Family Ark (monochrome) from the collection of AGBS at The University of Texas at Austin

Photo: Mark Doroba

Family Ark (monochrome), 1992

Offset lithograph

Side panels 29 3/8 x 14” / Center panel 29 3/8 x 21 3/8”

Attribution: Brandywine Art Prints Collection, Benson Latin American Collection and Art Galleries at Black Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, B-07

Inv: B-07

Family Ark exemplifies John Biggers’s dedication to depicting Black life with beauty, fidelity, and a full embrace of its history. He draws extensively upon lineage in his depiction, here presenting objects such as a washing pot, anvil, tiller, and combs as evocative of familial and ancestral care. As Biggers stated in a 1998 interview with Olive Jensen Theisen, “in my work, I reach back and grab things again.”

A student of Charles White during his time at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), Biggers’ nuanced portrayal of Black people testifies to the love both he and White shared for their communities and diasporic counterparts. As art historian Eddie Chambers notes:

"The dignity, respect, and beauty that Biggers brought to his renderings of West African people extended to his depictions of African American people as well. He did not flinch from rendering their woes, travails, and challenges, both contemporary and historical. Neither did Biggers hesitate to depict their beauty, inner strength, and fortitude as well as their fundamental humanity. In embracing drawing as his primary art form of choice, Biggers was recognizing, in much of the same ways as his contemporary Charles White, that his people had a particular appreciation, and indeed, love for drawn images in which they could see themselves, figuratively speaking. "

- Andrea Lucrecia Richardson

For more on the Brandywine Art Prints Collection, see: https://txarchives.org/utlac/finding_aids/00444.xml

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