Yale University School of ArtYale School of Art
1156 Chapel Street, POB 208339
New Haven, Connecticut, 06520-8339
(203) 432-2600

1971: A Year in the Life of Color

A Conversation with Darby English

Monday, September 25 at 7PM E.I.K., 32 Edgewood Avenue, New Haven

Yale School of Art welcomes Darby English (Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Adjunct Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY) in conversation with Mark Thomas Gibson (Artist; Critic and Assistant Dean of Student Relations, Yale School of Art) to discuss his book 1971: A Year in the Life of Color. English’s book explores the significance of two modernist painting and sculpture exhibitions of that year: Contemporary Black Art in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY and The De Luxe Show, The De Luxe Theater, Houston, TX. English and Gibson will discuss the role that a political movement can play in an artistic movement, specifically speaking to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and how that influenced the “Black Art Aesthetic” of the 1970’s (and beyond?). They will also explore the role that abstraction plays in describing the Black Experience, and what roles do institutions play in curating the “Black Art Aesthetic?”

About the Speakers

Darby English is the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago; he is also associate faculty in the Department of Visual Arts and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. English’s short-form writing has appeared in Art Bulletin, Artforum, caareviews, The Guardian, The International Review of African-American Art and other venues. English is the author of 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (MIT Press, 2007). He is co-editor of Art History and Emergency (Yale UP, 2016) and Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (MIT Press, 2002 and Rizzoli, 2007). A new monograph, To Describe a Life: Essays at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror will be published by Yale University Press in 2018. This book synthesizes material first presented as the Richard D. Cohen Lectures at Harvard University in November 2016. In 2014, English gave the twenty-sixth annual Hilla von Rebay Lecture at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and in 2015, the Israel Rosen Lecture at Johns Hopkins University. In autumn 2017, English will give the FORART Lecture in Oslo. English also serves as Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Mark Thomas Gibson (b. 1980, Miaml, FL) is an artist living and working in New Haven, CT. Gibson received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2013. During his time at Yale, Gibson was the recipient of the Ely Harwood Schless Memorial Fund Award in 2013. Gibson is currently a Critic and Assistant Dean of Student Relations at the Yale School of Art. In 2016 Gibson co-curated the exhibition Black Pulp! With William Villalongo, which has travelled from Yale University to IPCNY, USF, and Wesleyan. Black Pulp! has been reviewed in the New York Times and Art in America. In 2016 Gibson released his first book, Some Monsters Loom Large, with the help of an E-Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. The book was recently re-issued in a Second Edition in partnership with IPCNY. Gibson’s second book Early Retirement will be released September 7th 2017 in New York with Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, CH. Mark Thomas Gibson is represented by Fredericks Freiser Gallery, NY, NY