ArtsTalk: Early 20th-Century African American Master Artists

Akin Duro's Life in Art

How did artists like John Biggers, Romare Bearden, Lois Mailou Jones, Benny Andrews, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage and Charles Alston influence American art and contemporary American artists? As part of our Black History Month ArtsTalk series, Prof. Dana C. Chandler, who taught African and African American Art from 3000 BC to the present at Simmons College in Boston, for 33 years, will discuss the influence of these and other major early 20th artists, several fo whom he knew, on American art and artists. Called "controversial", a "Black Power Artist", "activist artist" and "Outsider Artist", Chandler, 70, was born in 1941 in Lynn, MA. He is best known for the edgy, colorful, controversial and hotly-debated artistic statements of his 1960’s-1980’s works. Because he continues to evolve, his messages change to reflect his personal evolution, he is still an interesting, provocative speaker who can speak and/or lecture brilliantly about the historical relevance of his art and his activism to the worldwide struggle for race and gender equality as well as bridge the generation gap that is confounding this country’s leadership and confronting America as we move into the “internationalist” phase of our own evolution. The show is co-hosted and produced by Dahna M. Chandler, an award-winning journalist and the artist agent for Prof. Dana. C. Chandler. (c) 2011. The Outsider Artist, LLC and BAPsody in Blue, Inc.