Barbara Jones-Hogu (April 17, 1938 – November 14, 2017) was an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

artist best known for her work with the

Organization of Black American Culture The Organization of Black American Culture (OBA-C) (pronounced ''Oh-bah-see'') was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, ...

(OBAC) and for co-founding the artists' collective AfriCOBRA.

Early life and education

Barbara Jones-Hogu was born in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

, in 1938. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from

Howard University Howard University is a private, historically black, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and accredited by the Mid ...

and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Institute of Design in Chicago, as well as a master's degree in printing from the

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

, Chicago. She later pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Independent Film and Digital Imaging at

Governors State University Governors State University (Governors State, GSU, GovState, or GOVST) is a public university in University Park, Illinois, United States. The campus is located south of Chicago, Illinois. GovState was founded in 1969. It is a public universi ...

while in her early seventies. She wished to earn the degree to document artists and their work. She was described as very private and thoughtful. She had one son, Kuumba Hogu, who has remarked that he wanted his mother to be remembered through her artwork.

Career

Jones-Hogu was a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), and contributed when they completed the

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

Wall of Respect in 1967. It is regarded as the first collective street mural in the United States. She completed the actors' section. Jones-Hogu became involved in printing while studying at The Art Institute of Chicago. Her major in Painting included courses in printmaking, and she discovered that she enjoyed it while taking the coursework for her major. She was working while going to school. She also was able to use printmaking facilities at the Institute of Design. Misch Kohn, the head of printmaking at the time, gave her a key to the printmaking facilities so that she could complete printmaking work there whenever she wanted, usually on evenings and weekends. In 1968, Jones-Hogu co-founded AfriCOBRA, a collective of African-American artists based in Chicago. One of her most famous works while involved with the group was "Unite", which has been featured in many exhibitions, including at the

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

in London. The work was inspired by a sculpture by

Elizabeth Catlett Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012) was an American and Mexican sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience i ...

, which she saw while visiting Catlett in Mexico in the summer of 1968. It was also inspired by the

1968 Olympics Black Power salute During their medal ceremony in the Estadio Olímpico Universitario, Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each Raised fist, raised a black-gloved fist during the playing ...

. She later remarked: " I thought we, as a people should unite as a people under this concept." The prints of "Unite" that she made prior to joining AfriCOBRA were differentiated from the prints she made while in AfriCOBRA by an African sculpture — the prints that she had done previously did not have an African sculpture, and instead had an African head. She created the work "Resist Law and Order in a Sick Society" due to these events. Many of her works incorporate key phrases as titles. Jones-Hogu also created a work entitled "Stop Genocide." The work was based on gangs, which she thought could be used as a force for good if they came together. However, she felt that the gangs were engaging in "self-genocide" instead of aiming to stop genocide, which she defined as " ite on black genocide and crime." She printed this work on Japanese handmade paper, instead of her usual paper that she used for AfriCOBRA prints. The latter paper started to become fragile over the years, prompting her to switch. She printed at the

, as she did not have a studio at the time. She produced many works with the flag for her thesis at the Illinois Institute of Technology. During this time, she also was filmed for a portion of the documentary

Medium Cool ''Medium Cool'' is a 1969 American drama film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968. It was notable ...

, but her parts were not used. Jones-Hogu said that makers of the documentary wished to ask young "radical" African-Americans about the potential turmoil in Chicago during the

1968 Democratic National Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making ...

. She remembered that she spoke on "the racial and the political attitudes and conditions in the city". She appeared in a 2011 documentary entitled ''AfriCOBRA: Art For The People'', in which she remarked: "The people we were making art for looked like us." The "Unite" print consists of two versions - one was created prior to her co-forming the group in 1969, and another version was created in 1971 after she became a member. Prior to becoming involved with AfriCOBRA, she remarked that her works were informed by a largely negative narrative in the context of racial politics. However, after becoming involved with AfriCOBRA, her individual work shifted and took on a more positive, hopeful narrative. One example is her 1971 screenprint ''Relate to Your Heritage'', which borrows the aesthetics of

blacklight A blacklight, also called a UV-A light, Wood's lamp, or ultraviolet light, is a lamp that emits long-wave ( UV-A) ultraviolet light and very little visible light. One type of lamp has a violet filter material, either on the bulb or in a se ...

and

blaxploitation In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement, the black power movement, ...

posters but, inverting their typically abusive or trivializing content, depicts black women in royal garb. She wished to display more positive issues in her politics, and this was a philosophy also echoed by AfriCOBRA. Around 1973, Jones-Hogu shifted from primarily painting to drawing, and to a lesser degree printmaking, as her son would become ill from paint fumes. She used oil-based inks. She had her first solo show involving her prints and drawings. The show was held by a gallery owned by African-American artists. Jones-Hogu started to prepare prints for other artists' work in AfriCOBRA. She felt that her printmaking abilities set her apart, as many artists in AfriCOBRA were painters. Every time she completed a print, she would always put "artist's proof" on it. She started to do

block printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. Each page or image is creat ...

and intaglio, and later moved on to making silkscreen prints once she opened her own shop. She did lithographs for fundraising, and

Sammy Davis Jr. Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, actor, comedian, dancer, and musician. At age two, Davis began his career in Vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which t ...

reportedly bought one. She briefly served on the board of the

South Side Community Art Center The South Side Community Art Center is a community art center in Chicago that opened in 1940 with support from the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in Illinois. Opened in an 1893 mansion in Bronzeville, it became the first bla ...

, and was heavily involved with it throughout her life. The South Side Community Center was also where her work was first exhibited in the early 1970s, and it went on to feature more exhibits of her work. Jones-Hogu later remarked in an interview that she was told that people had complained about the number of times her work was exhibited at the center, which ended her run of exhibitions there. She did not have a one-person show at the center, but exhibited with artists such as Napoleon Jones-Henderson. Later, she donated many of her prints to the center. Many of her prints had been lost due to flooding, as she stored them in her basement. Jones-Hogu started do much work with pastels and colored pencils starting in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. She began to create many portraits. She created a portrait of Lurlean Dean that Lurlean's son displayed at Lurlean's memorial service. An exhibition of the work of afriCOBRA describes Jones-Hogu's individual art style as "fus ngpolitical messages, images, and text." Jones-Hogu's work is displayed in many museums, including the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

The Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Fla ...

, the

National Civil Rights Museum The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built ar ...

, and the

National Museum of African American History and Culture The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 an ...

. Her work has appeared in books, including ''Creating Their Own Image: The History of African American Women Artists'', ''The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s'', and ''Toward a People's Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement''. She was represented from 2005 on by her art dealer, David Lusenhop of Lusenhop Fine Art, after she met him at an exhibition in which her work was displayed in 2004. She reportedly walked up to him and asked him why she had not received an invitation to the show, as her work was being displayed in it. She and Lusenhop became friends. Lusenhop Fine Art, of

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, represents the Estate of Barbara Jones-Hogu. Her first solo museum exhibition took place at th
DePaul Art Museum
in Chicago in 2018. It was entitled ''Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite 1968–1975''. Others were not aware of how much work she had produced until the latest years of her life, when she was moved to a nursing home. Jones-Hogu reportedly told others that she did not produce much work, but many projects of hers were found, and thus they were collected into an exhibition. A catalog for the exhibition was funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, and will be Jones-Hogu's first monograph.

Works of Barbara Jones-Hogu

Jones-Hogu's work is numerous in numbers, distribution and location. There is an abundance of work by Jones-Hogu that stems from both her importance and influence in AfriCOBRA's movement as well as her own independent work, which extends from the 1960s and '70s up to recent years and her death in 2017. Exhibitions in which her work featured include '' Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power'' exhibition, ''AfriCOBRA Nation Time'', ''AfriCOBRA Messages to the People'', ''We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85'', and many more.

Works (partial)

* ''Getting the Game Together'', 1967, woodcut on paper * ''Man's Return'', 1967, woodcut on paper * ''Untitled Woodcut'', 1967, pine wood * ''Be Your Brother's Keeper'', 1968, screenprint * ''The Land Where My Father Died'', 1968, screenprint * ''America II'', 1969, screenprint * ''America III: While Some Are Trying To Get Whiter'', 1969, * ''Nation Time'', 1969, screenprint * ''One People Unite'', 1969, color screenprint on gold paperboard * ''Unite (First State)'', 1969, screenprint * ''Untitled'', 1969, screenprint * ''Untitled'', 1969, color screenprint on gold paperboard * ''Heritage'', 1970, screenprint, tusche and glue * ''I'm Better Than These Motherfuckers'', 1970, screenprint * ''Stop Genocide'', 1970, screenprint * ''Unite'', 1971, screenprint on wove paper * ''Nation Time (II)'', 1971, screenprint * ''High Priestess'', 1971, screenprint on wove paper * ''Rise and Take Control'', 1971, screenprint * ''Relate to Your Heritage'', 1971, screenprint * ''Black Men We Need You'', 1971, color screenprint * ''To Be Free (TCB)'', 1971, screenprint * ''To Be Free (Know the Past, Prepare for the Future)'', 1971, screenprint * ''When Styling'', 1973, screenprint * ''God's Child'', 2009, screenprint

References

External links

"Barbara Jones Hogu - Never The Same"
(excerpt from a video interview), YouTube, July 25, 2013. * Barbara Jones-Hogu
"History, Philosophy and Aesthetics of AFRICOBRA"
Originally published in Afri-Cobra HI (Amherst: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1973). Revised by the author, Chicago, 2008.
"A conversation with Barbara Jones-Hogu"
''Area Chicago''. * Randall Miller
"AFRICOBRA: Philosophy at the Logan Center"
''Mutual Art'', July 23, 2013

* ttp://smartcollection.uchicago.edu/people/8052/barbara-joneshogu;jsessionid=1C5BF634E0F1896320988B9E5FFB4C1F/objects Some works of Barbara-Jones Hoguat the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art
"Power, Politics, & Pride: AfriCOBRA"
DuSable to Obama, WTTW. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jones-Hogu, Barbara 1938 births 2017 deaths 20th-century African-American artists 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American artists 21st-century African-American women African-American women artists Artists from Illinois Black Arts Movement people Howard University alumni