Black: Color, Material, Concept

"Black: Color, Material, Concept" explores ways that modern and contemporary artists of African descent have considered the multiple and often disparate possibilities of “black” through the choice of media, imagery and ideas. The exhibition includes twenty-five paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints drawn primarily from the Studio Museum’s permanent collection. As an element of art and design, “black” is both a seemingly basic part of any visual experience and an amazingly rich gradation of tones and depths. As a word, it is one syllable that can fill columns in a dictionary. As a social construction, it is one of the most highly charged and proudly asserted realities around the world, from the Haitian Revolution in the eighteenth century, to the antiapartheid Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa in the mid-1960s, to today’s Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Black materials, such as coal, dye or ink, have historically held great economic value, both in visual art and industry. Symbolically, the color black today evokes elegance and style, but is also associated with solemnity.

The color black results from the complete absorption of light and, uniquely, it is entirely without hue. Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985) explores identity and the sociopolitical constructs surrounding color through her drawings of figures using black pigments. Her use of a true black, unaltered by other colors, questions the meaning of black and the discrepancies between the color and the racial implications it holds. Her charcoal and pastel drawings point to the varieties of shades and textures in the color. In some cases, artists in the exhibition use materials that are both black in color and carry associations with blackness. For example, Nari Ward’s (b. 1972) "Rolling Calf" (1993) is made partially of tar, a material that historically carries negative racial associations. By combining tar with an ironing board, earth, salt, feathers, cotton, cloth and springs, Ward alludes to a history of American domestic labor. This juxtaposition of materials references enslaved women, whose duties would have included laundry, and subsequent generations who served as housekeepers because of limited professional opportunities.

Many artists are interested in blackness as a symbol of personal experience. Though these understandings of blackness vary, artists such as Noah Davis (1983–2015) explore histories and memories of American society that are not easily definable. In his 2008 work, "Black Wall Street," the loosely painted characters are blurry and purposefully ambiguous. Like many other artists in this exhibition, Davis empowers each viewer to create a distinct sense of meaning of this moment in time. Organized by Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, "Black: Color, Material, Concept' presents a multimedia look at work created by artists of African descent, as viewed through the lens of the Studio Museum’s permanent collection, and allows an opportunity to contemplate some of the techniques, themes and ideas that link artists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.