Negro Electro

Negro Electro
An Artistic Hypothesis and Manifesto

by Max Eternity

"Man of Mystery: Doctor Doctor"

NOTE: Click here for the complete Negro Electro prospectus.  What follows is an excerpt.

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This newly created art genre, Negro Electro, provides a well-defined forum for the mural, craft, and color field derivatives that Afro-Artists have contributed to the overall aesthetic of European-American modern art. Negro Electro operates with a forward-thinking orientation, also operating within the context of global advancements in electro-digital fine art.  Predecessors that have inspired this movement range from Harriet Powers, Aaron Douglass and Wilfredo Lam, to Sam Gilliam, Elizabeth Catlett and Henry C. Porter.

In a parallel vein contrasting the 1990’s “Post-Black” aesthetic, Negro Electro represents a sector of the new Black. The “Post-Black” genre found a home by affirming its assimilation into contemporary art, accomplishing this via a default rejection of the Negro or Black label, while also poking fun at “Whiteness.” In contrast, Negro Electro articulates Blackness as a graciously inherited, liberating force that has a potent and formidable artistic pedigree, evolved as a consequence of the American Negro Diaspora. Negro Electro accepts Whiteness as a part of Blackness, for it is a stark reality that Americans simply cannot escape.

In the abstract, Negro Electro is characterized by a conscious physicality. It is largely defined by bold use of color or galvanizing monochromatic scales, lyrical composition, and ‘coded’ African-American themes. Whether representational or figural, the genre presents a more quilt or mural inspired narration. Symbols and graphics are used to reveal a direct lineage to the simplistically elegant, yet primitive, pre-emancipated Negro, who would most likely have been creating in an arts and crafts style reminiscent of pre-colonial Africa. Thus, Negro Electro reflects the Black experience in America in its essential dichotomy of the ancient and the present, the primitive and the modern. Yet, however minimalist or simplistic, Negro Electro is the embodiment of a sophisticated, multi-faceted expression of creativity, which mirrors the complex connections that Blacks have with Africa and America in our post-digital millennia.

Negro Electro is a part of the TADAE creative subset, partly defining Art 2.0.

- Max Eternity, 2004-2010

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Click here to download Negro Electro (complete) prospectus.  Contact Max at: eternityatlanta@gmail.com