(ArtfixDaily.com)
The Seattle Art Museum is planning Figuring
History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas (February
15–May 13, 2018), a new exhibition organized by SAM featuring three leading
American artists from three generations whose work redefines history painting
in a contemporary context. The large-scale paintings on view are distinctive in
style, subject matter, and in the historic moments they reference, but
collectively they critique and redefine mainstream narratives of history and
representation. In their portrayals, these artists provide testimony centered
on Black experience.
The genre of history painting occupies a
privileged place in the history of European art. Beginning in the Renaissance
with representations of mythological, religious, and literary themes, the most
famous artists of the time were commissioned to commemorate pivotal historical
events that defined national identities. These large-scale works, done in the
grand style, were displayed in ceremonial venues and celebrated the ruling
class. Colescott, Marshall, and Thomas all lay claim to the history of the
genre, but with a poignant retelling of American history from a Black
perspective, giving prominence to histories and individuals that have been
erased or suppressed.
The exhibition features loans from several
institutions and collections, as well as works from SAM’s collection, including
the recently acquired Les Demoiselles d'Alabama: Vestidas (1985) by Colescott.
In addition, Mickalene Thomas plans to make new works specifically for the
exhibition.
“We are thrilled to bring together the
extraordinary work of Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, and Mickalene
Thomas at the Seattle Art Museum,” says Kimerly Rorschach, SAM’s Illsley Ball
Nordstrom Director and CEO. “The urgent themes of Figuring History reflect the
museum’s mission to be a place where exciting and challenging questions—even of
our own institution—can be asked.” 2 “Figuring History opens a door into a
labyrinth of questions,” says Catharina Manchanda, SAM’s Jon & Mary Shirley
Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art. “Who writes history, who is present
in its accounts—but also how do we square, reassess, and go forth with the
artistic, social, and political histories that we have all inherited? These
artists and their work speak about the past as much as the present.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, the
Seattle Art Museum will publish a fullcolor exhibition catalogue, also titled
Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas. It
will feature an introduction by Catharina Manchanda, essays by art historians
Lowery Stokes Sims and Jacqueline Francis, and interviews with Kerry James
Marshall and Mickalene Thomas.
ROBERT COLESCOTT (1925-2009) Born in
Oakland, California, Robert Colescott witnessed the Great Depression in his
early years and later served in the Army during World War II. Several years of
studies and teachings in France and Egypt following the war gave him an outside
perspective and critical edge on the racial conflicts in the United States. The
cartoon-like aesthetic of his earlier works take to task celebrated milestones
in the history of painting from Van Eyck to Picasso. A decade later, he applies
his boldly expressive style to stories that weave the fate of ordinary individuals
into the fabric of stories weighed down by the colonial past. He poses his
subjects as observers, agents, and narrators of an incomplete history, in need
of revision.
KERRY JAMES MARSHALL (b. 1955) Kerry James
Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama; he and his family moved to the Watts
neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1963, a formative time and place for the artist,
who now lives and works in Chicago. Marshall’s commanding portraits and
tableaux combine familiar representational forms, such as the portrait of the
artist or the academic life-drawing class, with political references that frame
deeply probing historical narratives.
MICKALENE
THOMAS (b. 1971) Mickalene Thomas’ monumental portraits and nudes of women
recall the odalisques and muses familiar from a long line of European art
history. Her figures do not lend themselves to passive consumption but are
powerful agents who confront us. Material culture and the aesthetics of
ornamentation play a central role in her work as she inflects and reimagines
Matisse’s arabesques and quasi-cubist spaces through the aesthetics of
contemporary fashion and style. The power dynamics shift profoundly as Thomas
negotiates gender and sexuality through a contemporary female gaze.
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