Michael Ray Charles: 20 Years Ago His Potent Images Confronting Racial Stereotypes Were Highly Controversial, Today They Feel Ripe for the Times
TWENTY YEARS AGO, Michael Ray Charles was a rare quantity—a Black contemporary artist with mainstream recognition. His potent and thought-provoking work explored African American representation in popular culture, employed blackface and caricature to confront racial stereotypes, and presented complex images aimed directly at America’s shameful history of slavery, subjugation, racial violence, and white supremacy....
Jammie Holmes Pours His Emotions Into His Paintings: ‘When People Look at My Work I Want Them to Feel Something’
“Four Brown Chairs” (2020) by Jammie Holmes FOUR YEARS AGO, Jammie Holmes started painting. He was working in a machine shop in Dallas, Texas, and thought the creative outlet would help calm his high blood pressure and anxiety. Between the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic and quarantine and the urgency of the racial justice...
Fulton Leroy Washington Honed His Artistic Talent in Prison, the Made in L.A. Biennial is Giving Him a New Platform
PAINTINGS ARE POWERFUL. They influence generations of artists (Picasso’s “Guernica”), encourage pilgrimages to museums (Amy Sherald’s portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama), and garner millions of dollars at auction (“Past Times” by Kerry James Marshall). Inspired by Francis Bicknell Carpenter’s “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln” (1864), artist Fulton Leroy Washington...
Kindred Spirits: Documentary Explores Life and Work of Washington, D.C., Artists Hilda Wilkinson Brown and Lilian Thomas Burwell
“THIRD AND RHODE ISLAND” depicts a residential block in Washington, D.C. The painting captures a row of red brick homes, a white wood porch, concrete walkways, and leafless trees. The circa 1930-40 work by Hilda Wilkinson Brown (1894-1981) is in the collection of the American Art Museum in Washington. Another artist, Lilian Thomas Burwell,...
In the Wake of COVID-19, Inveterate Traveler Theaster Gates is Grounded in Chicago, Making Pottery Again, and Still Collaborating
Theaster Gates is featured in “Firsthand: Coronavirus,” a series from Chicago’s PBS affiliate. | Video by WTTW TRAVELING THE GLOBE is a constant in the life of artist Theaster Gates. His schedule of exhibitions, talks, lectures, and projects is unrelenting. Gates has a diverse portfolio. In his bio, he states that his practice “focuses...
Emory Douglas: ‘I Was the Revolutionary Artist of the Black Panther Party’
Emory Douglas talks about his graphic design work. His images have become synonymous with the visual identity of the Black Panther Party. | Video by AIGA THE GRAPHIC IMAGES of Emory Douglas communicated the Black Panther Party’s platform and programs. From 1967 to the early 1980s he developed the organization’s visual identity. He served...
Public Editor: Alexandra Bell Highlights Bias in the News and Rewrites Racist Headlines
Installation view of “A Teenager With Promise (Annotated)” (2017) AT THE END OF FEBRUARY, the Whitney Museum of American Art announced 75 artists selected to participate in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Among them is Alexandra Bell, an artist with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Rather than using her journalism degree to...
Keith Duncan Brought Moments in Black History and the Culture of ‘The Big Easy’ to New York’s Meatpacking District
“The Wedding Reception” (2015) by Keith Duncan EVOKING THE CULTURE of black New Orleans, the work of Keith Duncan is full of bold color and energetic movement. His images are often densely packed with people coming together for ritual gatherings or presents a confluence of symbolic images around a unifying theme. “The Big Easy,”...
Betye Saar, 92, is Taking Steps to Secure Her Legacy While Forging Ahead with New Artwork and Exhibitions
Installation view of “Betye Saar: Something Blue,” Roberts Projects, Los Angeles THE SMITHSONIAN’S ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART interviewed Robert Colescott about his life and work in 1999. Paul Karlstrom, who spent his entire three-decade career at the archives as West Coast regional director, conducted the oral history interview with the artist. Toward the end...
New Short Documentary Gives a Voice to the Women Who For Generations Have Been Making Artful Quilts in Gee’s Bend, Ala.
Gee’s Bend Quilter Mary Lee Bendolph AFTER MAKING A CAPTIVATING documentary about artist and musician Lonnie Holley, Maris Curran has trained her lens on the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Ala. In 2016, Curran delivered a brief but memorable portrait of Birmingham, Ala.-born Holley. “The Man is the Music” documents his work and shares the...
Artist Simone Leigh Wins Guggenheim’s 2018 Hugo Boss Prize
THE 2018 HUGO BOSS PRIZE has been awarded to Simone Leigh. Best known for her ceramic works, Leigh’s practice examines black female subjectivity, black feminist discourse, and the history of labor and resistance. Her selection was announced last night at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Hugo Boss Prize recognizes the...
Diedrick Brackens Receives the Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2018 Wein Prize
THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM’S 2018 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize has been awarded to Diedrick Brackens. The Los Angeles-based textile artist is recognized for his tapestries and innovative weaving techniques. His selection was announced by Thelma Golden at the museum’s 50th anniversary gala this evening at the Park Avenue Armory. The annual prize...
Titus Kaphar, Whose Paintings Reconstruct Accepted Historic Narratives, is a 2018 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellow
Titus Kaphar in his New Haven, Conn., studio. YEARS BEFORE THE DEBATE about decolonizing America’s public squares where monuments pay homage to slaveholders and Confederate generals reached a fever pitch in 2017, Titus Kaphar was engaging with representation in Western art history and its overwhelming penchant for foregrounding white men while people of color...
For Made in L.A. Biennial, Artist EJ Hill is Taking a Stand in the Name of ‘Excellence, Resilience, and Victory’
EJ Hill at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles WHAT DID YOU DO THIS SUMMER? E.J. Hill spent his entire summer standing on a platform at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The museum’s Made in L.A. biennial opened on June 3 and every since, six days a week for three months, Hill has...
Artist Barkley L. Hendricks Received a Posthumous Faculty Award From Connecticut College Where He Taught for Nearly Four Decades
EMERITUS PROFESSOR Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) received the inaugural President’s Award for Creative Impact from Connecticut College on May 2. He was among five faculty members recognized by President Katherine Bergeron for demonstrating excellence and innovation in research, teaching and leadership. Hendricks is the first to be honored with the new Impact award which...
‘Unanswerable’: Lorna Simpson’s London Exhibition Charts Her Subconscious and Embrace of New Mediums
Lorna Simpson: In The Studio. | Video by Hauser & Wirth OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS OR SO, Lorna Simpson has transformed her practice. An accomplished conceptual photographer, she is now a formidable painter, who is newly expressing herself through sculpture. Since the mid-1980s, Brooklyn-based Simpson has challenged conventional notions of gender, identity, history,...
Portrait Artist Amy Sherald Discussed Her Practice at the National Gallery of Art: ‘I Paint American People. Black People Doing Stuff’
WASHINGTON, D.C. — There is an element of fantasy in Amy Sherald’s portraits. The Baltimore-based artist usually paints people she spots around the city—men, women, and youth who have a certain something that captures her attention and piques her curiosity. She’s depicted a woman with a baby on her hip, a young man who’s...
Soul of a Nation: Jack Whitten on Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and ‘the Political’ in His Abstract Paintings
Jack Whitten walks through “Soul of a Nation” at the Tate Modern and talks about his work and “present times” in America. | Video by Tate Modern NO STRANGER TO RACIAL DIVISION and political strife, Jack Whitten’s abstract canvases tackle weighty issues, confront hard truths, and consider the insights and sacrifices of important cultural...
Recognized for Her Portraits of Black Men, New Art21 Film Explores How Jordan Casteel ‘Paints Her Community’
AFTER DEVOTING A SUMMER in Gloucester, Mass., to landscape painting, Jordan Casteel decided to start making portraits of black men. The man who killed Trayvon Martin was acquitted in those months between her first and second year at Yale University where she earned her MFA. The experiences of her twin brother were unsettling, too....
ART21 Launches ‘Summer of Shorts’ Featuring New Film About Why Chicago Artist Theaster Gates Collects
FOR HIS FIRST EXHIBITION in Milan, Theaster Gates presented “True Value” (July 7-Sept. 25, 2016) which centered around the inventory of a shuttered Chicago hardware store. Installed in an art context, he reimagined the abandoned tools and supplies as a monumental visual display. An artist who trained as a potter, Gates has become more...
