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Post post-black: some politically incorrect thoughts on the reception and contemplation of African-American art.

Article Excerpt
Darby English. How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 384 pp., 22 color ills., 31 b/w. $30.

The art historian Darby English's How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness is a compelling and polemically daring reassessment of blackness as an artistic genre and set of visual expressions. English questions the necessity (or intracultural obligation) for black artists to take up the fight against racial oppression within the realm of their artistic production. By extension, he interrogates the purported usefulness of art as a tool for social transformation--especially in regard to so-called black artists. English's premise contests the ideological thematization of cultural production that requires "positive images"--and ultimately "transforms the artworks into racial objects, in the form of black art" (236). To undo the various impositions that identity politics exerts on artistic production, the text presents persuasive counter-readings of well-known (and in some instances, canonical) artworks.

How to See a Work of Art is certainly for art historians, which is significant considering that treatises on black art often either become part of the haze of cultural criticism, or are undertheorized and dismissed as overly romanticized preservations of African-American heritage. English here presents a serious, well-researched academic text that attempts to position black art outside its usual frameworks. In spirit, the premise for this collection of essays is grounded in a reassessment of black-queer and feminist critiques of racial blackness as it was constructed during the civil rights and Black Power eras. These criticisms posited blackness as a reclamation and assertion of masculinity that was ultimately heterosexist and intolerant of sexual difference. The acknowledgement of these important arguments is a strength. However, it may also be the book's major flaw if blackness (particularly within the realm of visual art) is to be understood only in terms of these cultural critiques. Is blackness as knowable and foreseeable as English suggests...

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