MS01.01.03.B01.F13.019

Entry to the outside world, the African-American artist attains his rightful place in the struggle to reestablish the image of man at the center of his art without being labelled a social commentator or protest artist. One is this reminded of the prohesy of the late Alain Locke wirting in the 1931 edition of the harmon foundation Catalogue of the Exibition of Negre Artists held in New York City. In his statement called the AFRICAN AMERICAN LEGACY AND NEGRO ARTIST, he concluded that with the growing interest and sense of maturity established in the blossoming form of black artists of the period, the advent of a truly racial school of expression could no longer be considered a haphazard chance. Perhaps his words are equally valid in our own time, particularly when certain ethnic symbols connote the existence of a black aesthetic that affirms the symbolic presence of Afro-American art.