From the 1967 until the early 1980’s when the Black Panther Party disbanded Emory Douglas was their Minister of Culture. During that time he produced hundreds of pieces of graphic art to accompany the Panther message.
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles is hosting an exhibition of Douglas’s work titled Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas. The exhibit, curated by Sam Durant with MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, presents almost 150 examples of Emory Douglas’s work.
From the Press Release:
“At a time when political unrest, war protests, and social inequality have again reached a boiling point, but where artistic responses are not as easy to find, the work of Emory Douglas serves as a powerful reminder of the efficacy of visual art to communicate and push forward a political agenda.”
Douglas’s “work gave potent visual form to the plight of urban mothers and to the humanitarian work undertaken by the Black Panthers to bring social services to their communities.”
The influence of Emory Douglas extends to the work of numerous contemporary black artists including Public Enemy and Spike Lee.
MOCA has a great online exhibition to accompany the show featuring numerous examples of Douglas’s work which includes his commentary on each piece. Durant has also assembled a healthy selection of links, books, articles, audio, and video related to the exhibit. If you are in LA head on over to the Pacific Design Center and have a look. The show runs through February 24th.
Rizzoli will be publishing a monograph on Emory edited by Durant due to be released in February. The book contains a preface by Bobby Seale, a foreword by Danny Glover and contributions by Kathleen Cleaver and Amiri Baraka.
