Chapter Summary Of Banks Represent: Art And Identity Among A Negro

Banks, P. (2010). Represent: Art and identity among the black upper-middle class. New York, NY: Routledge. Banks elaborates a racial identity theory of consumption that highlights how upper-middle class Blacks searched for Black visual art they could identify for themselves. The book is based on interviews, observations at arts events, and photographs of art displayed in homes to challenge common assumptions about elite cultural participation. Banks claim the purpose of the book is to describe how middle-class Blacks constructed Black identities through Black visual art. She addresses the gap in literature about the arts. Banks analyzes how Blacks see themselves depicted in art, “…visual art is a powerful vehicle through which upper-middle-class
She explores contemporary visual predicament and the brutal history enforced on Black women’s bodies. This chapter especially focuses on the unclothed nude female body in art and its avoidance. Collins argues, what is missing from feminist scholarship is the discussion on the nude Black body in art. She explains the exploited, sexualized, and racialized visual history of the nineteenth century tension round the Black female body. In this chapter, Collins analyzes several Black female artists artwork locating the meaning of how they infuse history, concepts and artistic practice in representing the nude body. Collins claims that Black women artists, “create space for reflection and change…they provide a visual language”
This chapters theorizes painting as a research practice that characterizes structure, agency, and action. He explains the act of painting involves a thought process in a meaningful way through self-initiated ideas. Sullivan argues, the act of painting is a research practice that involves theory, form, action, and idea. The chapter has subsections titled, painting as theory, theorizing painting as a research practice, painting as form, painting as idea, and painting as act. These subsection all demonstrate another perspective of how painting inform research. He contends, “Painters whose work explores conceptual issues that seek to open a dialectical exchange tend to do their artistic thinking in a language as this best describes the interactions that occur as relationships are found and formed among artists, artworks, and viewers”