Stuart Hall and Black British Art 62
von Rosenberg: Stuart Hall and Black British Art 62 Stuart Hall and Black British Art INGRID VON ROSENBERG Technische Universität Dresden, Germany Introduction: A Sidelined Area of Hall’s Work The following article deals with a somewhat neglected aspect of Stuart Hall’s manifold activities and its relevance for his theoretical work: his interest in and commitment to the promotion of black British art. To start with, a brief definition seems helpful as, in the course of time, the term ‘black’ has been charged with various meanings. Once used in a disparaging racist sense from the colonialists' position, it was later adopted by black people with self-confidence, first in an essentialist sense, later in more differentiating ways. It was Stuart Hall who highlighted the importance of cultural differences between the various groups living in diasporic conditions in Britain, most famously in his seminal article “New Ethnicities” of 1989. Yet when he wrote or spoke about ‘black art’ or ‘black artists’, he used the term black in the same “broad and inclusive way” as the politically active artists in the 1970s and 1980s had done, referring “to all those communities, of whatever ethnic or ‘racial’ origin, who were regarded as ‘other’ – different – and thus racially excluded” (Hall, 2001a: 35). The following study is based on this definition. In the later part of his life Stuart Hall became institutionally involved in black art, dedicating much of his time to this engagement: for 15 years he held the chairs of the boards of both Iniva (Institute of International Visual Art) and Autograph ABP (a non- profit making arts agency promoting photographers from ethnic minorities), two leading institutions focusing on ‘black art’ in the defined sense, i.e.
[Show full text]