Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary African-American Art

Last updated

Black Romantic: The Figurative Impulse in Contemporary African-American Art was an exhibition held at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 25 April, 2002 until 23 June, 2002. The show was curated by Thelma Golden, the museum's Chief Curator. Black Romantic was a survey of Contemporary African-American genre painting whose stated purpose, as described by the Director of The Studio Museum, Lowery Stokes Sims was to show "elements of desire, dreams, determination, and romance particular to the black experience present a viewpoint that is oppositional to modernist conceptualization of blackness flavoured by exogenous exoticism, stereotype, caricature, and even abstractionist manipulation". [1]

Contents

Curation and artists

Black Romantic was immediately seen as a risky exhibition because it did not cater to the predominant and powerful desires of the art world to see postmodernism and irony in the work of Black American artists. [2] Rather, it was curated from submissions to an open call. Many of the selected artists were lesser known at the time, and existed "almost exclusively outside the mainstream, within a parallel art world with distinct circuits of distribution, value, and reception supported by an enthusiastic black middle class". [3] Many of these artists were quite commercially successful, though rarely, if at all, exhibited in well known galleries. The show's proclaimed purpose was to show a revisionist trend in Black American genre painting that was undoing the stereotypes of black suffering. The show featured what some might, and did, consider the conservative art of figurative painting. It was through these various representations of the figure that the works themselves, and the show as a whole endeavored to work against racist and modernist stereotypes, caricatures, and characterizations of the black experience. One of the ways in which the curation of the show took seriously the task of discussing these works from a so-called "other art world" was by publishing a catalog that featured full-page reproduction prints of the thirty artists' works. [4] [1]

The artists included in the show were:Alonzo Adams, Leroy Allen, Iana L. N. Amauba, Jules R. Arthur, III, Alexander Austin, Marlon H. Banks, Nina I. Buxenbaum, Clifford Darrett, Keith J. Duncan, Lawrence Finney, Gerald Griffin, James Hoston, Robert L. Jefferson, Oliver B. Johnson, Jr., Troy L. Johnson, Jonathan M. Knight, Jeanette Madden, Cal Massey, Dean Mitchell, Kadir Nelson, Leslie Printis, Robert V. Reid, Jonathon Romain, Philip Smallwood, Aj Smith, Toni L. Taylor, Hulbert Waldroup, Larry Walker, Shamek Weddle, and Kehinde Wiley.

Reception and criticism

The show had been curated by Thelma Golden specifically to elicit reaction through its inclusion and curation of artworks not seen and accepted in the gallery art world. It garnered a mixed, somewhat negative reception. The main sources of criticism were the quality of the artwork and of Thelma Golden's own attitude towards the show. The most direct and scathing of these attitudes came from The New York Times. Reviewer Michael Kimmelman who writes, “I wonder whether Ms. Golden knows the extent to which she comes across as sabotaging her own artists in an accompanying catalog?” [5] He further summarized Golden’s attitude by quoting saying, "While organizing the exhibition, Ms. Golden writes, she was 'physically unsettled' by what she perceived to be the 'overwrought sentiment' of the art. She 'shuddered at the crass commercialism' and the 'bombastic self-promotion.'The 'absence of irony,' she adds, 'was profound.' So the challenge for her was 'the suspension of judgment -- not curatorial or aesthetic judgment -- but the suspension of value judgment.'" [5]

Aside from some critics’ negative opinion of Golden’s curatorial choices, the content of the show itself was controversial because the exhibition was meant to start conversations in the circles of the artworld by portraying work that was seen as kitschy, unfashionable, middle brow, or outsider art. Some critics didn’t believe that the various figurative paintings belonged together at all beyond the fact that they were figurative. [3] [5] Though many critics found fault with certain paintings on basis of form or merit, certain artists did stand out to different reviewers. Many did find a majority of these artworks middlebrow in a distasteful way. Proponents of the show found that distaste to be exactly the point of the show, to prove how the art world excludes certain classes, varieties, and races of painters from the "inside". As Kimmelman says, "Much hoop-jumping will be required by those who embrace well-connected white figurative painters like Elizabeth Peyton and Lisa Yuskavage to reject some of the unfashionable artists here -- or to say that an artist like Norman Rockwell is lousy but these artists are not. Or vice versa." [5]

The show was indeed doing something by bringing these lesser-known in the art world into it. Some claimed it was never done before, which is contestable and was. However, many did think it was a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to disrupt the distinctions between who is in and who is out. The museum had done what many accused them of not doing, of representing the people who needed it most, of representing themselves and their neighbors, instead of those already in and fashionable. [4] [1] People and critics also saw that the Studio Museum occupied a tricky position. James Trainor, writing for Frieze put it most clearly, saying, "The Studio Museum in Harlem is in an unenviable position. On the one hand, it represents a community and a culture, while on the other it is committed to presenting the foremost achievements of African-American artists to a wider world. The museum has been criticized by some in the black community, especially in its own backyard, Harlem, for ignoring precisely this kind of art in favor of the highbrow avant-garde practices that will be accepted downtown. 'Black Romantic' seems to be an acknowledgment and a questioning of those criticisms, and deserves credit for raising the issue of which black artists are on the inside and which are on the outside, and why." [3]

Related Research Articles

Renee Cox

Renee Cox is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist and curator. Her work is considered part of the feminist art movement in the United States. Among the best known of her provocative works are Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Raje and Yo Mama's Last Supper, which exemplify her Black Feminist politic. In addition, her work has provoked conversations at the intersections of cultural work, activism, gender, and African Studies. As a specialist in film and digital portraiture, Cox uses light, form, digital technology, and her own signature style to capture the identities and beauty within her subjects and herself.

Studio Museum in Harlem Museum in New York, New York

The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The Museum’s galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, with a new one on the same site. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African Americans, members of the African diaspora, and artists from the African continent. Its scope includes exhibitions, artists-in-residence programs, educational and public programming, and a permanent collection.

Post-black art

Post-black art is a category of contemporary African American art. It is a paradoxical genre of art where race and racism are intertwined in a way that rejects their interaction. I.e., it is art about the black experience that attempts to dispel the notion that race matters. It uses enigmatic themes wherein black can substitute for white. Some suggest the term is attributable to the 1995 book The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson.

Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, the Museum's former Director and President, in 2005. She is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.

Timothy Hyman is a British figurative painter, art writer and curator. He has published monographs on both Sienese Painting and on Pierre Bonnard, as well as most recently The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century. He has written extensively on art and film, has been a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement and has curated exhibitions at the Tate, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Hayward galleries. Hyman is a portraitist, but is best known for his narrative renditions of London. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Max Beckmann and Bonnard, as well as Lorenzetti and Brueghel, he explores his personal relationship, both real and mythological, with the city where he lives and works. He employs vivid colours, shifting scale and perspectives, to create visionary works. He was elected an RA in 2011.

Dean Mitchell is an American figurative artist who works primarily in watercolor and oil paint. His subjects, derived largely from African American culture, have been cited for their emotional depth, avoidance of facile sentimentality, and accomplished sense of formal design.

Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.

Catherine David French art historian and curator

Catherine David is a French art historian, curator and museum director. David was the first woman and the first non-German speaker to curate documenta X in Kassel, Germany. David is currently deputy director of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Georges Pompidou. She was born and lives in Paris.

Freestyle was a contemporary art exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem from April 28-June 24, 2001 curated by Thelma Golden with the support of curatorial assistant Christine Y. Kim. Golden curated the works of 28 emerging black artists for the exhibition, characterizing the work as ‘Post-Black’. The latter is a term she generated along with artist Glenn Ligon as a genre of art “that had ideological and chronological dimensions and repercussions. It was characterized by artists who were adamant about not being labeled as 'black' artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness." Freestyle was her first major project at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the first of four ‘F’ themed series of exhibitions including Frequency, Flow and Fore.

Christine Y. Kim is an American curator of contemporary art. She is currently Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before her appointment at LACMA in 2009, she was Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York. She is best known for her exhibitions of and publications on artists of color, diasporic and marginalized discourses, and 21st-century technology and artistic practices.

Denzil Forrester is a Grenada-born artist who moved to England as a child in 1967. Previously based in London, where he was a lecturer at Morley College, he moved to Truro, Cornwall in 2016.

Duro Olowu is a Nigerian-born British fashion designer. He is best known for his innovative combinations of patterns and textiles that draw inspiration from his international background.

Nyame Brown is an artist from San Francisco, CA whose multimedia work explores the intermingling of African-American pop culture and the larger African Diaspora. He received his BFA from The School of the Arit Institute of Chicago and his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1997. He is currently a faculty member at the Oakland School of the Arts and has previously held positions at St. Mary's College of California, Notre Dame University, Illinois State University, and The Art Institute of Chicago. He is the recipient of the Richard Driehaus Foundation Individual Artist Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant (2003). He was the Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in-Residence in Spring 2016.

Harlem on My Mind protest

The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) protested a 1969 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968. The protest resulted from conflicts between the Met and the Harlem art community after the Met's decision to exclude Black artists and the Harlem community from an exhibit about Harlem, as well as from racism and anti-Semitism within both the exhibition and exhibition catalogue.

Jordan Casteel is an American figurative painter. Casteel typically paints intimate portraits of friends, lovers, and family members as well as neighbors and strangers in Harlem and New York. Casteel lives and works in New York City.

Ming Smith African-American photographer

Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Franklin Sirmans is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator and has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.

Rujeko Hockley is a New York-based US curator. Hockley is currently an Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Frequency Exhibition was a contemporary exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem from November 9, 2005 - March 12, 2006. Curated by Thelma Golden and associate curator Christine Y. Kim, the exhibition featured the works of 35 emerging Black artists. Frequency, following the 2001 exhibition "Freestyle," is one of five "F" themed exhibitions alongside Flow, Fore, and Fictions. While curators Golden and Kim point out that Frequency was not "Freestyle II," the organization of artists under the umbrella of Black identity engages with "Post-Black" art similarly to the Freestyle exhibition.

Zoé Whitley American art historian and curator

Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which was described by ARTnews as one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Black Romantic | The Figurative Impulse in Cont Af Am Art". new.diaspora-artists.net. 2014. Retrieved 2020-07-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ↑ Dailey, Meghan (January 2002). "Black Romantic at The Studio Museum in Harlem". www.artforum.com.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. 1 2 3 Trainor, James (9 September 2002). "Black Romantic". Frieze– via frieze.com.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. 1 2 Jerry, Saltz (May 7, 2002). "A World Apart | The Village Voice". www.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2020-07-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. 1 2 3 4 Kimmelman, Michael (April 26, 2002). "ART REVIEW; A Black World Of Ins and Outs" – via NYTimes.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.