Author: Fred

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random art musings #000

AmericangothicAmerican Gothic, ( 1930) painting by Grant Wood Gordon_Parks_-_American_GothicAmerican Gothic, (1942) photograph by Gordon Parks CapricornCapricorn, model 1948, cast 1975 (sculpture) by Max Ernst

So M and I were at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) a few years ago and although I had been to the NGA many times before, we decided to take their “Introduction” tour. While on that tour one of the pieces that they highlighted on the tour and that really caught my attention was Max Ernst’s Capricorn.

It hit me on a few levels, mostly because I am always looking for  the presence of “African design intelligence” or an African aesthetic in art, literature, etc and this piece in particular felt like it had an organic feel to it, in the same way that some many of the African works that I have been exposed to, especially in the sculpture world….I am not sure if it was the fashioning of animals in human “positions” (i.e sitting and standing) or just a kind of symmetry and balance that  I feel in looking at all of these works.

In looking at the Wood and Parks pieces and considering the titles it is clear that the two works are in “conversation” with one another, even if that conversation is oppositional or confrontational, it is there.

The Ernst piece, Capricorn immediately caught my attention because it appeared that it, too, was a part of this visual conversation; its balance the composition, what was depicted all suggest  at the very least a thread of a connection.  The other thing that made me think that they was the timing. Both Parks’ piece and Ernst’s piece were completed very close in time, Parks piece in in 1942 the year of Grant Wood’s death and Ernst a few years after in 1948. I cannot help but think particularly around the time of Wood’s death that engaged artist like Parks and Ernst would not have something say about it in their work.

When I come to a piece of art I am always thinking about its DNA, not just process, materials and aesthetics , but the real lineage of the piece…who, what, where, why or when spawn it…what other ideas or works of art is it connected to, not just movements and manifestos

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Happy Birthday JB, August 2nd

Not this JB…

james-brown

This JB…

 

I don’t remember when I became interested in Baldwin, but I do remember seeing The Amen Corner
as a kid with my parents, and pulling Blues for Mister Charlie and The Fire Next Time
off my parents bookshelf and trying to make sense of the world that Baldwin was talking about. It would not be until I was a teenager that I would start to grasp how deep Baldwin is/was/be.

Much later than that I would come across Baldwin’s essay On Being White and Other Lies. This essay in a lot of ways made me rethink what it means for a group of people to decide and believe  that they are “White” and for that group of people to decide who else was or could become “White” . Conversely, that same group of people convinced of their “Whiteness” (pure, fair, just and deserving of honor) could also determine who would be their binary opposite, the “Blacks”. This essay for me also caused me to question “Blackness” as a function of being this binary opposite and the moral assignments that come along with it.

As student of Mathematics and Information Systems, I also started to think about the inability of a simple binary system in language to capture the complexity of humanity. For me, I find it hard to talk fully about  such complex in such simple terms. In intellectual, creative and progressive circle many of us push the envelope for more inclusive, complexity and nuanced, you see this so much in gender and sexuality discussions, you see it socioeconomic class discussions, yet when it comes to race  and culture we seem to be stuck with the binary.

Both “Whiteness” and “Blackness” are fiction despite the cultural, social, political and economic capital they wield and how real they feel. That is not to say that I am not connected to the substance of the experience in America we call “Blackness”, I am just not convinced that that label effectively or accurately captures that experience. Baldwin help to make that clear for me.

I am going to end with this anecdote, because I think it articulates what Baldwin was saying more clearly than I ever could. A few years ago, I was sitting on one of Dr.Greg Carr‘s lectures at Howard University and he said to a roomful of “Black” people, “In American society someone has to be Black, that don’t mean it has to be you.”  Hearing that made me re-visit Baldwin’s essay and gave me another way to look at the language we use and that is used against us…

 

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Still Blue?

I am almost ashamed to say that I did not remember that Amiri Baraka’s Blues People: Negro Music in White America was published 50 years ago in 1963.

Here and Here. Baraka lays down the hard fact of the heavy learning mojo that the late Sterling A. Brown put on him (and Toni Morrison, A.B. Spellman, Lucille Clifton, Thomas Sowell and many others).  These are writers and thinkers that inform who I am today so I through them (and his work as well)  I have come to a greater appreciation for Sterling A. Brown.

This appreciation becomes even more significant  as I think about the my recent family reunion down in the heart of  Gullah/Geechee land (Coastal South Carolina), I am remind that I am part of the Blues People Continuum or as Dr. Tony Bolden put it the “blues network.”( his book is called Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture 

bluesnet

I like the fact that Dr. Bolden’s  makes space in the “blues network” for all forms of  “African American vernacular culture” beyond just music, because this is the foundation for some of the new projects that I have coming up. This kind of grounding will be the perfect marriage of my current obsessions.

Thank you Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) for the work…to be continued

 

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MD:POETRY Poetry Reading 2/20/2012 @ Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center

Tonight! Poetry Reading with Jinahie (Angela Abadire)

and don’t miss our newest fundraising event
So You Think You Can Hand Dance?!
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Experience our ongoing series of live poetry readings as a part of our current Paper Dolls exhibition at Gallery 110.

TONIGHT’s Featured Poet:

Jinahie (Angela Abadir)

Time: 7pm-9pm

Location: Gallery 110, 3901 Rhode Island Avenue, Brentwood, Maryland
PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE!!!

An Evening of Glitz and Glamour

The evening features:
Three Course Dinner, Hand Dance, Line Dance, Freestyle
Hand Dance Contest, Hand Dance Workshop, Raffle, Door Prizes

MC: Ray Morton
Music by: DJ Bobby

Date: Saturday, March 9th, 2013

Time: 6pm-11pm

Location: Marriott Inn and Conference Center

Address: 3501 University Blvd, East Hyattsville, MD

**Free Parking**

Donation: $70.00 per person or $130 per couple!

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DC:ART: Addison/Ripley Fine Art is pleased to present: THORNTON DIAL, opening Jan. 19, 2013

From: Addison/Ripley Fine Art
Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Subject: Addison/Ripley Fine Art is pleased to present: THORNTON DIAL, opening Jan. 19, 2013

THORNTON DIAL Addison/Ripley

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Addison/Ripley Fine Art
Nesting, 1991, mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches

THORNTON

DIAL

works on paper

January 19 – February 23, 2013

opening reception Saturday, January 19, 5-7pm
Addison/Ripley Fine Art is very pleased to present, in cooperation with the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a collection of recent works on paper by celebrated Alabama artist Thornton Dial.

Born in 1928 and raised in poverty in the rural South, Thornton Dial spent his childhood toiling in the fields of western Alabama. For many years he worked as a laborer in the region’s heavy industry.

Dial was a steel welder for much of his professional career. His monumental sculptures are elaborate metal structures adorned with, sometimes covered by, painted fabric and found objects such as dolls, mannequin parts, and animal bones. In the sculptural relief surfaces of his mixed media paintings, Dial weaves fibers, sometimes carpet or clothing doused in paint, into undulating net-like lattices that seem to appear and disappear on the canvas. His geometric patterning and bold colors are contemporary while also relating to traditional African-American quilt making. These works on paper echo the bold, direct style of his earlier three dimensional assemblages.

Dial’s work is included in private and museum collections across the country such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at major museums including a joint exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the American Folk Art Museum in New York in 1993, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2005, and was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. In February 2011, the Indianapolis Museum of Art will premiere the touring exhibition Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial. The most extensive survey of the artist’s work ever mounted, it will include over fifty large-scale paintings, sculptures, and wall assemblages.

Throughout the years, Dial has made a variety of works through which he commented on the human spectacle. His creations began to receive attention from the established art world in the mid-1980s. Since then, his work has been exhibited and collected by some of the nation’s most important art institutions. A Time magazine article by Richard Lacayo in 2011 gives important insight into Dial’s work.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2056700,00.html#ixzz2HzxdDvyc
Rooster Pic, 1991, mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches

Life Go On, 1990, mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches

UPPER: Nesting, 1990, mixed media on paper, 30 x 22 inches
MIDDLE: Rooster Pic, 1991, mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches
LOWER: Life Go On, 1990, mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches
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African American Art and Culture on Tour (from International Arts & Artists)

header-black.pngdancetheatre.jpg“One of ballet’s most exciting undertakings.”
– The New York Times, 1971 Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts

Highlighting Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 40-plus year history, this magnificent exhibition celebrates the history and art of dance with 22 costumes, set pieces, videos, photographs and tour posters from four staged ballets including: A Streetcar Named Desire, Creole Giselle, Dougla and Firebird. Dispelling the belief that ballet could not be performed by those of African decent, Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. This multi-media exhibition captures the majesty of the choreography, the beauty of the costuming, and the dancers who defied gravity and stereotyping. With a modest beginning, holding classes in a warehouse on 152nd Street, the school has greatly expanded and since grown into a multi-cultural dance institution.

The exhibition comes with customized costume forms and backdrops for the four staged ballets. Banners are long and can be mounted to a wall, or will require tall ceilings to hang in open air space.

Available:
May 2013 – December 2015

Contact:
Beth Pacentrilli

Reflections: African American Life from the Myrna Colley-Lee Collection“Reflections presents the lives, traditions, and environments of African Americans from the 20th century to the present…It allows viewers to connect the strong tradition of storytelling by African Americans, with the sense of place that is largely unique to Southerners.”

Reflections: African American Life from the Myrna Colley-Lee Collection

A dialogue between artist and identity is represented through the more than 50 works selected from the collection of costume designer and arts patron, Myrna Colley-Lee. Reflections focuses largely on the figurative and representational, presenting pieces by such noted artists as Romare Bearden, James Van Der Zee, Elizabeth Catlett, Eudora Welty, and Betye Saar. Myrna Colley-Lee is credited as one of the foremost costume designers in the Black Theatre movement. Her collection juxtaposes works by leading artists with that of lesser known, offering a wide view of African American life and culture from the 20th century to the present.

Following its February 2013 debut at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, Reflections will travel to Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana; Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama.

Available:
June 2013 – November 2013
March 2014 – August 2014
April 2015 – December 2015

Contact:
Beth Pacentrilli

 

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Dance Theatre of Harlem “In capturing the spiritual and emotional essence of this journey that is an essential part of my own history, I felt a strong sense of connection, and a bond with lives just a few generations removed.”
– Joseph Holston

Color in Freedom: Journey along the Underground Railroad

The stories of the Underground Railroad are some of the most powerful in American history. Color in Freedom is an exhibition of 49 paintings, etchings and drawings by Joseph Holston created to capture the essence of the courage and determination required to escape bondage in pursuit of independence; and to enhance understanding of the condition of slavery and the powerful instinct toward freedom.

Color in Freedom consists of four movements that track the flow of events in the lives of those who traveled along the Underground Railroad: The Unknown World, Living in Bondage-Life on the Plantation, The Journey of Escape, and finally, Color in Freedom.

Available:
April 2013 – mid-May 2013
August 2013 – September 2013
January 2014 – December 2014

Contact:
Beth Pacentrilli

 

International Arts & Artists
9 Hillyer Court NW, Washington, DC 20008
202.338.0680 | artsandartists.org

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