Art

Read these thoughts on art and its expression from talented African-American artists.

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.
Katherine Dunham, Katherine Dunham Interview

A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.... No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.
James Weldon Johnson

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Art is an elastic sort of love.
Josephine Baker

Cease to be a drudge, seek to be an artist.
Mary McLeod Bethune

Each body has its art. Each body has its pose.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Pregressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the socity in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation
Angela Davis

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.
Richard Wright

We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end.
Nikki Giovanni

We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it's not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts.
Spike Lee