WANAFOTO: Black Art Movement

Showing posts with label Black Art Movement. Show all posts

29/07/25

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 @ National Gallery of Art, Washington + The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles + Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

National Gallery of Art, Washington

September 21, 2025 – January 11, 2026

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

February 24 – May 24, 2026

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

July 25 – November 1, 2026

John W. Mosley

View of the crowd as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

addresses civil rights demonstrators

at 40th Street and Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, August 3, 1965

Gelatin silver print

image: 24.8 x 19.7 cm (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.)

sheet: 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)

mat: 12 1/2 x 14 in. / frame: 13 3/8 x 14 7/8 in.

John W. Mosley Photograph Collection,

Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection,

Temple University Libraries

Cecil J. Williams

During the summer of 1960, the elders of Orangeburg took to

the streets as part of ongoing demonstrations and boycotts

in support of civil rights. They are standing outside a segregated

supermarket where they were allowed to shop

but not sit down for lunch., 1960, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image/sheet: 37.3 x 55.9 cm (14 11/16 x 22 in.)

mat: 53.3 x 71.12 cm (21 x 28 in.)

frame: 55.6 x 73.3 cm (21 7/8 x 28 7/8 in.)

Harry Adams

Protest Car, Los Angeles, 1962, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image: 27.5 x 35.4 cm (11 x 13 15/16 in.)

sheet: 29.7 x 41.9 cm (11 11/16 x 16 1/2 in.)

mat: 16 x 20 in. / frame: 16 7/8 x 20 7/8 in.

Tom & Ethel Bradley Center,

California State University, Northridge, Harry Adams Archive

Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center

at California State University, Northridge

Kwame Brathwaite

Untitled (Charles Peaker Street Speaker, head of ANPM,

after Carlos Cooks passed away, on 125th Street), c. 1968,

printed 2016 / Inkjet print

image: 37.2 x 37.2 cm (14 5/8 x 14 5/8 in.)

mat: 15 x 15 in. / frame: 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

and Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2023.129.2

The National Gallery of Art presents Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985, an exhibition exploring the work of American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora photographers in developing and fostering a distinctly Black visual culture and identity. The first presentation to investigate photography's role in the Black Arts Movement, a creative initiative comparable to the Harlem Renaissance in its scope and impact, which evolved concurrently to the civil rights and international freedom movements, the exhibition reveals how artists developed strategies to engage communities and encourage self-representation in media, laying a foundation for socially engaged art practices that continue today.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement will be on view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art before traveling to The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

Doug Harris

Malcolm X speaks at a rally at Harlem's Williams Institutional

CME Church on December 20, 1964, with Fannie Lou Hamer,

and Professor Bill Strickland, 1964

Gelatin silver print

image: 20.32 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.)

mat: 14 x 17 in. / frame: 14 7/8 x 17 7/8 in.

Collection of Doug Harris

Jeffrey Henson Scales

In a Time of Panthers 1, Chicago Summer, 1967, printed 2022

Gelatin silver print

image/sheet: 45.7 x 45.7 cm (18 x 18 in.)

mat: 26 x 26 in. / frame: 26 7/8 x 26 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art,

Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2024.121.1

Photography and the Black Arts Movement brings together approximately 150 artworks spanning photography, video, collage, painting, installation, and other photo-based media, some of which have rarely or never been on view. Among the over 100 artists included in the exhibition are Billy Abernathy (Fundi), Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Frank Bowling, Kwame Brathwaite, Roy DeCarava, Louis Draper, David C. Driskell, Charles Gaines, James E. Hinton, Danny Lyon, Gordon Parks, Adrian Piper, Nellie Mae Rowe, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems.

This expansive selection of work showcases the broad cultural exchange between writers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and other visual artists of many backgrounds, who came together during the turbulent decades of the mid-20th century to grapple with social and political changes, the pursuit of civil rights, and the emergence of the Pan-African movement through art. The exhibition also includes art from Africa, the Caribbean, and Great Britain to contextualize the global engagement with the social, political, and cultural ideas that propelled the Black Arts Movement.

"Working on many fronts—literature, poetry, jazz and new music, painting, sculpture, performance, film, and photography—African American artists associated with the Black Arts Movement expressed and exchanged their ideas through publications, organizations, museums, galleries, community centers, theaters, murals, street art, and emerging academic programs. While focusing on African American photography in the United States, the exhibition also includes works by artists from many communities to consider the extensive interchange between North American artists and the African diaspora. The exhibition looks at the important connections between America's focus on civil rights and the emerging cultural movements that enriched the dialog," said Philip Brookman, cocurator of the exhibition and consulting curator of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art.

"Photography and photographic images were crucial in defining and giving expression to the Black Arts Movement and the civil rights movement. By merging the social concerns and aesthetics of the period, Black artists and photographers were defining a Black aesthetic while expanding conversations around community building and public history," said Deborah Willis, visiting cocurator, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and founding director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. "The artists and their subjects helped to preserve compelling visual responses to this turbulent time and their images reflect their pride and determination."

Isaac Sutton

Photograph of Etta Moten Barnett gazing at a painting, c. 1960

Gelatin silver print

overall: 26.5 x 26.5 cm (10 7/16 x 10 7/16 in.)

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum

of African American History and Culture,

courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum

of African American History and Culture

Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum

of African American History and Culture

Roy Lewis

Nina Simone on a Sunday morning visit to the Wall of Respect

mural at 43rd and Langley in Chicago's

Black Belt (Nina's Prayer), 1967, printed 2025

Inkjet print

sheet: 48.3 x 33.0 cm (19 x 13 in.) / mat: 18 x 24 in.

frame: 18 7/8 x 24 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art, Alfred H. Moses

and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2025.34.2

Bruce W. Talamon

David Hammons, Creating a Body Print,

Slauson Avenue Studio, Los Angeles, 1974, printed 2025

Gelatin silver print

image: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)

Bruce W. Talamon

Drawing in part from the National Gallery's collection—with many newly acquired works—and from lenders in the US, Great Britain, and Canada, the exhibition presents the cultural and political titans of the era spanning 1955–1985, including civil rights leaders, artists, and musicians, as well as everyday people, scenes of daily life, and fashion and commercial photography. Structured around nine thematic sections—including explorations of the self, community, fashion and beauty, the media, and ritual—the exhibition weaves a holistic vision of the period and its cultural impact.

Ralph Arnold

Above This Earth, Games, Games, 1968

Collage and acrylic on canvas

overall: 114.3 x 114.3 cm (45 x 45 in.)

framed: 114.3 x 114.3 x 7.62 cm (45 x 45 x 3 in.)

Collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography

at Columbia College, Chicago

Photo: P.D. Young / Spektra Imaging

David C. Driskell

Woman with Flowers, 1972

Oil and collage on canvas

overall: 95.3 x 97.8 cm (37 1/2 x 38 1/2 in.)

Art Bridges

Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

Betye Saar

Let Me Entertain You, 1972

Wooden window frame with cut and pasted printed

and painted paper, photocopy transparency,

and wood veneer with found object

overall: 96.52 x 154.94 x 10.16 cm, 4.21 lb. (38 x 61 x 4 in., 1.91 kg)

On loan from National Afro-American Museum

and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio

Courtesy of the Artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

Roland Charles

Untitled, 1978, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image: 26 x 38.1 cm (10 1/4 x 15 in.)

sheet: 29.7 x 41.9 cm (11 11/16 x 16 1/2 in.)

mat: 16 x 21 in. / frame: 16 7/8 x 21 7/8 in.

Tom & Ethel Bradley Center,

California State University, Northridge

Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center

at California State University, Northridge

Among the works in the first section of the exhibition is a collage by Romare Bearden, 110th Street Harlem Blues (1972). A dynamic mixture of painted paper and photographs, the work illustrates the ongoing vitality of Harlem's community, echoing the vibrancy and social content of the Harlem Renaissance, which Romare Bearden was exposed to in his early life. Moving into the section titled Picturing the Self / Picturing the Movement, self-portraits by Coreen Simpson, Alex Harsley, and Barkley L. Hendricks underscore a central theme of the exhibition: artists asserting their presence within the broader narrative of the movement and the era, along with the importance of self-representation in their art. A highlight of Representing the Community—a section filled with everyday scenes of people at work and at rest—is Ralph Arnold's Soul Box (1969), a mixed-media assemblage of found objects and collage, serving as a time capsule that captures stories of the Black Arts Movement.

Photographs were a crucial tool used to communicate the events of the civil rights movement to a national audience. Artists and news media understood the power of photographs to address inequality and advocate for civil and human rights, and some works in the exhibition are by photojournalists who captured the speeches, marches, and sit-ins that defined the era. A rarely seen 1965 photograph by Frank Dandridge captures Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. watching President Lyndon B. Johnson's televised address following the Selma, Alabama, marches—events that would ultimately lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Depicting Dr. King in a private, domestic moment, the image underscores not just the personal gravity of the moment but the television's growing role in shaping public understanding of the era's historic events. One of several works featured in the In the News section, it reflects how photographers responded to the shifting landscape of news media—from still photography to the rise of television.

The Black Arts Movement was instrumental in reshaping fashion, advertising, and media as tools of self-representation and cultural empowerment. A Kraft Foods advertisement (1977), photographed by Barbara DuMetz and featuring a young Black girl holding her doll, illustrates how the movement prompted advertisers to engage Black audiences more thoughtfully by hiring Black photographers and models in their campaigns. It is among the highlights of the Fashioning the Self section, along with an editorial photograph by Kwame Brathwaite, the photographer who helped coin the "Black is Beautiful" movement, and many depictions of women in beauty shops, showing the importance of these spaces to forming identity and community.

The exhibition's concluding section, Transformations in Art and Culture, reflects a shift in the Black Arts Movement's purpose—from its earlier focus on civil rights to a younger generation's engagement with more historical and conceptual ideas, while still drawing on the movement's visual language. Highlights include multimedia and time-based works by Ulysses Jenkins, Charles Gaines, and Lorna Simpson, which explore new and experimental ways to explore Black identity.

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 - Curators

The exhibition is cocurated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, and Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

Exhibition Publication

Book Cover Courtesy of the Yale University Press

Artwork by James E. Hinton

Mahalia Jackson Singing at Rally, Soldier Field, Chicago, 1963

Gelatin silver print

support: 47.63 x 36.83 cm (18 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.)

framed: 63.5 x 53.3 x 3.2 cm (25 x 21 x 1 1/4 in.)

High Museum of Art, Atlanta,

Purchase with funds from Jan P. and Warren J. Adelson

Published in association with Yale University Press, the fully illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition examines the vital role photography played in the evolution of the Black Arts Movement, which brought together writers, filmmakers, and artists as they explored ways of using art to advance civil rights and Black self-determination. Edited by Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis, with a preface by Angela Y. Davis and contributions by Makeda Best, Margo Natalie Crawford, Romi Crawford, Cheryl Finley, Sarah Lewis, and Audrey Sands, this book reveals how photographs operated across art, community building, journalism, and political messaging to contribute to the development of a distinctly Black art and culture. Essays by these distinguished scholars focus on topics such as women and the movement, community, activism, and Black photojournalism, and consider the complex connections between American artists and the African diaspora, and the dynamic interchange of Pan-African ideas that propelled the movement.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

West Building, 6th St and Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20565

www.nga.gov

05/04/25

Noah Purifoy @ Tilton Gallery, NYC - "Poetry as Politics: Seeing Beyond the Object - Noah Purifoy and Kindred Spirits" Exhibition

Poetry as Politics:

Seeing Beyond the Object

Noah Purifoy and Kindred Spirits

Tilton Gallery, New York

March 20 - May 24, 2025

Tilton Gallery presents an exhibition of works by NOAH PURIFOY (1917-2004) and a few of his contemporaries who were kindred spirits in their attitudes and philosophy towards art making. The exhibition centers on Purifoy’s signature assemblages and include works never before exhibited in New York. Works range from his important early 1965-66 Watts Remains from the rare group of works made for the exhibition 66 Signs of Neon in response to the 1965 Watts Rebellion to indoor and outdoor works from his period in Joshua Tree.

Additional artists include John Outterbridge, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, John Riddle, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Varnette Honeywood, Betye Saar and Donald Stinson. Many of these works also have rarely, if ever, been shown.

Noah Purifoy and the artists in his circle in Los Angeles from the mid-sixties on, many of whom worked primarily in assemblage, believed in the power of art, the poetry of art to effect change and to propel thought that went beyond the art object to move attitudes in real life and political thinking.

Noah Purifoy has stated: “When you do art, you see beyond the object. That effort of seeing beyond the object is also present in human relations.” He believed that art is a powerful tool for social change and that creativity and activism go hand in hand. John Outterbridge also spoke often about the wrongs of the world and the power of art to touch people and shape change. These artists turned philosophy into the poetry of art.

Works were rarely overtly political, but the artists wove their understanding of history and of their present world, their beliefs and their hopes into constructions and sculptures and collages made from discarded fragments. Materials include found pieces of metal, carved wood, fabric and repurposed objects and partial objects of every kind.

Never didactic, much was left up to the viewer, allowing the strength of the artworks to speak for itself. Direct activism was reserved for real life and channeled into impacting arts education and creating institutions and cultural centers for their community.

Noah Purifoy was Founder and Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1964 to 1975 where he created programs in the arts for the youth of the Watts community. He then sat on the California Arts Council for ten years from 1976 to 1987, promoting the arts and art education around the state.

John Outterbridge (1933-2020) was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Compton Communicative Arts Academy in nearby Compton from 1969 to 1975. It was not only a haven for the community, but a center for art, poetry, music, dance and theatre. He then succeeded Noah Purifoy as Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1975 to 1992. He was a panelist for the California Arts Council and for the National Endowment for the Arts and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Getty Institute for Arts Education, all in 1978 to 1980. Other artists participated in different degrees in the activism of the times.

This group of artists worked at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Arts Movement and impacted their contemporaries and generations to come. Not only did many of these artists teach formally, but they were generous in sharing their beliefs and many younger artists were impacted by their elders’ deep thinking. Their influence continues to the present; the Hammer Museum’s most recent Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, found inspiration in the work and life of Noah Purifoy.

TILTON GALLERY

8 East 76 Street New York, NY 10021

www.jacktiltongallery.com

11/02/24

John Outterbridge @ Tilton Gallery, NYC

John Outterbridge

Tilton Gallery, New York

February 7 - April 13, 2024

Tilton Gallery presents an exhibition of works by JOHN OUTTERBRIDGE (1933-2020). This is the artist’s fourth solo show at the gallery and the first comprehensive exhibition since his death in 2020. The exhibition spans his groundbreaking career and includes examples from the 1960s through the 2010s.

An artist, philosopher, thinker, community activist and mentor to other artists, John Outterbridge was born in 1933 in Greenville, North Carolina. He moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in 1963. In Los Angeles, he soon became a central and outspoken figure in the art community that included Noah Purifoy, David Hammons, Betye Saar, John Riddle and many others. He was co-founder and Artistic Director of the Communicative Arts Academy in Compton, CA from 1969-1975 and Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center in South Central Los Angeles from 1975-1992, succeeding his predecessor Noah Purifoy, and continuing to bring the arts and art education into the African American community.

Outterbridge’s work reflects both his experiences in the segregated South of the 1940s and 1950s and his involvement in the Los Angeles Black Arts Movement during the civil rights era. He grew up in a house and community where the re-purposing of discarded materials and objects was a given. His father moved “junk” for a living, storing the objects he collected in the family backyard till they found a new use. In Los Angeles, Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, adjacent to the Watts Towers Arts Center, represented a powerful example of how fragmented, found materials could be repurposed into an object of beauty.

John Outterbridge from early on assembled materials, found objects, and fragments of fabric into works of art that spoke to the human condition. Abstracted from their original uses, these materials became a language of both poetry and politics, commenting both on the history of African Americans in this country and the specific conditions of Black life. Outterbridge’s work evolved from abstraction to figuration and back to abstraction and in all cases found meaning both in the materials he used and how he used them. More often than not, his work spoke through symbolism and poetic metaphor, with titles adding historical references and word play endowing the work with twists of humor.

Throughout his career, John Outterbridge worked in overlapping and at times intertwining series, many of which are represented in this exhibition.

Beginning in the 1960s, John Outterbridge created a large group of works he named the Containment Series. These works were made of hammered and assembled sheets of metal, often combined with wood and leather. He gathered fragments of metal throughout LA, often walking by the railroad tracks with other artist friends, such as John Riddle. He worked the metal by hand till Mark di Suvero, who he met when he worked at the Pasadena Art Museum as preparator and educator, lent him his tools for working with metal when he left the city. Although visually abstract, this body of work speaks to the constraints of slavery and the continuing contemporary containment of Black Americans from freedom.

This was closely followed by the Rag Man Series, works made of sewn and painted canvas, stuffed with fabric to create literal and abstract three-dimensional stuffed and painted canvas “bags”, some with disjunctive American flag images painted on the surfaces. Unfortunately, many of these works have disappeared, but three major works remain: Case in Point, Rag Man Series, 1970 in the collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Plus-Tax: Shopping Bag Society, Rag Man Series, 1971 in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and Jive Ass Bird, Rag Man Series, 1971 in private hands.

Outterbridge’s Ethnic Heritage Series, roughly 1971-1982, is more directly figurative and addresses the question of ancestry. Complex, often abstracted figures reference African sculpture and ethnic effigies. These works extend the early “Rag Man” stuffed canvas shapes, turning them into representations of human figures such as Broken Dance in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Many of the figures from the Ethnic Heritage Series are personalized. Outterbridge carved their heads, placing them atop figures and wood structures that are clothed in colorful scraps of fabric. Urban Man, 1981 shows the head of a man peering out of a large almost space-age entrapment.

Other of these figures are individualized by braided hair and bear beaded necklaces, anklets and other charms, such as in Untitled, 1975 in the present exhibition, a sculpture of a female figure with ornate garments and beads carrying a bucket filled with black eyed peas that especially speaks to her African ethnic heritage. Tribal Figure, Ethnic Heritage Series, c. 1978-82 is a male figure that carries his assembled and ethnic garb and painted features regally.

A particularly strong and mysterious example of these figures, also in our exhibition, is the early Captive Image, Ethnic Heritage Series, c. 1971-72, one of a larger sub-series with this title. This figure exhibits two masklike heads attached to an abstracted torso, symbolic of conflicting public and interior personalities, a forced duality that was part of African American life in days of captivity and still in the present day. Another work from this subseries, also called Captive Image, Ethnic Heritage Series, 1978-82 displays the torso and legs of a figure, thrown across a wooden cart, directly referring to the history of captivity.

Another cart in this show, entitled Missing Mule, Ethnic Heritage Series, 1993 speaks to another theme Outterbridge often returns to in both content and title of numerous works. This cart, missing a mule to draw it, calls attention to the artist’s continuous search for the freedom symbolized by the mule and forty acres promised to slaves upon emancipation and not received; John Outterbridge reasserts his claim for all African Americans.

The mule, usually missing, literally appears, along with more scraps of torn or discarded materials, in an elaborate, otherwise abstract, Untitled wall sculpture of 2006. The long twig in this work, wrapped in these rags, including bits of the American flag, represents family lineage to the artist, referring again to history, both personal and that of the human race.

Outterbridge’s incorporation of the American flag in his work, almost always partial, but recognizable, is another recurring theme throughout his work, from early examples to his very late work.

In the 1990s, John Outterbridge returned to working with metal and wood, all the while continuing his use of discarded bits of fabric, including bits of torn American flags, important in his works from all periods. Window with Footnote, 1991, a metal wall construction with a recessed “window” in which sits a wooden leg, wrapped in fabric strips, as if to heal an injury. From 2009 to 2012, John Outterbridge made a large series of smaller wood and metal sculptures that refer back to instruments of containment as well as healing. I Mus Speak, 2012 in this show contains a small, but complete American flag amidst its otherwise abstract assembled parts.

Rag and Bag Idiom IV, 2012 belongs to one of the last series of works Outterbridge made. Harking back to the early Rag Man Series, they are made of canvas, sewn to construct multiple small irregular three-dimensional shapes, stuffed to maintain these shapes. Smaller than most of the earlier Rag Man works, these are painted in bright multi-colored hues. Remnants of other colored fabric or rags are attached and hang loosely. Dynamic and forceful for their size, these works convey Outterbridge’s inner optimism and add a fresh, new dimension to contemporary abstract art.

Finally, Tilton Gallery presents a re-installation of Rag Factory III. Outterbridge’s series of Rag Factory installations was first conceived for an exhibition in 2011 that was part of the Pacific Standard Time Los Angeles initiative, then a second configuration was shown at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and subsequently a third at our gallery and then at the David Zwirner Gallery in London. Not seen in the U.S. since 2012, this exuberant and playful installation takes the artist’s lifelong interest in the use and re-use of colorful fabric that he always called “rags” to create something akin to a May pole that takes up an entire room.

As expressed in a statement John Outterbridge wrote for the initial installation at LAX, “I see a rag as an object of many vibrations…you can’t escape the importance of the rag, no matter where you go or what you do…because of the colors, because of their previous lives and their histories, rags are pretty much a statement about our social position in the world and the importance of the cast-off. I like using metal a great deal too, or really any material that has a voice…I feel good about the use of rag as an expressive element, but I don’t see it as different than other aspects of my life…Rags have always been in and around the environments I’ve been a part of. With me, art has the audacity to be anything it needs to be at a given time. Anything. Because the creative process is the beginning of all things, no matter what we’re doing or where we are going.”

John Outterbridge has exhibited widely since the late sixties. His work was included in the Pompidou Center’s ground-breaking 2006 exhibition, Los Angeles, 1955-1985: The Birth of an Artistic Capital and in New York at Tilton Gallery in L.A. Object & David Hammons Body Prints, also 2006. His work was represented in six of the Pacific Standard Time 2011-12 exhibitions in Los Angeles, including in Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980. More recently, it was included in the traveling exhibition organized by the Tate Modern, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power; in Outliers and American Vanguard Art that originated at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and in West by Midwest: Geographies of Art and Kinship at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among a multitude of other important museum group shows. Outterbridge also participated in the 2015 Venice Biennale. He had a solo exhibition, John Outterbridge: Rag Man, at Art + Practice, organized by the Hammer Museum in 2015 that traveled to the Aspen Art Museum. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many others.

TILTON GALLERY

8 East 76 Street New York, NY 10021

www.jacktiltongallery.com

17/11/23

Black Artists of Oregon @ Portland Art Museum

Black Artists of Oregon

Portland Art Museum

September 9, 2023 – March 17, 2024

Charles Tatum (American, 1937–2008)

Cosmic Woman, 1973

Wood panel sculpture, 25” x 14” x 14.5"

Collection of Patricia Soltys

Photographer: David Czuba

Natalie Ball

Mapping Coyote Black, textile, 2015, 10" x 10"

Courtesy of the Artist

Photographer, E.G. Schempf

Jeremy Okai Davis (American, born 1979)

Hue (Streat), 2021

Acrylic and One Shot on canvas, 50" x 50"

Photographer: Mario Gallucci

Penda Diakite (Malian-American, born 1992)

Mandiani, 2021

Acrylic, rubber, collage on wood panel 60" x 48"

Photographer: Penda Diakite

The exhibition Black Artists of Oregon, presented by the Portland Art Museum, highlights and celebrates the work of Black artists in Oregon over more than a century, exploring this history both through the lens of Black artists whose works are represented in the Museum’s collection as well as the works of influential artists who, historically, have not been exhibited or held in museum collections.

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen the awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it is the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition includes Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Carrie Mae Weems

Untitled (Woman with daughter), from the series Kitchen Table, 1990

Gelatin silver prints

Gift of the Contemporary Art Council

Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York., 94.19a-c

Isaka Shamsud-Din

Rock of Ages, 1976

Oil, gold leaf, and mirror on canvas

Gift of Roxie Schell and Damon Tempey

Thelma Johnson Streat

Monstro the Whale, 1940

Wool

Courtesy of the Fine Arts Collection,

U.S. General Services Administration.

New Deal Art Project, public domain, L42.32.1

Shedrich Williames (American, born 1934)

Untitled, 1972

Gelatin silver print, image: 13 3/16 in x 10 3/8 in

sheet: 14 in x 10 15/16 in

Gift of Al Monner, 94.36.1

Iván Carmona Rosario (Puerto Rican, born 1973)

Mariconeo, 2022

Mineral silicate paint on ceramic, 82" x 20" x 16"

Courtesy of the artist

Photographer: Mario Gallucci

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors are experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition is also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon guest curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition continues Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Intisar Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Arvie Smith

Dem Golden Slippers, 2007

Oil on linen, Gift of Donna Hammar

Harrison Branch (American, born 1947)

Untitled, Corvallis, Oregon, 1975

Gelatin silver print, image: 7 5/16 in x 9 1/2 in

sheet: 13 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in

Gift of the Photography Council, 2002.58.4

Adriene Cruz (American, born 1953)

Egungun, 2013

Mixed media embellished fabric 32 x 36 inches

Collection of Adriene Cruz

Melanie Stevens (American, born 1979)

Reflection II: Charles In Form, July 2023

Linocut print 22 x 30 inches

Courtesy of the artist

Bill Rutherford (American, born 1937)

Wabi Sabi: Imperfect Beauty

Eucalyptus on marble base, 12 x 7 x 7 inches

Courtesy of the Artist

Artists featured in Black Artists of Oregon

manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991)

damali ayo (b. 1972)

Natalie Ball (b. 1980)

J.S. Bell (1882-1925)

Harrison Branch (b. 1947)

Nikesha Breeze (b. 1979)

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

Richard Brown (b. 1939)

Iván Carmona Rosario (b. 1973)

David Ornette Cherry (1958-2022)

Ralph Chessé (1900-1991)

Robert Colescott (1925-2009)

Licity Collins (b. 1972)

Adriene Cruz (b. 1953)

Cleo Davis (b. 1974)

Jeremy Okai Davis (b. 1979)

Baba Wagué Diakité (b. 1961)

Penda Diakité (b. 1992)

Modou Dieng Yacine (b. 1970)

Sadé DuBoise (b. 1993)

Ray Eaglin (1941-2004)

Mo Fee (1969 – 2020)

Bobby Fouther (b. 1950)

Henry Frison (1940-2020)

Julian V.L. Gaines (b. 1991)

Al Goldsby (1930-2002)

Sherrian Haggar (1946-2019)

Elijah Hasan (b. 1966)

Patricia Herron (b. 1951)

Jason Hill (b. 1976)

Janice Ingersoll (b. 1949)

Tristan Irving (b. 1990)

Lisa Jarrett (b. 1977)

Jaleesa Johnston (b. 1989)

Nick Jones (b. 1945)

Arnold Kemp (b. 1968)

Rupert Kinnard (b. 1954)

ebin lee (b. 1989)

Charlotte Lewis (1934-1999)

Geeta Lewis (b. 1956)

Mark Little (b. 1948)

Willie Little (b. 1961)

Latoya Lovely (b. 1982)

Ivan McClellan (b. 1982)

Chris McMurry (b. 1970)

Christine Miller (b. 1990)

sidony o’neal (b. 1988)

Katherine Pennington (b. 1953)

Otis Quaicoe (b. 1988)

J.L. Quenton (b. 1953)

Philemon Reid (1945-2008)

Bill Rutherford (b. 1937)

Isaka Shamsud-Din (b. 1940)

Arvie Smith (b. 1938)

Melanie Stevens (b. 1979)

Thelma Johnson Streat (1911-1959)

Kayin Talton-Davis (b. 1980)

Charles Tatum (1937-2008)

Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)

Sharita Towne (b. 1984)

Thomas Unthank (b. 1936)

Maya Vivas (b. 1990)

Samantha Wall (b. 1977)

Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)

Shedrich Williames (b. 1934)

Tammy Jo Wilson (b. 1974)

Mosley Wotta (b. 1983)

Eatcho (b. 1980)

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

1219 SW Park Avenue Portland, OR 97205

www.portlandartmuseum.org

31/03/23

Claudette Johnson @ Ortuzar Projects, NYC - Drawn Out

Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out

Ortuzar Projects, New York

March 9 – April 22, 2023

Ortuzar Projects presents Claudette Johnson: Drawn Out, an exhibition of new works by London-based artist Claudette Johnson (b.1959, Manchester, UK). The exhibition is the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States.

Since beginning her career in the early 1980s, Claudette Johnson has challenged traditional representations of gender and Blackness in Western art history. Johnson’s studies of women, and, more recently, men, insist on demanding the acknowledgement of the Black body through often life-sized portraits—a presence that is, in the artist’s words, historically “distorted, hidden, and denied.” Often free-floating within fields of flat color or the white of the page, Johnson imbues her figures with power and subjectivity as she invites them to “take up space in a way that is reflective of who they are.”

In this new body of work, Claudette Johnson continues her exploration of portraiture. Many of her works are drawn from life, including friends and fellow artists, as well as self portraits of Johnson herself. Photographs and found media inform other works. Through a balance of carefully rendered faces, hands, and clothing, contrasted with sketchier and more gestural mark-making, Johnson’s compositions grasp disposition, personality, and mood. Many of Johnson’s subjects look directly at the viewer, recreating an intimate encounter with the artist. In a departure from her usual solo portraits, the exhibition includes three double portraits of friends or historical figures. Through the depiction of two friends posing together, Johnson introduces an additional layer of intimacy within the work: the intimacy and vulnerability of sitting for an artist, as well as the intimacy shared between the subjects. The negative space in-between bodies also introduces a new formal dynamic to the work. Johnson intends for her viewers to encounter the sitters on their own terms as strangers, rarely naming them or revealing biographical information. Her interest, to quote the artist, is stimulated by “what the image shows of their relationship rather than their relative celebrity.”

While traditionally working with pastel, watercolor and gouache, Claudette Johnson’s recent works have increasingly explored oil, oil stick, and egg tempera. This expanded repertoire has allowed Claudette Johnson to move fluidly between the acts of drawing and painting, as well as to work her compositions over a longer duration. These new mediums introduce a vibrancy and material density that sits in stark contrast to the fields of unpainted white ground. In the tension of positive and negative space is a sense of incompleteness that recreates the feeling of the live session. In an exploration of vulnerability, comfort, candidness, and ease, Johnson foregrounds the complexity of humanity in any shared encounter, granting her subjects their right to selfhood in the experience of being seen.

Claudette Johnson was an early member of the BLK Art Group, an association of young Black artists who examined, through their work, issues of race, gender, and the politics of representation. In an effort to bring young Black artists from Wolverhampton University together, the BLK Art Group organized the historic First National Black Art Convention in 1982, attended by several influential contemporary Black artists like Frank Bowling, Lubiana Himid, Rasheed Araeen, and Sonia Boyce. The lecture that Johnson delivered at the convention on the depiction of Black female figures within Western art history—notably the only presentation by a female artist—erupted into a heated dialogue. The discussion catalyzed the formation of a network of women artists at the forefront of the British Black Art Movement.

CLAUDETTE JOHNSON’s recent solo exhibitions include Still Here, Hollybush Gardens, London (2021); Claudette Johnson: I Came to Dance, Modern Art Oxford (2019); and Claudette Johnson, Hollybush Gardens, London (2017). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Courtauld Connections: Works from our National Partners, The Courtauld Gallery, London (2022); Drawing Closer, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island (2022); Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s — Now, Tate Britain, London (2021); From Hockney to Himid: Sixty Years of British Printmaking, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England (2021); Close: Drawn Portraits, The Drawing Room, London (2018); The Place Is Here, South London Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary, London (2017); No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990, Guildhall Art Gallery, London (2015-16); and Thin Black Line(s), Tate Britain, London (2012). Her work is held in numerous public collections, including Tate, London; British Council Collection; Manchester Art Gallery; and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

ORTUZAR PROJECTS

9 White Street, New York, NY 10013

www.ortuzarprojects.com

_____________

20/10/22

Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces @ MoMA, NYC

Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces

MoMA, New York

October 9, 2022 - February 18, 2023

Palmer Hayden (American, 1890–1973)

The Subway, c. 1941

Oil on canvas. 30 × 26 in. (76.2 × 66 cm)

The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection

George Mingo (American, 1950–1996)

Zebra Couple, c. 1983

Oil on canvas. 48 × 64 in. (121.9 × 162.6 cm)

Courtesy the artist’s estate and Hudgins Family Collection, New York

The Museum of Modern Art presents Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces.. Just Above Midtown (JAM) was an art gallery and Black space that welcomed artists and visitors of many generations and races in New York City from 1974 until 1986. A hub for Conceptual art, abstraction, performance, and video, JAM expanded the idea of Black art and encouraged both critiques of and thinking beyond the commercialization of art. Linda Goode Bryant started JAM in 1974, when she was a 25-year-old arts educator and mother of two, to, in her words, “present African-American artists on the same platform with other established artists.” A self-declared laboratory for experimentation, JAM encouraged artists and visitors to challenge hierarchies within the art world and definitions of what art should be.

MoMA’s exhibition follows a loose chronological structure that references the hundreds of solo and group exhibitions, performances, and installations at JAM. The display includes a wide range of art made by key figures like David Hammons, Janet Henry, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, and Randy Williams, among many others. The exhibition presents archival photos, videos, and other contextual historical material to give visitors a sense of the collaborative ethos that defined the art gallery and the alternative model of art it championed to respond to a society in need. In addition to the exhibition, the project includes performances, film screenings, public programs, and an exhibition catalogue, co-published with The Studio Museum in Harlem. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces is organized by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Curator, with Lilia Rocio Taboada, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, in collaboration with Linda Goode Bryant and Marielle Ingram. With thanks to Amber Edmond, Brandon Eng, Curatorial Fellows, and Argyro Nicolau, former 12-month Intern, Media and Performance.

Thomas (T.) Jean Lax explains, “This exhibition recognizes Just Above Midtown as the efflorescent space that modeled how art and the relationships art fosters could respond to a society in crisis. This ambitious project not only historicizes JAM’s importance, but also underscores its relevance in the present.

Randy Williams

L’art abstrait, 1977

Wood, canvas, book, book cover, plexiglass, wire, metal bolts, and lottery ticket,

24 × 41 × 5 in. (61 × 104.1 × 12.7 cm).

Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mark Liflander

David Hammons

Untitled, 1976

Grease and pigment on paper

29 × 23 in. (74 × 58.4 cm)

Suzanne Jackson

Talk, 1976

Colored pencil on paper 41 1/4 x 29 1/2 inches (104.8 x 74.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New York. Photo: Timothy Doyon

MoMA’s exhibition opens with archival materials that introduce Goode Bryant and JAM to visitors, alongside select artworks that capture the art gallery’s belief in using unconventional and found materials and show the range of styles seen in over 150 JAM exhibitions between 1974 and 1986. Works like Sydney Blum’s SWARMS four (1980), Randy Williams’s L’art abstrait (1977), Valerie Maynard’s The Artist Trying to Get It All Down (c. 1970), and Wendy Ward Ehlers’s Untitled (Three Inches Equals One Week of Laundry) (c. 1974) are presented in tandem with archival documents and photographs from JAM’s opening alongside video footage of Goode Bryant. The interplay of artwork and archive, which visitors experience throughout the exhibition, invites audiences to explore how JAM brought together a community that shared a powerful belief in the ability of artists to use what they had to create what they needed, and to support each other.

The next section of the MoMA exhibition offers a deeper focus on the more than 50 exhibitions that JAM organized from 1974 through 1979. These exhibitions were shown at the gallery's first location at 50 West 57th Street, which was situated in the commercial art gallery district of New York City that was dominated by white gallerists, artists, and buyers. Works on view connect to emblematic group shows at JAM, including its inaugural exhibition, Synthesis: A combination of parts or elements into a complex whole, which presented for the first time Vivian Browne’s painting Untitled (Man in Mountain) (1974) and Norman Lewis’s No. 2 (1973). Synthesis offered a vision of Black art that included and celebrated both figuration and abstraction—a radical departure, at the time, from the broader art world’s status quo of separating those two practices. Visitors also see the pairing of David Hammons’s Untitled (1976) and Jasper Johns’s Hatteras (1963), referencing the show Statements Known and Statements New. This landmark 1976 JAM exhibition juxtaposed works on paper by five widely recognized white artists with works by less established artists of color, to emphasize the importance of creating a desegregated Black space in which non-Black artists show their work, too. The publication Contextures, authored by Goode Bryant and art historian Marcy S. Phillips in 1978, is on view, as well. In Contextures, Goode Bryant and Phillips combined the words “context” and “texture” to create a new concept that referenced artists who questioned the inherent properties of art and used found and remaining materials to create new works of art, while maintaining the integrity of their original form. A loop of archival footage, produced by Randy Williams and Goode Bryant, provides audiences with additional insight into the inventive, experimental process and life at the art gallery.

The corridor gallery provides a window into the behind-the-scenes of JAM's operations, showcasing wallpaper made up of facsimiles of bills, past due statements, and eviction notices. Beginning in 1978 and flourishing at Franklin Street during the early 1980s, JAM ran a professional-development program titled the Business of Being an Artist (BBA) in which JAM staff reviewed individual artists’ work and ran a 33-week course. In 1982, Goode Bryant and video artist Dieter Froese produced and directed a signature film by the same name, seeking support for artist communities beyond New York City and revenue for the gallery through distribution. They interviewed artists, gallerists, curators, and cultural workers about their insider knowledge of the burgeoning contemporary art market, shown as clips in the final work, outtakes of which are on view in this gallery.

As visitors continue through the exhibition, the presentation evolves to focus on JAM’s move downtown, in 1980, to 178–180 Franklin Street. At this location, JAM offered exhibition opportunities to over 500 additional artists and expanded its production of performance, video, and programming—ranging from films to workshops to open rehearsals. JAM continued to organize group shows, often in collaboration with other downtown alternative arts organizations. One of these group shows, Dialogues (1980), was organized with 15 other downtown organizations, including the American Indian Community House and Interart Gallery. Dialogues showcased Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds’s Understanding the Uniqueness of an Ethnic Identity (c. 1980) and Rosemary Mayer’s October Ghost (1980/2022), both of which are on view at MoMA. Performance collaborations brought together artists working across artistic disciplines, including Air Propo (1981), performed by Senga Nengudi, Cheryl Banks-Smith, and Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris. A video of the original performance is on view in the MoMA exhibition.

The last section of the exhibition focuses on the period between 1984 and 1986, when JAM moved to its final physical location in SoHo at 503 Broadway. Here, JAM created a laboratory that specialized in performance, new media, and process-oriented artist support, while subleasing rehearsal and office space to other artist organizations. Visitors see original footage and performance outtakes shot by and capturing artists working at JAM, paired with Lorna Simpson’s Screen 4 (1986) and Sandra Payne’s series Most Definitely Not Profile Ladies (1986). The MoMA exhibition ends with gestures toward the present that speak to JAM’s impact and ongoing legacy, including a diptych by Lorraine O’Grady, Announcement Card 1 (Banana-Palm with Lance) (2020) and Announcement Card 2 (Spike with Sword Fighting) (2020), which serves as a mirror to her first performance at JAM, in 1980, as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, as well as two new videos by Goode-Bryant

The exhibition continues on the Museum’s fourth floor with Just Above Midtown: To The Present in Gallery 414. This gallery, located within the Museum’s dynamic collection presentation, features Flying Carpet (1990) by David Hammons and a specially commissioned two-channel video, a Negro, a Limo-o (2022) by artists Garrett Bradley and Arthur Jafa and produced by Goode-Bryant that was created in response to her question: how can collaborating with others push artistic limits?

LINDA GOODE BRYANT BIOGRAPHY:

Goode Bryant’s decades of art-based activism began with her founding of Just Above Midtown gallery (JAM), a self-described laboratory that foregrounded the work of African American artists, including David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, and many others. JAM’s explicit purpose was to be “in, but not of, the art world,” offering early—and often unique—opportunities to artists to experiment and create freely, away from art market pressures. After closing JAM, Goode Bryant dedicated herself to filmmaking, directing the Peabody Award–winning documentary Flag Wars (2003), an intimate portrait of a community in flux that explores the tensions between preservation and gentrification. Over her nearly 50-year career, Goode Bryant has and continues to advocate for a connection to “our innate ability to use what we have to create what we need.” Most recently, Goode Bryant founded Project EATS, a “living installation” of neighborhood-based, small-plot, high-yield farms that use art, urban agriculture, partnerships, and social enterprise to sustainably grow and equitably distribute fresh, local, organically grown food in communities across New York City.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York,

and The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2022

Exhibition Catalogue

A richly illustrated catalogue, published in conjunction with Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, showcases rarely seen material from JAM’s history—artworks, ephemera, and photographs—that collectively document the gallery’s communal and programmatic activities. Edited by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and Lilia Rocio Taboada, it includes essays by Lax and Kellie Jones that contextualize JAM and consider its legacy; a conversation between Goode Bryant and Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem; a complete exhibition chronology written by MoMA and Studio Museum staff with nearly 50 annotated entries; and excerpts from oral histories, conducted especially for this project, with JAM staff and artists. 184 pages, 219 b&w and color illustrations. Paperback with jacket, $45. ISBN: 978-1-63345-137-7. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson in the rest of the world.

Exhibited artists:

Bimal Banerjee (American, born India 1939)

Cheryl Banks-Smith (American, born 1953)

Dawoud Bey (American, born 1953)

Cathey Billian (American, born 1946)

Camille Billops (American, 1933–2019)

Willie Birch (American, born 1942)

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations, born 1954)

Sydney Blum (American and Canadian, born 1950)

Garrett Bradley (American, born 1986)

Rolando Briseño (American, born 1952)

Vivian Browne (American, 1929–1993)

Linda Goode Bryant (American, born 1949)

Martin Cohen (American, 1945–2021)

Barbara Chase-Riboud (American, born 1934)

Albert Chong (Jamaican, born 1958)

Houston Conwill (American, 1947-2016)

Charles Daniel Dawson (American, born 1943)

Marcy R. Edelstein (American, born 1950)

Wendy Ward Ehlers (American, born 1929)

Peter Feldstein (American, 1942–2017)

Tom Finkelpearl (American, born 1956)

Susan Fitzsimmons (American, born 1949)

David Hammons (American, born 1943)

Maren Hassinger (American, born 1947)

Palmer Hayden (American, 1890–1973)

Cynthia Hawkins (American, born 1950)

Janet Olivia Henry (American, born 1947)

Suzanne Jackson (American, born 1944)

Walter C. Jackson (American, born 1940)

Arthur Jafa (American, born 1960)

G. Peter Jemison (Enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, Heron Clan, born 1945)

Noah Jemison (American, born 1943)

Jasper Johns (American, born 1930)

Nina Kuo (American, born 1952)

Norman Lewis (American, 1909–1979)

Rosemary Mayer (American, 1943–2014)

Valerie Maynard (American, 1937–2022)

George Mingo (American, 1950–1966)

Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris (American, 1947–2013)

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (American, born 1951)

Senga Nengudi (American, born 1943)

Lorraine O’Grady (American, born 1934)

Sandra Payne (American, 1951–2021)

Howardena Pindell (American, born 1943)

Liliana Porter (Argentine, born 1941)

Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008)

Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds (Jamaican, 1911–1989)

Jorge Luis Rodriguez (American, born 1944)

Betye Saar (American, born 1926)

Raymond Saunders (American, born 1934)

Coreen Simpson (American, born 1942)

Lorna Simpson (American, born 1960)

Russ Thompson (Jamaican, born 1922)

Randy Williams (American, born 1947)

MoMA - MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019

moma.org

25/06/19

Get Up, Stand Up Now. Generations of Black Creative Pioneers @ Somerset House, London

GET UP, STAND UP NOW
Generations of Black Creative Pioneers
Somerset House, London
Through 15 September 2019

DEBORAH ROBERTS

Untitled, 2018

Featuring: Anthea Hamilton, Armet Francis, Black Audio Film Collective, Bradford Young, Carrie Mae Weems, Chris Ofili, David Hammons, Dennis Bovell, Derrick Adams, Ebony G Patterson, Gaika, Glenn Ligon, Grace Wales Bonner, Hank Willis Thomas, Helen Cammock, Horace Ové, Jenn Nkiru, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lubaina Himid, Marlon James, Martine Rose, Mowalola Ogunlesi, Nari Ward, Peter Doig, Ronan McKenzie, Sanford Biggers, Sonia Boyce, Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, Young Fathers, with a specially commissioned soundtrack by Jillionaire of Major Lazer. Curated by Zak Ové.

This summer, Somerset House celebrates the impact of 50 years of Black creativity in Britain and beyond, with a landmark exhibition showcasing art, photography, music, literature, design and fashion. It is the first time that this distinguished group of approximately 100 artists are represented together, with their work articulating and addressing the Black experience and sensibility, from the post-war era to present day.

Historic artworks and new commissions sit alongside items from personal archives, much of which has never been seen by the public before. Through these original photographs, letters, films and audio clips, the exhibition connects the creative, the personal and the political, reflecting how artists have responded to the issues of our times.

RICHARD RAWLINS

The True Crown, from the series I AM SUGAR, 2018

Curated by acclaimed artist Zak Ové, Get Up, Stand Up Now begins with the work of his father, Trinidadian Horace Ové, credited as the creator of the first feature film by a Black British director, and his pioneering peers who were part of what is now known as the Windrush generation, such as Armet Francis, Charlie Phillips and Vanley Burke. During the 1960s and 1970s, they developed a new creative model for modern multicultural Britain, paving the way for the next generation of artists, such as John Akomfrah, Sonia Boyce and Steve McQueen, who all contribute to the exhibition. Get Up, Stand Up Now extends to works from today’s brilliant young Britain-based talent too, including photographer Ronan McKenzie, fashion designer Mowalola Ogunlesi and musician Gaika, who interrogate identity in innovative ways. Carrying forward the line of enquiry and internationalist ambition established by Horace Ové and his dynamic creative circle, a number of renowned contemporary diasporic artists also participate in the exhibition, including David Hammons, Carrie Mae Weems and Sanford Biggers.

Curator Zak Ové has invited each artist to exhibit on account of their significant contribution to shaping our cultural landscape. All the artists’ trailblazing work transforms their local experiences into a global, universal language, which challenges the systems of power and representation and continues to change the consciousness of society today.

CHE LOVELACE

Figure at Treetop, 2016

Courtesy and Copyright of the artist

and Galerie Eric Hussenot, Paris

Photo Brendan Dalzin

HIGHLIGHT EXHIBITION WORKS

INFLUENTIAL FIGURES

Many works reflect on the act of remembrance and recognition of places and people, acknowledging the significant contribution of Black culture and individuals, both those renowned today and those overlooked or forgotten by history.

One of the show’s opening works includes award-winning film maker Steve McQueen’s poignant Remember Me, his first work conceived in neon and consisting of three handwritten versions of its title. Originally made in the wake of McQueen’s celebrated film installation Ashes, about the violent and premature death of a young Grenadian man, it was personally chosen by McQueen for Get Up, Stand Up Now. McQueen’s meditation on memory is particularly pertinent in relation to the impact of Horace Ové, whose work is recalled throughout the show by subsequent generations of artists.

Michael X, who once claimed to be “the most famous Black man in Britain” as the self-styled leader of the British Black Power movement, is shown alongside supporters John Lennon and Yoko Ono in an unseen shot by Horace Ové, recently discovered in his personal archives. The activist lived in the flat above the Ové family and many of the British Black Power meetings took place in the Ové’s garden. His life is also mined in John Akomfrah and Black Audio Film Collective’s most controversial film Who Needs a Heart. Michael X’s US counterpart Leroy Eldridge Cleaver is captured with his wife Kathleen by Gordon Parks, one of the most important figures of twentieth century film and photography and a significant influence on many Black British creatives. Parks is the first African-American to produce and direct major motion pictures, including the original Shaft film, and became the first Black photographer for Life and Vogue magazines. Photo conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas draws a striking parallel between a labourer and an American football player, depicting the athlete in a kneeling stance in his 2011 work Cain't See in the Mornin' til Cain't See at Night.

The 2017 Turner Prize winning artist Lubaina Himid’s painting Venetian Maps: Ceramicists represents the contribution made by Africans to the cultural history of Venice. The Oscar-nominated cinematographer of Arrival and Selma, Bradford Young, is reworking his video installation REkOGNIZE, especially for the exhibition. It documents the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where millions of African-Americans migrated in the early 20th century, becoming a centre of artistic creation. Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson’s intricate tapestries compile images of murder victims in the crime scene, uploaded onto social media from around the world. The works are highly embellished with beads, glitter, flowers, fringing and appliqué fabrics, seducing viewers into witnessing the underreported brutality experienced by those of lower socioeconomic standings, often from Black communities.

Photographer Ajamu showcases his sublime series of portraits of young Black British queer artists, activists and cultural commentators. Birmingham-based artist Barbara Walker’s detailed drawings recall Britain’s Black servicemen. Created using archive material from the First and Second World Wars, the pictures are a powerful reminder of how they are often missing in representations of the British Armed Forces.

MUSIC

Music plays an important part in Get Up, Stand Up Now, exploring the immense influence of Black artists on many genres of music. Somerset House has commissioned two new audio works, especially for the exhibition. The stratospheric DJ Jillionaire, one third of supergroup Major Lazer, has mixed an exclusive soundtrack to be streamed inside the gallery. He has created a musical bridge between the generations in Get Up, Stand Up Now, bringing his take on the beats of calypso and soca, straight from the streets where he grew up in Trinidad, to the sounds of Afrofuturism. Artist Libita Clayton will orchestrate live percussive performances inside the space on select dates, exploring ideas of resistance through rhythm and language.

A host of musicians have also selected objects to go on display, which speak of their musical inspirations and creative processes. Each object is additionally accompanied by a playlist curated by the musician. Contributors include reggae maestro Dennis Bovell, a musician and producer on many classic hits, having collaborated with the likes of Marvin Gaye, The Slits, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Horace Ové on the seminal television series Empire Road. Sons of Kemet’s frontman Shabaka Hutchings – who is performing at this year’s Somerset House Summer Series with American Express – has given the clarinet gifted to him by legendary jazz musician Courtney Pine.

Somerset House Studios resident Jenn Nkiru – one of Jay Z’s and Beyoncé’s collaborators on APESH*T – showcases her trailblazing films, made with the likes of Neneh Cherry and Kamasi Washington. Her fellow Studios artist Gaika presents his new immersive installation Heaters 4 the 2 Seaters, inviting visitors into his signature subversive and satirical take on the current political and geo-economic climate.

Clips from Horace Ové’s seminal 1970s documentaries Reggae and King Carnival will also be shown. One of the first documentaries made on Reggae music, Reggae features exclusive footage from a festival held at Wembley Stadium in 1970 and King Carnival charts the history of the Trinidad & Tobago Carnival, commissioned for the BBC series The World About Us. Carnival is referenced in numerous exhibition works, recognising the rich symbolic and historical significance of colonial independence through this celebration. Rarely seen archive materials documenting Notting Hill Carnival, Europe’s biggest street festival, will also be on display.

IDENTITY

A series of sculptural works represent self-identity and transformation. Fashion’s favourite new designer Mowalola Ogunlesi will create a new life-size mannequin of an Afrofuturistic cowboy, complete with guitar to conjure a future-facing soundtrack, drawing inspiration from the street style and sounds of Lagos.

Berlin-based artist Satch Hoyt presents Ice Pick, an Afro hair pick cradled in an upholstered musical instrument case, usually carried by classical orchestras. It is accompanied by a rhythmic soundscape of two African-American women performing the daily ritual of combing their hair with wooden, plastic and metal picks. Faisal Abdu’Allah, who works as a barber alongside his artistic and academic practice, brings his gold-plated The Barber’s Chair to the show, recognising the barber’s salon as an indistinguishable site of communal exchange and comradery. David Hammons also draws inspiration from African hair in his Hair Relaxer. The title refers to the painful practice of ‘relaxing’ or straightening African hair, yet the sculptural installation shows a long head of hair, unstraightened and retaining its natural kinkiness, lying at ease on an old-fashioned chaise lounge, often used in the representation of female beauty in European art.

The archives of Althea McNish, Britain’s first Black textile designer of international repute who brought tropical colour to British textiles and changed interior design trends, have been referenced for the exhibition. McNish’s work resonates with Yinka Shonibare’s trademark wax batik fabric, summoned in Self Portrait (after Warhol) and incorporated into the 24-carat gold gun-toting Revolution Kid (Calf). In a new, site-specific commission for the show, Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk creates an Afrofuturistic mural and temple to learning, with bespoke table and seating by exhibition designer Yinka Ilori.

Get Up, Stand Up Now also presents rarely seen work from an exciting range of photographers, who have provided new perspectives in fashion photography, including Ronan McKenzie, Armet Francis and Campbell Addy.

FILM

Visitors will have the opportunity to watch feature-length screenings of Horace Ové’s seminal films Pressure and Baldwin’s Nigger, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Baldwin’s Nigger documents a conversation between the eminent American author James Baldwin, whose books include If Beale Street Could Talk and I Am Not Your Negro, and comedian Dick Gregory. Ové’s close relationship with Baldwin is further illustrated in a number of intimate photographic portraits. Pressure follows the fictional story of a British-born son of a first-generation Trinidadian family finding himself adrift between two cultures. Behind the scenes photographs, hand-notated scripts, original film cannisters and letters relating to the film are also shown.

Scottish born, Trinidadian based artist Peter Doig has created original hand-drawn film posters for both Horace Ové and Zak Ové’s films to be screened in Get Up, Stand Up Now. They feature alongside Doig’s numerous alternative film posters, used to advertise his Studio Film Club, free weekly film screenings organised by himself and fellow Get Up, Stand Up Now contributor Che Lovelace in Doig’s Port of Spain studio.

LITERATURE

Poems from dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, Commonwealth Poetry Prize winner Grace Nichols and former Young Poet Laureates for London Caleb Femi and Selina Nwulu will be vibrantly reimagined throughout the exhibition. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, featuring the poems and new essays from editor of New Daughters of Africa Margaret Busby, artist and curator David A. Bailey and publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove.

EVENTS

An extensive talks and events programme provides exclusive insights into some of the key protagonists and works within the exhibition.

SOMERSET HOUSE
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
www.somersethouse.org.uk