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The Artist Has always Been a Disturber of the Peace
Yvonne Neverson/1978

From Africa: International Business, Economic and Political Magazine 80 (April 1978), 109-10.

James Baldwin is one of the most famous black writers of our time. Born in Harlem, New York, his particular experience as a Black person who has the ability to create images with words encouraged him to draw from his own personal experience and to reflect more profoundly on the wider issues of the Black experience.

The role of the Black writer is a constant subject of Baldwin's thinking... and he (has) explored with honesty and precision the curious situation in which an artist of the Black Diaspora finds himself.

Since Baldwin's earlier writings in the 1960's he has been primarily an observer and sometimes committed participant to the tremendous sociopolitical change that Africa and the Diaspora have experienced.

Africa magazine recently went to meet James Baldwin. Yvonne Neverson initiated the dialogue. Some excerpts:

Q: Africa is keenly interested in observing the process of cross-fertilisation of ideas among artists in Africa and the Diaspora. Do you think that this is an on-going process which originated in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and if so how do you feel this can best be fostered?

A: I would set up exchange student programmes through institutions if they are willing to do it, but if not then we need to set up our own institutions, to do it ourselves. I have a nephew born in New York who recently went to Africa. It had a tremendously liberating effect on him, and although that is an individual example, that kind of experience ought to be more actively fomented. I see this as something which the African media could promote in a positive

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way. What I am talking about is cultural interdependence. If one were to really examine it, it is conceivably much deeper than the common experience of colonialism or neo-colonialism. The colonial experience certainly in America, Europe and in Africa created another identity and maybe, perhaps, it forces us to recognise how much we need each other in order to examine the foundations of a new world. The first step is knowing that it's there. I would think, that this kind of cultural interplay and cross-pollination is much more vivid for this generation.

Q: In those areas where a common language is utilised, say in music and literature, there is a growing body of artists whose works are widely known in the Black world and are shared by most Black people. This, however, does not seem to be so apparent in the area of the visual arts where the language of symbolism does not seem to be as universal. What is your view?

A: I do not claim to know a great deal about this, but there is little doubt that this sense of common identity is one of the principal impulses. Of course America is vast by itself, and yet the sense is that one no longer wishes to be isolated on the American continent for there is another nation or another world which is much larger than the one into which we are born, and literally all need each other. We have to know what is going on in the Caribbean, we have to know what is going on in Africa and Africa has to know what is going on in Black America.

Q: This sense of common identity between contemporary artists of Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas is perhaps manifested visually by their returning to African traditional themes as a source of inspiration. Do you see this as an important element in their artistic development.?

A: That is what excites me. There are no rules about it. That is what is happening. In my own work; in any creative work you are driven to the first principles. You are driven to where you should really come from, what you really feel apart from all the things which you think you have learnt and forgotten. But when the chips are down and you are really trying to work out of the soil that you've been given, there is no place else to go. Whatever you have learnt to gain it is irrelevant at that pressure. The passion that creates a work of art is really not cerebral.

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Q: How do you see it manifesting itself more concretely?

A: That I cannot answer really. I would like to see a change in the educational system in America which allowed, or at least did not penalise, the energy we are talking about. In fact I think what I am talking about is occurring in various southern states of America but it is also happening, oddly enough, in places like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York where there are abandoned waste grounds and the kids have taken the remaining wall standing. Some of the kids in the various cities painted what they call a wall of respect. It was absolutely spontaneous. The kids themselves decided to do this. This graffiti which is both political and satirical, is a very important creative endeavour which is another aspect of this communal spirit which I mentioned earlier.

Q: In Africa this is very similar to the popular art which is to be found in sign writings and some of the decorative works in public buildings. Would you say that this mode of artistic self-expression using new symbolism is similar to the observable popularisation in literature such as the rejection of standard English?

A: It depends on the level of rejection. I am not so sure that it is important to reject like that. I think it is important to reject it as a standard but whether to reject it in toto is another question. It is a standard that obviously does not work, for it is not big enough to carry your experience and in that sense one is forced to snatch the language and do things with it that cannot be done within the confines of the Queen's English. There is a reality of a painting. There is a reality of a Black life that is not that of Rembrandt. Everything must be learned but to be put to your own purposes.

Q: This popularisation is in some cases influenced by the belief that Blacks should communicate with Blacks only. Do you agree?

A: That is too crippling and I deem it unnecessary. I think you communicate, you do your work. There it is and it is for everybody because, you know, in all this talk about Blackness one tends to forget or let me say it this way; the terms you have lived with so long is the same point of view from which one can suggest, to overstate it. But I mean it when I say there are no White people and that it is a myth.

The sense of history, the sense of reality even the sense of religion under the umbrella heading `White' has is really a metaphor for

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safety and for power and that is why people are White. The idea of speaking only to Black people seems unnecessary. No one in love or trouble or at the point of death is only a recognisable colour. What he is at that moment is his experience. It is himself.

Q: Often the artist is in an ambiguous position for his self-expression can be constrained by other factors. Have you experienced this with regard to your own work?

A: I have some feeling that there is on some level a greater respect for artists. A greater understanding of them than there was twenty years ago. Although I do not want to minimise the conflict with the artist's own struggle for existence, there is a danger of conflict between the private vision and the public role. But I think that conflict is irreducible and I don't think it has been crippling. It can become that given social and political vigours, given time and places and it is part of the secret behind the jailing of the playwright, Ngugi, in Kenya who has offended the State. The artist has always been a disturber of the peace in some way, but that seems less important at this moment than the beginning of the flowering which is something unprecedented.