Lost (and Found) Artist Series: Claudette Johnson – Challenging Traditions of Representation

Artland’s Lost (and Found) Artist Series is dedicated to artists who spent most of their careers out of the spotlight or were previously excluded from the mainstream art canon. This edition focuses on the work of Claudette Johnson, a Black British artist who has been challenging traditional representations of Black women since the beginning of her artistic career as a prominent exponent of Feminist Art in the UK and is now regarded as one of the most influential figurative artists of her generation. The artist is now receiving renewed attention and her first solo exhibition in the United States at Ortuzar Projects in New York City is running through April 22, 2023. 

The Art of Claudette Johnson

Since the early years of her career in the 1980s, Johnson has questioned historical representations and portraiture of Black bodies, and especially Black women’s bodies, in Western art history. Growing up in the first Black family on her street in Manchester during the 1960s and 1970s, Johnson was irrevocably shaped by this experience. She read the work of African American authors who talked about Black Power and the Black Panthers, and these readings influenced her own artistic practice. Another key literary work that inspired Johnson was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, in which the author describes the character of a Black girl who is practically invisible to the White people around her. This experience was one that Johnson herself knew about all too well.

In Johnson’s paintings, she demands that attention is drawn to the Black body. With her often life-sized portraits, she encourages presence, autonomy, space, and power for her subjects and community.

The BLK Art Group

Claudette Johnson was a member of the BLK Art Group, a group of Black artists formed in Wolverhampton in 1979, who brought forward issues about race, gender, and representation in their artistic practice. They raised questions about what Black art was and what it could be. The BLK Art Group organized the First National Black Art Convention in 1982, and it was here that Johnson gave a lecture on the depiction of the Black female figure in Western art history. This presentation turned into quite a heated debate in the hall, and this in turn led to the creation of a network of female artists who would spearhead the British Black Art Movement.