Who is the Black artist in America—and how does race inform one’s relationship and responsibilities to society? As the civil rights movement surged through the United States during the summer of 1963, a group of New York–based African American artists brought these questions to the fore as the Spiral Group. Dedicated to critical inquiry, the collective centered the concerns of Black artists at a time when they were largely excluded by white-owned art institutions.
.
“I suggest that Western society, and particularly that of America, is gravely ill and a major symptom is the American treatment of the Negro,” Spiral Group co-founder Romare Bearden told ARTnews in a 1966 feature. “The artistic expression of this culture concentrates on themes of ‘absurdity’ and ‘anti-art’ which provide further evidence of its ill health,” Bearden continued, outlining the art world’s complicity in maintaining a racist status quo. “It is the right of everyone now to re-examine history to see if Western culture offers the only solutions to man’s purpose on this earth.”
.
Together with Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff, Bearden established the Spiral Group in order to incorporate elements of philosophy, sociopolitical activism, and creative integrity into conversations around artmaking. In total, the group would include 15 members, aged 28 to 65, including Emma Amos, Calvin Douglass, Perry Ferguson, Reginald Gammon, Felrath Hines, Alvin Hollingsworth, William Majors, Richard Mayhew, Earl Miller, Merton D. Simpson, and James Yeargans.
.
The group’s logo, chosen by Woodruff, symbolized the group’s noble aims: an Archimedean spiral moving upward and outward in all directions from a fixed starting point, with segments numbered 0 to 15 to represent each artist. In theory, the group’s starting point seemed straightforward enough—their focus was Black artists in America. But as the group’s journey would soon illustrate, that nexus would eventually prove to be rather elusive.
.
.
