Addressing Humanity

Race does matter in an exhibit of recent African-American art at Princeton University Art Museum.

By: Josh Appelbaum
   One might ask why it’s important, in 2005, to mount an exhibition comprised exclusively of work done by African-American artists.
   Between Image and Concept: Recent Acquisitions in African-American Art at Princeton University Art Museum is a show that will prompt a lot of questions and spur healthy debate among museum-goers around that very question, and others.
   The short answer is that, until about five years ago, collecting artwork from 20th century African-American artists wasn’t a priority of the museum. Laura Giles, curator of prints and drawings, says the work of African-Americans had largely been ignored in its collection of the 20th century photography, prints, paintings and sculpture. "Of course that speaks to the whole history of race at Princeton," Ms. Giles says.
   The new exhibit presents 26 works the museum has acquired through donations and purchases since 1999, and the grand total of artwork by African-American artists stands at about 100.
   "I became interested in African-American art while working at the Art Institute of Chicago," Ms. Giles says. The collecting and exhibition of African-American art was more common in public art museums and among private collectors in Chicago than in other private galleries and museums, she says.
   As supporting text by Franklin Sirmans, a lecturer in the Council of Humanities and Visual Arts, points out, most of the pieces on view — etchings, photographs, prints and clothing — are conceptual or abstract but have subtexts that relate to race, racism or identity.
   Artists whose work is a part of the museum’s collection face racial stereotypes head-on. Gordon Parks’ photograph (one of two in the collection) "Red Jackson" (1948) shows a man smoking a cigarette, looking out of a broken window.
   Ms. Giles says the man in the photograph, one of Mr. Parks’ most famous, was a gang leader. "Gordon Parks speaks to (his subject’s) humanity," she says. "He wants to convey the contemplative, in order to reduce the stereotypical image."
   Iona Rozeal Brown’s colored screen print, "Untitled II (Female)" (2003), draws on 19th-century Japanese erotic paintings and modern-day Tokyo’s "Street Fashion" movement that originated in the city’s Shibuya district. A common practice of "Street Fashion" is for Japanese youth to darken the skin with burned cork. The Geisha figure in the print wears dreadlocks and, except for the back of the neck, which she presumably cannot reach, is tinted a dark beige.
   The recent print comments on how black culture has been co-opted and commercialized through globalization. "I don’t think a work like this would have been done 20 years ago," Ms. Giles says. "She’s created something that’s contemporary, creative and topical and explores cultural and racial identity."
   One work that is playful and socially irreverent is Sanford Biggers’ "Tunic" (2003), which was originally commissioned by the museum for its Shuffling the Deck exhibit in 2003. Modeled on a feathered cape from Cameroon, also in the museum’s collection, the artwork is enclosed in glass to reinforce the institutional aspect of the mock-anthropological piece. "Tunic" is a zippered bubble coat, covered by feathers collected from pet stores in Manhattan and is described by Mr. Biggers as a "garment worn in the late 20th century by urban youth to protect against the ghetto bird and the beast" — meaning police helicopters and the police themselves.
   More conceptual among the works in the exhibit are Martin Puryear’s woodcut illustrations for a 2000 edition of author Jean Toomer’s Cane. First published in 1923 and well received by white and black critics, the book is considered of one the most significant written works of the New Negro (or Harlem) Renaissance of that period. Through prose poems, plays and other more traditional narrative forms, Cane "documents the persistence of both racial violence and black vernacular forms," says the supporting text written by Princeton Assistant Professor of English Jeremy Braddock.
   Mr. Puryear’s woodcuts are based on illustrations in the first edition of Cane, many with a cyclical theme that represents the author’s journey from Washington, D.C., to Wisconsin and southern states, where he discovered folk song and spirituals. Mr. Puyear’s series of six original woodcuts accompany the Arion Press limited edition of Cane (2000, $18,000).
   The original woodcuts and limited edition book are presented along with a slipcase designed by Mr. Puryear made of four woods in four colors.
   The woodcuts, each titled with a woman’s name — "Karintha," "Becky," "Carma," "Fern," "Esther," "Avey" and "Bona" (2000) — are inspired by passages in Cane. "Becky, a white woman who had two Negro sons, was ostracized by the community and forced to live on a narrow piece of land between a railroad track and a road," Ms. Giles says.
   The woodcut also continues a nature theme seen throughout Mr. Puryear’s work in sculpture. Among an upside-down shack, a strip of railroad and a line representing a road are arching lines that form the outline of a flower.
   Although Ms. Giles says that many works by the artists in the museum’s exhibition are concerned with race, some can be interpreted in different ways, including Henry Ossawa Tanner’s etching "The Disciples See Christ Walking on Water" (1907).
   Ms. Giles was reluctant to say definitively whether Mr. Tanner’s intention of using his common theme of water in the work is a religious statement or an evocation of the Middle Passage, which brought slaves to the Americas.
   And John Wilson’s pastel and gouache, "Steel Worker" (1959), was emblematic of the working class America in the late 1950s. The illustration, which was commissioned for the cover of The Reporter, a worker’s magazine "when the unions were still strong," as Ms. Giles says, speaks more to class issues than race.
   Each of the 26 works are worthy of placement within collections of other 20th century artists and conceptual movements. In the future, Ms. Giles says, works in Between Image and Concept: Recent Acquisitions in African-American Art will be presented in other exhibitions highlighting thematic, conceptual and historical concerns in contemporary art.
   She says the presentation of these recent acquisitions attempts to place emphasis on artists who were underrepresented in previous museum exhibitions. "We want to put the work out there so people know it’s here and can come to the museum to see it," Ms. Giles says.
   In the same way women’s and African-American studies are relevant to university students in this day and age, Ms. Giles says, drawing a line around race is sometimes useful in talking about American art in the 20th century.
   She poses another question: "I mean, race still matters, doesn’t it?"
Between Image and Concept: Recent Acquisitions in African-American Art is on view at Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University campus, through Feb. 26. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 1-5 p.m. For information, call (609) 258-3788. On the Web: www.princetonartmuseum.org.