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- TV-MA
- HBO
- TV-MA
- HBO
Summary The Sam Pollard documentary was inspired by 1976 exhibition organized by David C. Driskell, “Two Centuries of Black American Art” and features interviews with contemporary artists, curators and historians.
- TV-MA
- HBO
- TV-MA
- HBO
Black Art: In the Absence of Light
Season 1 Premiere: Feb 9, 2021
73
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
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Summary The Sam Pollard documentary was inspired by 1976 exhibition organized by David C. Driskell, “Two Centuries of Black American Art” and features interviews with contemporary artists, curators and historians.
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 4 Critic Reviews
73
75% Positive
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
25% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 4 Critic Reviews
73
75% Positive
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
25% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
An illuminating bird’s-eye view of the past half-century of Black art in America. ... The film never dips into saccharine platitudes, and it is unafraid to examine the defects within artistic movements that, while fighting for racial justice, had their own blindspots.
We’re talking about a dense, complex history. No one film can hope to get all of it, and this one leaves a lot out. (Mention of the Black Power movement is all but absent here.) Still, there’s a lot, encapsulated in short, deft commentary by scholars and curators.
It’s still an eye-opener for any casual art buff, realizing that a lot has happened in that scene since Basquiat, and an awful lot happened before David C. Driskell had the gumption and the thick skin to dare to suggest there was a Black art aesthetic, and that there were more than 200 years of African American art that was too good and too important to ignore.
Yet the film seems unfocused. It is part welcome record of an art exhibition and its broad impact over two generations of artists, part survey of what an arbitrary selection of Black artists have achieved since, part analysis of diverse issues within a culture too often mischaracterized as monolithic and part chronicle of a crucial institutional infrastructure that has grown exponentially in the new millennium. By itself, any one of those topics would fill a documentary to overflowing.
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Production Company:
- HBO Documentary Films
- Two Dollars and a Dream
Initial Release Date: Feb 9, 2021
Number of seasons: 0 Seasons
Rating: TV-MA
Genres: