African-American modern artists have long been caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If they stick to what any artist knows best―his or her own life, community and experience―then they're ghettoized as specialist "black artists," the two words seemingly joined at the hip. If they branch out a little to comment on, say, life in general, the way the world works or just plain beauty, they run the risk of being called―in whispers―sellouts. (Unfair but true: white artists' subject matter is automatically assumed to be fairly universal; a white novelist writes about life in America, while a black novelist writes about black life in America.) Only a dozen black jazz greats, perhaps, managed to get full credit for holding on to their roots and reaching the clouds at the same time. Among African-American visual artists the list is even shorter. It begins with the painter-collagist Romare Bearden (1911-88), who is finally getting his due with a beautiful, succinct retrospective, which will be at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., until Jan. 4.
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