The Black Revolution, an American social upheaval of this century, poses numerous questions and challenges to all segments of our culture. For the artists, black and white, there is a dilemma of commitment as regards the acceptance of Black art for its merit without approval of the white artist. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the Black Revolution would be a turning point in American Negro art.

This study concerns the deliberate subordination in painting of thirteen art elements and principles, the primary pictorial features, and examination of the intervals between pictorial events, the pictorial interface. A written record was kept of the artist's observations and impressions during the making of ten nonobjective paintings and their later study. The artist selected five paintings as more successfully subordinating the primary pictorial features and three paintings as most successfully exhibiting the three characteristics determined for the pictorial inter face: (1) conceptual resonance, (2) ambiguity, and (3) unbiasedness. The three paintings selected as most successfully exhibiting the characteristics of the pictorial interface coincided with three of the five paintings selected as more successfully subordinating the primary pictorial features.

An exhibition catalog was chosen as the problem for this study, for it provided a practical means for an art historian to experience the problems associated with assembling material for an exhibition and catalog. These problems included researching background material, locating and coordinating a unified collection of artifacts, working with museum and research center staffs, plus the experience of photographing, editing, arranging lay-outs and writing in the format of an exhibition catalog.