was the Harlem Renaissance — when poetry, jazz, painting, and politics collided to say: We’re here. We matter. And we’re not asking permission anymore.
Artists like Aaron Douglas fused African motifs with Art Deco style, making murals that told stories of the Middle Passage, cotton fields, and Black futures. His figures weren’t just shapes — they were spirits. Movement. Power.
Loïs Mailou Jones, Archibald Motley, and others painted Black life as it really was — not what white America imagined it to be.
This era wasn’t just about aesthetics. It was about ownership — of narrative, of identity, of space.
It laid the foundation for every Black creative warrior that followed.
Jacob Lawrence & Faith Ringgold: Storytellers of Struggle
The 1940s and ’60s brought new storms — war abroad, civil rights battles at home. And with it came art as a weapon.
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series was revolutionary. Through 60 small panels, he told the story of Black families fleeing the Jim Crow South for Northern cities. No fluff. No filters. Just color-blocked brilliance and sharp truth.
Faith Ringgold picked up the torch in the Civil Rights era. Her story quilts weren’t just cozy blankets — they were layered with politics, pain, and dreams. “Tar Beach” showed a young Black girl claiming the sky as hers — flying above racism and poverty.
These two showed us that art wasn’t just something to look at. It was something to listen to.
Jacob Lawrence
Basquiat, Kerry James Marshall & the Rise of the Modern Kings
Enter the raw energy of Jean-Michel Basquiat — a Brooklyn-born bomb of brilliance.
Basquiat’s art wasn’t neat. It wasn’t polished. It was graffiti meets scripture, a collision of anatomy, African symbols, jazz, boxing, and Black pain. His crowns became a language — a way of saying, “Black men are kings, even when the world sees us as criminals.”
(You already know I covered his meteoric rise in “Warrior’s Tale: Jean-Michel Basquiat”. Read that for the full fire.)
Then came Kerry James Marshall, who went the opposite way — big, clean, figurative paintings of everyday Black life. But don’t get it twisted: Marshall’s Black figures aren’t just dark-skinned. They are Black as space. Black as protest. Black as pride.
He said, “I want to be in the museums. I want to be in the books. I want to be unavoidable.” And he is.
BUY MY ART🖤
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Nwantinti - 2012
Black Women Creating New Universes
Let's set this straight, Warriors: Black women didn’t just enter the art world—they reengineered it. They carved galaxies into galleries, dusted stereotypes off stage, and insisted that we see them in full—complex, beautiful, defiant.
I told this story best in this article, The Rise of Female African Artists.
“Today, I want to talk about something monumental happening in the art world. For the first time ever, female African artists are surpassing their male counterparts in auction sales!... This is history in the making, and I have to shine a light on it.”
And shine the light they did.
Here’s what’s happening: In 2024, female African artists accounted for a staggering 52.8% of total auction sales, bringing in $22 million — up from $17.5 million just a year earlier, with represented women increasing from 288 to 452 artists.
This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the result of decades of resistance, creativity, and refusal to be sidelined. Let's meet some of our queens and see how they built those universes through grit and grace:
Wangechi Mutu — Afrofuturism in Collage and Clay
Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu doesn’t just paint—she transmutes. Her work is the intersection of grotesque beauty, environmental dread, feminist power, and Afrofuturist vision. She builds figures from clay, paper, found objects—texts and textures that scream “We are beyond your boxes.” Her work isn’t here to comfort; it’s here to reframe, to recenter Black female power on her own pedestal.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby — A Bridge Between Worlds
Nigerian-American painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby weaves images that feel both tactile and spiritual—a collage of memory, identity, and intimacy. With photo-transfers, paint, and family portraits layered like ancestry, she builds universes that cross geography, generational trauma, and yearning. Her auction milestones—like The Beautyful Ones selling for over $3 million—echo the global hunger for Black, diasporic narrative.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: Women Are Dominating
This surge isn’t random. The data is clear:
Female African artists generated $22 million in auction sales in 2024, with a 52.8% market share.
They are outperforming male counterparts for the first time in history—and they’re just getting started.
This shift happened even while the global and African art markets were down. Female artists defied the downturn.
Julie Mehretu, Retopistics - 2001
The Warrior’s Final Word: Black Art Is the Archive
Black history has always been erased, rewritten, or ignored.
That’s why Black art matters. It is the archive. The memory. The proof.
When textbooks leave out the truth, art paints it. When news stories spin the narrative, art reclaims it. When trauma silences a people, art sings.
As a warrior, I see Black art as evidence of survival. It says, “They tried to bury us. But we grew roots. And from those roots came rhythm, color, soul, resistance, and beauty.”
Whether it's on canvas, digital, on walls, or in movement, Black art continues to shape the world — not as decoration, but as declaration.
And for anyone still asking if it belongs in museums, in the canon, or in the center of cultural power — the answer is simple:
Renaissance Man - Inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci
