The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

Naylor’s subsequent novels were increasingly am-
bitious. The narrative structure ofLinden Hillspar-
allels that of Dante’sInferno, drawing an implicit
comparison between African American middle-class
culture with its buried ugliness and moral bankruptcy
and Dante’s vision of Hell. Like Toni Morrison’sSong
of Solomon(1977), the book offers an indictment of a
black bourgeoisie that strives for wealth and social at-
tainment.Mama Dayportrays the matriarchal society
of Willow Springs, a Gullah island owned by slaves
since 1823, when a slave woman married her master,
forced him to deed the land to his slaves, then killed
him. At the center of this empowering, African Amer-
ican, matriarchal culture is Miranda “Mama” Day,
firmly rooted in the irrational, feminine world as a
healer, knowledgeable about medicines and potions.
Naylor contrasts this world with New York, where
Mama Day’s niece Cocoa has moved.
Many critics have comparedMama Dayto Shake-
speare’sThe TempestandKing Lear, though Naylor
draws as much influence from earlier African Ameri-
can and women writers as from Shakespeare. In the
1980’s, more than in previous decades, writers incor-
porated influences from a wide range of literature,
including earlier African American female voices
such as Ann Petry and Zora Neale Hurston. Naylor
took advantage of this broad literary heritage while
reinventing the American novel to encompass inter-
sections between race, culture, gender, sexuality,
and class.

Impact Gloria Naylor, alongside colleagues such as
Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Walker, and
Terry McMillan, represented a generation of Afri-
can American women writers who not only por-
trayed the American experience but made it their
own. Their explorations of the intersections be-
tween gender, race, class, and sexuality during the
1980’s constituted not only some of the best writing
of the decade but also some of the most American
writing as well, permanently changing the definition
of American literature.

Further Reading
Montgomery, Maxine Lavon.Conversations with Glo-
ria Naylor.Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2004.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds.Gloria
Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New
York: Amistad, 1993.
Georgie L. Donovan

See also African Americans;Beloved;Color Purple,

The; Kincaid, Jamaica; Literature in the United States;

Multiculturalism in education.

Neoexpressionism in painting

Definition Art movement

During the 1980’s, a diverse yet bold group of artists sought

to move away from the remoteness associated with

minimalism and conceptualism and to promote a more ag-

gressive and emotive approach to painting.

The neoexpressionist rebellion against the prevail-

ing trends of contemporary art had its beginnings

during the 1960’s, but it did not reach its peak until

the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The artists associ-

ated with this movement, such as the supremely self-

confident American artist Julian Schnabel and the

eclectic Italian artist Francesco Clemente, believed

in expressing their inner angst through a more figu-

rative painting style. Art was to be linked closely with

the psyche of the individual artist. The neoexpres-

sionist artists were greatly influenced by the works

of the groundbreaking psychologist Carl Jung. At-

tempting to express through art the more primitive

of impulses, the neoexpressionists looked to mem-

ory, to raw sexuality, and to emotional fervor for in-

spiration. A childlike enthusiasm for self-expression

found its way back into art.

Painting Is Not Dead The growing avant-garde art

scene of the 1960’s and 1970’s had become an ex-

tremely reductive and impersonal enterprise. Emo-

tion had become less common as a motivation for

the artistic process. Prevailing artistic trends were ce-

rebral and cared little for the act of painting. Art crit-

ics and theorists even went so far as to expound that

painting was certainly irrelevant and most likely

dead. For many European and American artists,

however, the thought that painting could be “dead”

had the ring of absurdity. For this diverse group of

artists, the often messy act of painting was a neces-

sary ingredient in the creative process. It was their

belief that painting could be made vital and relevant

to the contemporary world. This new attempt to

bring back painting was looked upon with disdain

by several prominent art authorities of the time.

While the artists of this revolutionary new move-

ment did employ wild and seemingly inappropriate

The Eighties in America Neoexpressionism in painting
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