African diaspora art: from ‘looking at’ to ‘seeing from’
Illustration: The Time Is Always Now:Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery website
Daniel Nelson,
Recent and current exhibitions by Black artists show how they have fought their way into Western art, but the latest show — The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe The Black Figure at the National Portrait Gallery — also illustrates how many still feel the need to fight the old battle.
That battle was either invisibility or distortion - a partial vision that unsurprisingly replicated itself on the canvas, with Black bodies absent or depicted in secondary roles, “mostly as attendants, servants and the enslaved, sometimes as adoring magi, but always on the edge of the action”.
The Portrait Gallery exhibition aims to shift the dominant art historical perspective, from ‘looking at’ the Black figure, to ‘seeing from’ the viewpoint of Black artists and the figures they depict”.
Sculptor Thomas J Price sets the tone with his giant sculpture of a composite Black woman commanding your attention as you enter.
The show’s final section also illustrates the idea of depicting rather than being seen.
But between the first and last come, for example, Amy Sherald’s life-size portraits of African-Americans with grey skin; Claudette Johnson’s reclamation of art “borrowed” from African originals; Kerry James Marshall’s confrontation of racist imagery; a room establishing a record of individuals, places and memories that situate Black people at the center of historical narratives; Barbara Walker’s brilliant re-working of old paintings in which the minor attendant is highlighted and the White main figure has sunk into the white background; Kerry James Marshall’s black woman who is not really there; a Black artist working without black paint.
After centuries of ignorance and racism, this is all essential, and often thoughtful and skilful. It’s particularly important for the predominantly White visitors to the Portrait Gallery, many of whom may find it new and powerfully presented information. In that context, too, it’s great that the Gallery is offering reduced £10 tickets to under-26s. Youngsters need history to read the present.
So while the show is important, and the 55 works by 22 artists well worth seeing, I cannot but feel disappointed that it’s still necessary to make and show art that’s so preoccupied with countering racism. If this was an exhibition by African artists in Africa it would be 100 per cent different. I suppose we must just be grateful that in the face of oppression and discrimination, some men and women respond with thoughtful, vivid creativity.
+ Associated events at the Portrait Gallery
* The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe The Black Figure, £18/ £5 for 25-year-olds and under, is at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE , until 19 May. Info: https://www.npg.org.uk/
+ Also on in London:
* Entangled Pasts, 1768-now: Art, Colonialism and Change, “over 100 contemporary and historic works as part of a conversation about art’s role in shaping narratives of empire, enslavement, resistance, abolition and colonialism - and how it may help set a course for the future”, £22, under-16s free, 16-25-year-olds half price, Royal Academy, Piccadilly, until 28 April. Info: RA
+ ‘A world of argument and conflict, disagreement and adoration’
* El Anetsui, the Ghanaian-born, Nigeria-based artist is best-known for his cascading metallic sculptures made of thousands of bottle-tops and copper wire. Themes include the environment, consumption and trade, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1, until 14 April. Info: Tate
+ Miracles in gleaming gold made from recycled rubbish
* Soulscapes, contemporary retelling of landscape by artists from the African Diaspora, £17.50, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, SE21 7AD, until 2 June. Info: Soulscapes