Emma Amos, Postmodernist African-American painter and printmaker and long-time NoHo Neighbor, has died.
Emma and her husband lived at 21 Bond St. since the 1970’s and participated in the evolution of the neighborhood regularly until his death in 2005. Her studio on Bond St. was meticulously laid out; full of color, busy with renderings and works in progress. Is was always a priviledge to experience her art this way and to share conversation full of rare insight.
The fact that Ms. Amos’s art complicates, rather than narrows, notions of identity, racial and otherwise, makes it pertinent to the present moment, when binary thinking of all kinds is under scrutiny. At the same time, her careerlong belief in art as a form of ethical resistance carries new weight when the promises of the civil rights era seem again under threat…..“It’s always been my contention,” she once said, “that for me, a black woman artist, to walk into the studio is a political act.” Holland Cotter, co-chief art critic, The New York Times, 5/30/2020