From the Black Feminist Matrix: Artistic and Biological Reproduction in Elizabeth Catlett's late career Prints (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: From the Black Feminist Matrix: Artistic and Biological Reproduction in Elizabeth Catlett's late career Prints
Author: Rebecca VanDiver
Abstract: Motherhood is a pervasive theme in Elizabeth Catlett’s sculptural and printmaking practice. In her 1940 MFA thesis she wrote that the mother-child motif was “one in which blackness and femaleness intersect.” In the late 1960s, after race riots engulfed major US cities and the release of the Moynihan Report damning the state of the Negro family, Catlett’s prints started to explore the trauma of Black motherhood and the impossibility of biological reproduction in such times of crisis. This paper analyzes a selection of Catlett's prints from 1969-1980 and argues that Catlett deploys repetition and seriality as artistic strategies to counter the negative mainstream discourses concerning Black women. While Catlett’s early career has received scholarly attention, her late-career printmaking practice (post-1970) remains heretofore understudied as such this paper addresses this lacuna while also offering new insights into contemporary African American printmaking practices.
Date: 10/04/19
Primary URL: http://library.udel.edu/special/catlett-symposium/
Conference Name: "My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples" A Symposium on Elizabeth Catlett

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