Talk:Signifyin'

Frank Bowling on Signifying

Just dropping this in for anyone with more knowledge/experience editing articles like this.

Almost two decades before Gates' book, artist and critic Frank Bowling published an article in ARTnews that responded to contemporaneous criticisms of and attitudes toward abstract art by black artists. Bowling analyzed the work of several artists including Melvin Edwards, and wrote extensively about how Edwards' choice of materials during this era - barbed wire and chains - was a coded reference to African-American history and experience. Bowling explicitly used the term signify, saying: "And Edwards’ unforced delivery is the opposite of political-realist art. He reroutes fashion and current art convention to 'signify' something different to someone who grew up in Watts rather than to 'signify' only in the meaning of Jack Burnham and his colleagues." 1

I feel like this deserves mention here, but I wouldn't know how to properly integrate this into the article. A number of critics and historians have noted that Bowling's use of the term predates Gates' (incl. Harmon Siegel in American Art, Catherine Craft in Melvin Edwards: Five Decades, and Mark Godfrey in Artforum). 19h00s (talk) 16:25, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

origin of signifyin'(g)

while signifyin' using English developed among enslaved African people brought to the United States, it was based on African traditions particularly in the Yoruba speaking tribes according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in The Signifying Monkey. 97.120.113.95 (talk) 12:26, 4 October 2025 (UTC)