OF TWO NATIONS
I walked into the exhibit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963 - 1983 with questions. Was black power achieved in these years? Would all the artworks featured have a strident political focus? And would this art be good?
This art is great. The exhibit features a cadre of American artists executing museum-caliber work in styles conversant with the dominant aesthetics of the time: expressionism, conceptual art, and the new figuration. Yet almost all of the artists were unknown to me, as if they had been working in a parallel hidden universe.
Photographs by Roy DeCarava have spare compositions and a shadowy graphite-like finish. They render daily scenes with gravity, distance and mystery. Painted portraits by Barkley Hendricks honor their subjects, often himself, with particularizing details but without sentimentality. These life-size renderings possess awesome graphic authority, and bring the white-walled gallery to life. Canvases by Carolyn Mims Lawrence – packed with figures and words – carry the narrative force of epics, and call one closer.
Why haven’t these artists been featured in prominent group shows or individual retrospectives, as their art world peers have? Are they best considered when isolated culturally, as they are here? Certainly many of the artworks tackle political themes, but all can also be understood formally. These artists are producing work that complements or exceeds that of their peers. So why do most of them remain undersung?
Barkley Hendricks. Blood (Donald Formey), 1975. Oil and acrylic on canvas.