- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Feb 9, 2021
Critic Reviews
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We’re talking about a dense, complex history. No one film can hope to get all of it, and this one leaves a lot out. (Mention of the Black Power movement is all but absent here.) Still, there’s a lot, encapsulated in short, deft commentary by scholars and curators.
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An illuminating bird’s-eye view of the past half-century of Black art in America. ... The film never dips into saccharine platitudes, and it is unafraid to examine the defects within artistic movements that, while fighting for racial justice, had their own blindspots.
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It’s still an eye-opener for any casual art buff, realizing that a lot has happened in that scene since Basquiat, and an awful lot happened before David C. Driskell had the gumption and the thick skin to dare to suggest there was a Black art aesthetic, and that there were more than 200 years of African American art that was too good and too important to ignore.