Afro Futurism Visions

 

"It’s your job to point out to your audience how your art relates to your signature story. It helps them have an ‘’Aha-moment" when they understand your art better and continue to love your work.

Today we talk about how to create a connection with your audience by making them understand the context of your art.

So I pose a question for you today:

What is one way you can point out to your audience how your art relates to your signature story?"

This is my response to that prompt:

1970s-This story is presented in an outlined narrative of crucial highlights and deep moments from about age 18 until age 30.  Times when I was about being me. "An Artist".  Being, then doing. Acting. Expressing.  Sometimes openly and freely. Other times with stressful oversights and suppressions to conform to not be me.  "No Artists Allowed!"  Since I identify me as being "An Artist" and am always "open" about it, there are those tensions that come from so many folks, with the benefit of power and venom, who are visually challenged and straight up artophobic!

"OM!" circa 1971 by Onli. Inks on 22" X 28" cold pressed illustration board.

 Long before the trending of the powerfully embraced opulence of the term, "Afrofuturism" the 18-year-old Turtel Onli founded the Black Arts Guild in 1970 as an autonomous creative exclusive, self-sustainable think-tank for young, Black, gifted, and dedicated visual art students to facilitate their transition from talented but frustrated Art Students into life-long artistic professionals.

 B.A.G. was equitable in its inner voices as all and each member could set themes for exhibitions, was expressive in its aggressive tenacious standards-based critiques and were mutually respected and appreciated during showcases, exhibitions or gigs.  B.A.G. had Gay, Queer, Bi, Straight, Male, Female, Vegan, Jehovah Witness, Pentecostal and even just pain Odd members. 

 In B.A.G. everybody was real......or should we say...OUT"?

The above image is a hype-poster for a dynamic B.A.G. exhibition in the early '70s at the AFAM Art Gallery run by the ever-cool artist/saxophonist, Jose WIlliams. It was designed and created by B.A.G. Member, Dalton Brown. Look close as that map of Africa contains images of several B.A.G. members.

For Onli this was another effort to create a space and place to be himself. A "family" or sorts. 

As a child he was often  forced to go out and play in the alley or playground instead sitting for hours,,,,,drawing..  Nope. Not good. In High School Onli was peer-pressured to party and be cool.....nope again.  None of these were a place for an artist. Not at all. Hmm? He often thought, was any of them ever forced to be an artist?? Nope!!!!

 It was in B.A.G. where Onli started using the term "Rhythmism" and "Future-Primitif" to address the common intuitive visual art styles and conceptual treatments shared by several key B.A.G. members.

Bringing the radical ideas and novel esthetics of the Black Cultural Revolution to commercial applications was its overt agenda. Covertly it was about Getting paid!  With B.A.G., Onli directed and participated in rigorous initiations, critiques, professional procurement and various traveling themed group exhibitions starting in 1970 until 1977. 

In 1971 the above oil painting, "Family Group" by Onli, was acquired by the Johnson Publishing Company and included in its permanent collection of works created by Black Artists. JPC was the publisher of "Ebony Magazine". 

This important early sample of Rhythmism sold in 2020 per the SWANN Galleries Art Auction. 

Onli later became a contributing illustrator of JPC's charming educational title. "Ebony Jr." as shown in the above sample from the poem. "Big Mama's Wisdom".

The image above was created by Onli in 1975. B.A.G. used the then negative, controversial yet health giving watermelon as its logo and did watermelon infused artwork as part of its initiation process. They even owned and re-contextualized "Piccinnini" and Mamie images that up until then were used to demean the dignity of Black Americans.  This too was part of the Black Cultural Revolution.  

To rebrand and acclaim their Americna reality while establishing their newborn Africanisms.

Onil painted the above mural in the notorious Cabrini-Green Public Housing Projects of Chicago in the Summer of 1971 after being asked to do it by the definitive legendary Urban Muralist, the late Bill Walker. That Summer Onli was pulled over while riding his bike home from working on the mural by the Chicago Police. They made it clear that they did not approve of his work.  

Onli never painted another political urban mural after that scary exchange.  At the time Onli was a Draft Dodger with a Number-2 in the Selective Service Lottery Number. If caught, he would have been off to the War in Viet Nam.

 Plus, his being affiliated with the Black Panther Party would not have gone over well either. 

The 40" X 40" acrylic painting below is by Onli during this period. "Unite!"

 Because of this and many other issues B.A.G. and so much of Onli's and B.A.G.'s innovative efforts and impact were censored, overlooked or assigned to others rather than speak, write or document his and their plain truth. Therefore, here is a flow of images and chronological events.  This is his life and story during these years. 

The truth or history is what really happened.

1973- Onli designed this published later highly collectable album cover for Delmark Records. It features his early untrained raw emergent Rhythmistic interpretation of Afrikanized meditation. 

The above 24" X 36" stippled inks Rhythmistic goddess is from thsis period. 

 During this phase Alice Coltrane, AKA Turiya, was Onli's spiritual advisor. He felt the experiments in avant-garde and free jazz were akin to his Rhythmistic explorations and ambitions.

Now for  bringing on da Funk!!

Onli contributed published album covers designs and conceptual treatments to important labels or brands such as American Variety Entertainment, The Proctor & Gardener Advertisement Agency and Casablanca Records during the pre-digital era. 

All Future-Primitif. 

All Rhythmistic!

One of the main reasons Onli decided to go to Paris was due to his being prompted to do so by former original Katherine Dunham Dancers, Lucille Ellis, featured in this Rhythmistic portrait above and her buddy Eartha Kitt. 

 Ellis and Onli worked together at the legendary Abraham Lincoln Centre in the Bronzeville District of Chicago in the mid 1970s.  Ellis taught Dunham Dance Technique and Onli was a Teacher-Therapist with an Art Therapy Component.  They shared a strong cross-generational bond and appreciation of advancing The Arts.

 In early 1977 Ellis and Kitt explained to Onli that his creative unfoldment awaited him in Paris as it had for them.  He gifted Ellis this large Rhythmistic portrait before he left for that exciting maiden voyage to the City of Lights.....Paris France.

NOTE- One major innovative project Onli did with and for the Rolling Stones was never used because it would not have passed the censorship laws of the day. 

Even though the 'Stones directed it and really loved it. The above drawing was part of that project. It was not for the outside cover but for the inner paper sleeve that would have contained the actual disc.

 B.A.G. was decommissioned in 1978 when Onli was focused on working in Paris, France. None of the other members wanted to step up and direct the guild.

1974- One of Onil's Rhythmistic paintings from his collection celebrating the glory & power of Black Women was accepted in the landmark juried / invitational group exhibition in Berkeley California at the Rainbow Sign Gallery.

The influential social engineering Playboy Magazine hired Onli to illustrate for the "Reviews Section" of its trendy "OUI" Magazine. This exposed thousands of readers on an international scale to his Rhythmistic treatments and he used this to further his thesis of Rhythmism and its capacity to communicate. illustrate and be commercialized. 

Playboy paid the highest rates to its writers, photographers, illustrators and cartoonists in editorial publiscations globally.

Onli continued to grow his watermelon themed body of Rhythmistic art.  He calls this collection "Passion Fruit". It was during his tenure directing B.A.G. that Onli and Dalton Brown started using the term "Rhythmism".  Onli later refined the term to include the Future-Primitif processing of concepts.

1975- Onli created this full-spread album cover illustration for the legendary innovative jazz musician, Miles Davis.  Though Davis loved this Rhythmistic portrait he & Onli could not reach business terms about its use.  Onli refused Davis' offer of sub-par payment. Thus, this Rhythmistic cover treatment was never used. 

1977- Onli went to live, work and study in Paris France. Wanting to challenge his Rhythmistic thesis on the international level, he called this his Cosmopolitan Phase. 

 He worked for the Paris Metro Magazine and MODE Avante Garde Magazine along with winning a national drawing competition that led to his having a solo exhibition at the FIAP in Paris. Here he presented his first Rhythmistic exhibition.  It was called, "Presenting My Rhythm".  During the summer of 1978 thousands of tourists and Parisiens visited this showcase. 

 It was here that Onli was convinced of the validity of Rhythmism as a Future-Primitif genre in the visual arts canon.

The above "Femme Chat" and the below "Venus" were done by Onli for the trendy Goth / Punk infused MODE Avante Garde Magazine based in Paris, France in the late 1970s.

To project the Future-Primitif nature of his works Onli started signing his works 1999 in the mid-1970s.

 
During this period of Onil's career, he was often criticized and marginalized in "The Black Art Movement" and even called a "sell-ou't for doing commercial illustrations and wanting to establish a genre that went beyond the limited orthodoxy of the term, "Black Art". 

 Then in non-Black mainstream circles he was surprisingly often the only or first Black to enter those offices with a skill set and level of professionalism to secure and complete actual commissions.  He often was black balled, harassed and even escorted out of some of those offices. 

The "Art Establishment" frequently stated that its tradition was set.  Firmly put, no visual Artiste could determine or name a genre in the Visual Arts. That only a connected art critic or art historian could do so. 

The types who will tell you who your influences were or are.  How your art is derived from things and ideas you never knew about or experienced.  The people who others listen to, who determine if you or your artwork is "Good"? "Hot"?

Plus, which artworks of yours lack merit and value.  Yeahhhh...... them!

NOTE: Onli was doing all of this before he had earned his BFA in Art Education from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Why? Because he was an Artiste who was always looking for a place and space that would accept his being an artist.

 Onli's published and exhibited works speak for themselves and his dedication.

 "Rhythmism Lives!!!"