Figuring History at the Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum’s recent special exhibition, Figuring History, brings together three contemporary Black artists to reframe art and American history through a Black perspective. Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, and Mickalene Thomas use references to popularly depicted moments in history and recognizable art styles to tell a story of Black culture and representation that is often missing from the art museum experience. The magnitude of the exhibition’s impact was slightly lessened by the way in which the public is directed to enter the space. The soft, rhythmic hum of the escalator’s electrical innards becomes the soundtrack to Figuring History’s visual prelude. Behold, room after room of African religious paraphernalia and animal masks, placard after placard of white exultation at Black man’s ability to create art, even if by accident. Before approaching the cordoned-off area where culture is celebrated and history is questioned, African art is readily available for a public who has not bought access to this temporary site of Black resistance. Before our ideas of Black culture and representation can be properly challenged by the artists of the special exhibit, we begin the familiar task of placing the savage at the forefront of Black history as we encounter the permanent African art collection in all of its damaging glory. If the SAM really wants to have a platform where Black artists can question the white narrative of history in America and offer a unique perspective on Black culture in relation to this country’s history, as is the supposed purpose of this special exhibition, then perhaps they should consider the placement of their African collection with respect to artwork that is deliberately attempting to disrupt the harmful ideas of Blackness that these archaeological finds encourage.
It was only after being surrounded by the larger-than-life productions of Black artist Kerry James Marshall that I was able to slowly forget my introduction into the exhibition. His Vignette #2.75 (depictions of Black Love reminded me of Larry Neal’s manuscript about the Black Arts movement, particularly his ideas of Black Liberation as “impossible if we fail to see ourselves in more positive terms,” remaining “slaves to the oppressor’s ideas and values--ideas and values that finally attack the very core of our existence,” prompting his suggestion that “we must see the world in terms of our own realities” (Neal 39). Marshall’s acrylic vignettes of a happy Black couple in love do exactly that. The raised Black Power fist on the gate of their yard immediately evokes memories of Black people with pick combs protruding from their voluminous afros, and the man happily swinging his honey around reminds me that Black men and women can and do find happiness with one another, despite the stereotypical animosity that plagues discourse around Black relationships. Marshall’s vignettes fulfills “the function of artistic technique and a Black esthetic,” which Neal says “is a is to make the goal of communication and liberation more possible” (Neal 44). His vignettes go beyond simply using European artists and styles to insert a Black perspective onto a white narrative. His pieces are a call to every Black person who sees them and is reminded of the positive terms on which we should see each other if we are ever to successfully mount a revolution for Liberation. TR
Works Cited
Neal, Larry. “Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation.” We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85. Brooklyn Museum, 2017, 39-51.
