Caribbean absences in african american art history

The political struggles and sensibilities of Garveyism resonate with that of the Black Arts Movement. But the intersections of art and politics in the black diaspora reveal other kinds of commonalities between African American and Caribbean artists. James A. Porter, William Edouard Scott and Eldezior Cortor also depicted the Caribbean-particularly Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba-for an African American audience. Their paintings frequently reflected broader ethnographical and tourist interests in the region, often focusing on particular representative types, tropical landscapes and market scenes. When the Caribbean does emerge in narratives of African American Art, it is most often in connection with the artistic production of the first half of the twentieth century. Paying attention to Caribbean absences in the historiography of African American art often challenges attempts to homogenize black artists’ cultural production, showing how black artists made use of or even refused these shared heritages in multiple ways, as they made their way in the world.