Ouch! Red Tails

‘Red Tails’ a disservice to Tuskegee Airmen

By Courtland Milloy, Published: January 29, 2012

The Washington Post

The movie “Red Tails” could not possibly have been “inspired by” the Tuskegee Airmen, as billed, for it is little more than a black comedy about guys who clown and connive their way through World War II, supposedly as combat pilots.

Disheveled, undisciplined, crude and uncouth, they are the exact opposite of the real men who served in the all-black fighter group in the 1940s.

In this movie — which has raked in millions of dollars at the box office and even got a thumbs up from President Obama — the squad leader finds courage in a bottle of booze while his wingman’s lust for an Italian woman leads to insubordination. During dogfights with the German Luftwaffe, the black pilots behave like kids in a video arcade.

“Stop fooling around,” the booze-head captain tells his womanizing lieutenant, who has disobeyed orders to engage a more experienced enemy.

“I’m just playing with him,” the lieutenant replies.

This is not just a bad film; it is ridiculous. It caricatures the black airmen with the very stereotypes they fought so hard to dispel in real life.

“I wanted to make it inspirational for [African American] teenage boys,” producer George Lucas said in an interview with John Stewart on “The Daily Show.”“I wanted to show that they have heroes that are real American heroes that are patriots that helped make this country what it is today.”

So he turns the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen into the first-ever happy-go-lucky hip-hop war movie.

The cast includes several actors from the HBO TV series “The Wire,” two of whom played street-corner killers and one who was a heroin addict. One combat pilot talks like Bubba, the black country bumpkin in the movie “Forrest Gump,” while another sounds like a jive-talking Chris Tucker, the squealing comic who co-starred with Jackie Chan in the series of “Rush Hour” action comedies.

“If somebody asks me something about the war,” a black airman says, “I’m going to make something up.”

A real laugh riot, this movie.

In reality, the Tuskegee Airmen placed a premium on discipline, precision, order and military bearing. After all, they were under the command of Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a black man from the District, whose rank as an Air Force general and whose education — 35th out of 276 at West Point, class of 1936 — was awe inspiring.

Davis stood 6-foot-4 and weighed in at a trim 200 pounds. Terrence Howard, who sang “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” in the movie “Hustle and Flow,” hardly fills those shoes.

“The men knew that their all-black fighter group was an experiment that many people wanted to see fail,” J. Byron Morris, past president of the East Coast chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, told me. “They wanted us to self-destruct. But B.O. Davis kept them on the straight and narrow, and the men were too self-respecting to fall apart.”

During a recent screening of the movie sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, I sat with Morris and several other Tuskegee Airmen. The men were pleased that the history of the black pilots, gunners and mechanics was getting so much attention, and they were grateful to Lucas for using $93 million of his own money to help bankroll the film.

Nevertheless, they saw little of themselves on the screen. Davis would not have tolerated the fist fights, aerial stunts, drunkenness and insubordination. For my money, Lucas could have depicted the pilots as they were — as distinctive as the squad led by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” or the group of soldiers in the television series “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.”

He could have at least made them appear credible as pilots.

The question that loomed largest over the 332nd Fighter Group was whether they were intelligent enough to fly. The doubts, deeply rooted in racism, persist to this day. Of 14,130 Air Force pilots in 2009, just 270 identified themselves as black — fewer than 2 percent — according to the Air Force Personnel Center.

So it was particularly egregious to have those black pilots clowning in the cockpit, engaged in dogfights that weren’t just fiction but science fiction. Rather than showing how the black pilots actually fared in combat, the film shows them magically flying propeller-driven planes fast enough to catch German jets that were 100 miles per hour faster.

They could turn on a dime, too, as if piloting Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon at warp speed in one of Lucas’s “Star Wars” episodes.

Unbelievable.

Innovation Institute flies high!

I just came back from another session of the Innovation Institute and heard that there was a nice promotional piece in US Airways magazine.  An executive from BASF read the article and contacted McColl. They had 90 people there last week and were excited about the possibilities. Great job! Looking forward to working with them in the future.

 

Text reads:

Cultivating Creativity: Innovation Institute redefines leadership and corporate innovation.

A Haven for right-brain creatives, McColl Center for Visual Art also provides a bridge for left-brainers.

The Innovation Institute at McColl Center for Visual Art helps executives not just think outside the box, but throw the box out the window.

In a post-recession economy, businesses are searching for new and effective ways to lead, problem-solve, and drive the kind of innovation that will propel an organization forward in the new economy. Innovation Institute works to restore creativity in corporate environments through smart risk taking and harnessing the imagination. It explains, "No one ever learned to innovate by talking about it. It's all in the doing—risking, revealing, setting aside theories and never, ever hiding behind the familiar."

Engineers, marketing executives, accountants, physicians, and more (including corporations like Duke Energy, Bank of America, and Ingersoll Rand) are seeking out the Innovation Institute programs to strengthen their work place.

Programs are led by an artist, and the Transformational Leadership program takes place over six days. Class themes include Courage in the Face of Struggle and Unlocking the Creative Voice, among others. Leadership program participants work with six specific artists who help the participants find their inner creativity and learn how to manage and act on creative impulses. The Transformational Leadership program is limited to a small number of participants to ensure a more personal experience. The team takes part in presentations and challenging hands-on group and individual exercises. One day's session may produce paintings and sculptures, another may include drafting poetry about...

taking risks. No matter what the project, the goal is always the same: to push participants to tap their inner creativity and to use it effectively.
Innovation Institute custom programs lead teams through provocative processes that generate breakthroughs, teach the importance and value of creative space, and unleash personal creativity—all building blocks to driving real innovation.
A corporation that seems to be "stuck" following the same procedures and getting the same results can try a half-day "creative session" or a multi-day retreat as part of the Institute's customized innovation work. If brainstorming and creative sessions feel more like brain-draining sessions, Innovation Institute can open new doors with half-day or full-day Focused Creativity sessions. And if team collaboration isn't producing break-through outcomes, a multi-day retreat would provide a welcome windfall of true results.
Regardless of the issues or business or individual may face, the Innovation Institute can help unleash your creative core, experience the challenges of creativity, harness imagination, and develop the capacity to recognize, influence, and support creativity in others. Those skills are critical to business success in today's competitive environment.

Cecelia Scott: A remembrance

Cecelia (aka “Ce”) Scott — one of the founders of McColl Center for Visual Art and creative director at both McColl and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture — made news last November after she chose to exit her posts at both institutions (for as yet unrevealed reasons). Her last curatorial work — the exhibition “Converge” by artists Quisqueya Henriquez and Sonya Clark — opens tonight at McColl. The following piece is a reflection of her impact by noted artist, educator and friend Bill Gaskins.

 

 Ce Scott, photographed in front of a piece by artist Thu Kim Vu. (Photo by Thu Kim Vu.)

Most visual arts organizations born in the 20th century are faced with 21st century questions concerning the relevance of art, artists, and arts centers in a time of national, economic, and cultural uncertainty.

With that said, the recent departure of Cecelia Scott from her position as creative director from McColl Center for Visual Art prompted some personal reflections on the person behind the role that few people had proximity to. Much more than a person has left the center of contemporary art in the city of Charlotte — a majestic legacy departed with her.

My association with Ceceila Scott began in 1995 during her distinguished tenure as a graduate student at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. She was entering the Hoffburger School of Painting at the Institute one year after I graduated from there and commuted each week from Baltimore to teach at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Presently, I am a professor in Art, Media and Technology and Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design in New York.

Since our first meeting, I have been a witness to Cecelia’s growth and development as an artist and an administrator at the McColl Center, as architect of its nationally and internationally noted artist residency program.

Through years of conversations with Cecelia over a variety of issues and ideas related to her duties at McColl and in art in general, I have always been impressed by how inclusive and social her vision is within an arts culture that can become hermetic and exclusive. She is in many ways a practical visionary through how she works effectively with the human and material resources available to her, while at the same time asking: “What is the next level of growth, and how do we get there?”

Aside from being a forward-thinking arts administrator at McColl, Cecelia was also a thoughtful curator who constantly asked provocative questions that sought to challenge the artist — and the audience.

And she amassed a record of exhibitions that have showcased a broad range of art makers from around the world in doing so. In the midst of this intense level of activity, Cecelia maintained her own life as an artist whose work ranges from works-on-paper, mixed media, performance, and the culinary arts.

I know few people who can speak and comprehend as many languages of artistic expression as effectively as Cecelia. Her vocabulary and skills have greatly enabled her dialogues with a broad range of people both in and out of the visual arts.

Most significantly Cecelia possesses an engaging personal and professional carriage, bearing, and integrity that enabled her to build coalitions across a broad spectrum of public and private constituencies that greatly served the Center in its development efforts, and enabled the center to grow and expand its range of activities and audiences.

I was an artist-in-residence at McColl in the summer of 2008. During that same period, McColl President and CEO Susanne Fetscher was away on personal leave until October 2008. The absence of the executive director meant that the workload on the administrative staff significantly increased. For three months I had a view of Cecelia on a day-to-day basis in her role at McColl.

Aside from managing her responsibilities as director of residencies and exhibitions, she was always thinking holistically about the Center — locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, in the long and short range, and at the micro and macro level — with an uncommon level of detail and scope.

Cecelia was always in the vicinity of the heavy lifting and problem solving that makes McColl Center for Visual Art one of the best residency programs and visual arts centers in the country. No task ever seemed to be above or below her. There are few people in this business that work better with and harder for artists and the their audiences than Cecelia Scott. I left McColl much better for the time I spent in the space she cultivated.

In my view, what she did with the greatest distinction at the McColl Center was raise trenchant questions of both producers, patrons, and public spectators of art that took the form of amazing dialogues, exhibitions, public programming, short and long-range strategic planning and development strategies.

Having observed her management and leadership style from a distance as well as day-to-day, I can say that the departure of Cecelia Scott from the McColl Center will not only leave a huge void both locally and regionally, but also nationally and internationally as well.

What the city will miss will be her challenging Socratic facility, her passion for working with artists, her social and interpersonal assets, her curatorial vision and experience as well as her interactions with trustees, staff, administrators, artists, the community at large and her wonderful sense of humility, humor, generosity of spirit and intellect in the service of the Center.

What must also be said is that it was the vision and wisdom of McColl President Susanne Fetscher who hired Cecelia as a founding staff member of the former Tryon Center for Visual Art as education and outreach program director and for the role of creative director at McColl Center. I have no doubt that Susanne’s wisdom will serve her in finding someone to fill the position formerly held by Cecelia.

Likewise, I have no doubt about Cecelia’s future as a leader and change agent in the art world. With her departure from the McColl Center, however, I doubt that anyone will ever replace her and the contribution she made to the quality of art and life in Charlotte.

Consequently, I have serious concerns about the future of contemporary art in the Queen City.

Bill Gaskins,
New York City

3 Voices Interview

Finally got my hands on a copy of an interview I did with Joy Vandervort-Cobb at the College of Charleston a couple years ago. Joy is a wonderful and hilarious theater professor with a set of golden pipes. She was supposed to be taking over the hosting duties for a radio show produced by the College and aired on PBS. Joy wanted me to be her first interview - we had a blast and seriously, I could talk with that woman for hours.

New Art - Faces of Color 4

New Art - Rainbro Row

If you don't live in Charleston, S Carolina, or have never visited, then this probably doesn't make much sense. It is a cynical take on one of Charleston's most popular and photographed tourist attraction - Rainbow Row.

Rainbow Row is the name for a series of colorful historic houses located north of Tradd St. and south of Elliot St. on East Bay Street just before you hit High Battery. It is referred to as Rainbow Row for the pastel colors used to paint all of the houses. They exemplify everything that Charleston seems to sweat profusely - history, charm, nostalgia, etc., you get the picture. It is an assured stop on the carriage rides.

A little history on the non-historic (via Wikipedia). After the Civil War, this area of Charleston devolved into near slum conditions. In the early 1900s, Dorothy Porcher Legge purchased a section of these houses numbering 99 through 101 East Bay and began to renovate them. She chose to paint these houses pink based on a colonial Caribbean color scheme. Other owners and future owners followed suit, creating the "rainbow" of pastel colors present today. 

Common myths concerning Charleston include variants on the reasons for the paint colors. According to some tales, the houses were painted in the various colors such that the intoxicated sailors coming in from port could remember which houses they were to bunk in. In other versions, the colors of the buildings date from their use as stores; the colors were used so that owners could tell illiterate slaves which building to go to for shopping (nice one, huh?).

Perhaps the second most photographed attraction in the Charleston area are the plantations, notably, Magnolia and Boone Hall. The grandeur of those places totally overshadow the squalid little huts known as slave cabins. In fine 'Plantation series' form, I decided that the slave cabins needed to be seen as equally as charming, so through the magic of Photoshop, I added an extra cabin to close the ranks and 'painted' the slave cabins behind the McLeod Plantation (originally whitewashed) in bright rainbow colors. Considering the original Rainbow Row has no real historic value and the slave cabins do, why not leverage the visual value of the valueless to make relevant the truly deserving?

I ought to have T-Shirts made of these.

I agree wholeheartedly!

Saatchi's scathing portrait of the art world: 'Vulgar, Eurotrashy, masturbatory'

Leading British collector launches surprise attack saying buyers and dealers 'can't tell good artists from bad'

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 December 2011 18.10 EST

Charles Saatchi has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers and
dealers who populate the art world. Photograph: James King for the Observer

Charles Saatchi, the most important British art collector of his generation, has launched an incendiary attack on the buyers, dealers and curators who populate the contemporary art world and concluded that many of them have little feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a bad one.

Writing in today's Guardian, Saatchi paints a scathing picture of the contemporary art world and says that being a buyer these days "is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar".

He says: "It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, hedgefundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard." Saatchi described the Venice Biennale, scene of the world's biggest contemporary art jamboree, as a place where these people circulate "in a giddy round of glamour-filled socialising, from one swanky party to another".

"Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art?" asks Saatchi. "Do they simply enjoy having easily recognised big-brand-name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth? Their pleasure is to be found in having their lovely friends measuring the weight of their baubles, and being awestruck."

His comments will unquestionably cause waves in a world in which Saatchi has taken a pivotal role.

For some he is the less famous husband of Nigella Lawson but for the art world he is of immense importance. For 30 years he has been a voracious buyer of new art and was instrumental in the success of the Young British Artists movement, buying up the best of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and exhibiting it at the groundbreaking Sensation show at the Royal Academy in 1997.

But Saatchi says he finds the new art world toe-curling. "My little dark secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others.

"Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity, and spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another."

Many will be surprised at the ferocity of his opinions. The Turner-nominated artist Louise Wilson – half of the Wilson twins – said she did not recognise his characterisation of collectors. "Maybe Charles is upset because he is not longer the chief proponent of the vulgarity," she said. "There are more collectors out there as opposed to the late 80s and 90s when there was just one which is a good thing."

But she added: "Many artists and art works have now definitely become a brand in a sense and some people may well go 'I'll have a Koons and a Gucci.' You can see that happening in certain contexts so in a way he does raise some interesting observations."

The curator Norman Rosenthal said it was impossible to generalise.

"It is very difficult to make a good exhibition," he said, "and the real problem is the art world has become so huge. When Charles and I were younger and doing the world of art it used to be much easier to sort it all out."

Rosenthal said Saatchi had put on extremely good shows but also shows that were not so good "and I speak as a dear friend of Charles."

Rosenthal was speaking from Miami where most of the people Saatchi is talking about have gathered for the latest fair on the contemporary art calendar. Rosenthal admitted that if 95% of the art there were destroyed then it would be no great loss.

What effect Saatchi's intervention will have on a buoyant contemporary art market remains to be seen but Sarah Thornton, the author of Seven Days in the Art World, predicted it would change little.

"This is so disingenuous of Charles Saatchi because he is selling art to these people and he is their role model. I find it shocking that he would come out and say this because his gallery has become a showroom for upcoming auction lots."

Thornton said Saatchi had made many millions selling on much of his collection. "He is feeding the people he is condemning." She put his comments down to "misanthropy".
Saatchi has had a London gallery for contemporary art since 1985 in different locations including St John's Wood, County Hall and since 2008 the former Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea.

According to the Art Newspaper's survey, in 2009 and 2010 the most visited UK show was Van Gogh at the Royal Academy followed by five shows at the Saatchi.

In 2010, Saatchi said he wanted to leave the gallery and part of his collection to the nation. A spokeswoman said negotiations to make that happen were continuing.

Expert view: Saatchi's Robert Hughes moment

The first thing to be recognised about Charles Saatchi's Swiftian explosion of rage against the art world is that he is uniquely qualified to say it. The second is that broadly speaking, he is right.

Saatchi is so synonymous with contemporary art that some readers may be baffled by his anger at the current state of it. Surely he is Mr Modern Art? Absolutely, but Saatchi has always been a collector who took risks for artists he loves. His championing of Damien Hirst two decades ago was not an attempt to follow fashion but a genuine act of enthusiasm for an artist widely attacked by critics (then as now) and mocked by the tabloids: he was right.

For me, the moment I first saw Hirst's shark seemingly swim through green formaldehyde at the Saatchi Gallery was when I knew the art of my time had teeth.

Saatchi's brand of provocative art collecting, daring the public to like what he likes, made him the natural patron of artists likesuch as Hirst and Sarah Lucas who, in the punk tradition, did not care what the public wanted and grew great on irritation. Everything is different now because, as he says, there are many collectors, and it's hard to see how they have individual taste or a sense of mission. Mega-dealers such as Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian happily "educate" the tastes of these collectors. Art fairs popularise the idea of art as cool shopping even with those who cannot afford to shop.

Here is the one weakness in his argument. While it is undoubtedly the moneyed global elite and their suck-ups who dominate the art world, there is no revolution at the gates, for art fans from much wider social spheres are sucked into this uncontroversial, irrelevant neophilia.

A broad swathe of the middle class, not just collectors, lap up the videos and pretentious installations he lambasts (he has never collected video), and dismiss any skepticism as "conservative". The art world has taken a lot of innocent people with it on the road to mindless corporate fashionability. It needs an honest critic, and maybe Saatchi's Robert Hughes moment has come. No one can accuse him of being a stick-in-the-mud.

Jonathan Jones

Absolutely Brilliant!

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

New Art

The 'Faces of Color' series adds another image to the growing list. 

New Art

The next installment in the faces of Color series. 

  

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'Malcom X - A Life of Reinvention' Review

A Man for Many Seasons

by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

by Manning Marable

Viking Adult, 2001, 608 pp.

Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention hit the book stands last spring with considerable buzz, given the allure that accompanied Malcolm X’s life story, as well as the drama of Marable’s personal tragedy. Marable died of complications resulting from pneumonia at age sixty a few days before the publication of his magnum opus. His sudden demise heightened the impression that his Malcolm—the product of ten years of work— would be definitive.

The man euphemistically known as “the Brother X” has become iconic. He has been the subject of a major Hollywood biopic. But his legacy remains contested. Critics and admirers alike pick and choose from among the images of Malcolm X. There is the majestic freedom fighter, admired by Spike Lee and Barack Obama. There is the Brother X associated with parochial-minded anti- Americanism; the race-baiting Malcolm X recently denounced by Stanley Crouch as “a maskmaker from his days as a hustler to the moment at which he was shot to death”; Malcolm the global humanitarian, the symbol of world brotherhood; Malcolm the sectarian, the divisive influence. There is the religious Malcolm, potentially the new face of Black Islamic America.

But there is another Malcolm, the male chauvinist, who bragged in his autobiography of never having trusted a woman, and whose image reified ugly strains of Islamic sexism, as well as its capacity for radical violence. Marable notes, “An al-Qaeda video released following the election of Barack Obama described the president as a ‘race traitor’ and ‘hypocrite’ when compared to Malcolm X.”

Martin Luther King’s career fits easily into the mold of a martyred civil rights hero. He promoted social integrationism and was murdered by a white racist. For most of his public life, Malcolm X belittled social integrationism and was murdered by other blacks in a sectarian feud. Malcolm X’s break with the Nation of Islam defined the final period of his career. But after he put aside the NOI’s half-baked philosophy of “white devils” he still extolled the power behind a collective racial identity. He ultimately “changed,” but to what? There is not a clear version of what the final Malcolm X represented.

Malcolm’s legacy has been interpreted to be culturally black nationalist or capitalist (in the Marcus Garvey tradition of black entrepreneurship) or socialist. His last phase coincided with the period of anticolonialist socialist revolutions in Africa. He identified strongly with Pan-Africanism. But Pan-Africanism has come and gone; where does this leave Malcolm X in history?

A Life of Reinvention is heavy on particulars, or minutiae—a narrative retelling by a zealous researcher. Isn’t this a biographer’s task? Yes, and yet for all that Marable accomplishes, a certain disappointment haunts the reader. A Life of Reinvention may fill in certain blanks and provide salacious details (a normative practice in this day and age of tell-all biographies); it may “humanize” Malcolm X, if you will, but its struggle with the Brother X’s political legacy is perfunctory, while it could have been Olympian.

The primary source behind the multiple constructions of Malcolm X’s legacy is The Autobiography of Malcolm X, compiled over a two-year period from interviews conducted with journalist Alex Haley. The Autobiography has sold millions, its popularity driven by the charismatic power of Malcolm X’s story of sin and redemption, and his conversion from a life of crime to one of political and religious commitment. Haley’s narrative has made Malcolm X hip, threatening, or cool, and promulgated many of the alternative Malcolms. Marable clearly has a bone to pick with The Autobiography, averring that “Malcolm X had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.” Furthermore, “A deeper reading [of The Autobiography of Malcolm X] also reveals numerous inconsistencies in names, dates, and facts. [After years of teaching the Autobiography] I was fascinated. How much it true, and how much hasn’t been told?” ponders Marable. But both books relate basically the same story.

New Art - Faces of Color Series

As many of you may know by now, I tend to paint in spurts and change my style of art and ideas about as often as I change my underwear. Well, here's another pair to try on. These next few images that I will be delivering over the coming weeks were actually inspired by my good friend Tyrone Geter. Tyrone is a master with charcoal and often uses them on dark backgrounds. I love the effect he was achieving but charcoal is a medium I have zero love and tolerance for - way too messy for me to fool with. I decided to do my version of the charcoal look with oil which I call 'charcoil'. (Use that and I will sue!) Each of the images will be on a different background color to mimic the various color papers that charcoal is often used on. 

I recently was working on the Plantashun series that included some realistic images of actual slaves. I loved the look of despair and strength on the faces and wanted to continue with them. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a lot of detail out of the faces in many of the century old photos, so I decided to start using live models. The lady below is actually my long time neighbor, Ms. Margaret Sass. I love her face and asked if I could take her picture months ago, but didn't know what to do with the image afterwards and stored it away. When this idea came to me I knew she was the perfect start. The next image is that of another neighbor who lives across the street. I'll have that one ready sometime next week.

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New Commissioned Art

The portrait of his lovely wife, Gina Torres, was commissioned by Laurence Fishburne earlier this year. It was supposed to be presented to her on their anniversary (Sept. 22), but alas, they are both successful actors and as such have overlapping schedules. He finally presented it to her yesterday and thank goodness, she loved it. Whew! Portraits are difficult business. The margin for error is great and a high profile commission like this keeps the artist on pins and needles until you get the thumbs up from commissioner and recipient. I'm not well known as a portrait artist but I do enjoy the challenge.

"Portrait of Gina Torres"

Oil on Linen

54" x 42"

(select to enlarge)

Art featured on Black Art in America website!

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Black Art In America

Article - Biennial Showcases Contemporary S.C. Art

Issue #24.40 :: 10/05/2011 - 10/11/2011 

Biennial Showcases Contemporary S.C. Art

701 CCA Aims to Fill Void Left By Demise of Triennial

BY JEFFREY DAY

When the Triennial was done away with several years ago, an outcry arose in the arts community. No one was louder about the demise of the every-three-year South Carolina contemporary art show than Wim Roefs, a Columbia gallery owner. When the 701 Center for Contemporary Art opened in 2008 and Roefs became its board president (and de facto director), he stated the center’s commitment to creating a show to replace the Triennial.
The first one of those — a biennial rather than a triennial — opens this week. The exhibition by 24 artists will be broken into two parts, the first opening Friday, Oct. 7, from 7 to 9 p.m. and the second starting Nov. 17.

“It was really a great loss,” says Roefs of the Triennial’s demise. “They were great shows and a place to discuss what was going on in the arts.”

Biennial 2011 includes artists from Hilton Head to Spartanburg, painters and potters and sculptors, the latter working with everything from found objects to cut-up blue jeans to books. Each artist will show two to five pieces. Participants range from such well-established and familiar artists as Mary Edna Fraser and Jim Connell to others who are young and mostly unknown. They range in age from 23 to 76.

“This is better than a solid list,” Roefs says. “There are established artists, but the younger ones are nothing to sneeze at — these are artists with great potential.”

He’s not tooting his own horn, because he didn’t select the artists. The contemporary art center asked a dozen curators, educators and artists from throughout the state to nominate two artists for the Biennial. Among the nominators were Brian Lang, decorative arts curator at the Columbia Museum of Art; Leo Twiggs, an artist and retired professor and museum director at S.C. State University; Tom Stanley, artist and chairman of the Winthrop University Art Department; and Tyrone Geter, artist and director of the Benedict College art gallery. Midlands artists in the show are James Busby, Peter Lenzo, JRenee, Lucy Bailey and Jim Arendt (who recently moved to Conway.) Three artists are from the Upstate, two from Orangeburg, five from Charleston, six from Rock Hill and three from other places in the state

Several of the artists were in one or more of the five Triennial exhibitions held from 1992 to 2004, including mixed media artist Aldwyth from Hilton Head; ceramic artists Jim Connell of Rock Hill, Alice Ballard of Greenville and Peter Lenzo of Columbia; and Charleston resident Colin Quashie, who explores political and social issues with bite and humor and a wide range of mediums. Others who have long been working in the state, such as Shaun Cassidy of Rock Hill and Winston Wingo of Spartanburg, will be in the Biennial. Among the lesser known artists are several who have solid careers, including James Busby of Irmo, who has had several exhibitions at the Stux Gallery in New York, and Stacey Davidson, who just began teaching at Winthrop University and who shows at the Marlborough Gallery in New York and London.

New Art - Plantation Digest

I decided to combine what were stand alone panels into one cohesive piece. The initial idea was to create a faux magazine that would have been read by plantation owners had it existed. After looking at a few 'lifestyle' magazines, I noticed that many had advertisements up front followed by table of contents, editor's note, etc. Since I had already created the advertisements (all of the J. CROW pages), I decided to redo them on thinner panels and hinge them together to resemble a magazine layout. I'm quite happy with the outcome and who knows, I may just continue to expand upon the piece by the time it makes it to the exhibition at REDUX in March.

I needed to submit work for the Biennial that was newer than 3 years old. Since I had been working on the UNC Mural much of that time and then went headlong into the plantation pieces, I decided to preview one of the pieces in the Biennial. It will interesting to see what kind of a response it garners.

Plantation Digest
32" x 44" (each panel)

Gel Transfer and Acrylic on Birch Plywood

INDIVIDUAL PANELS:

 

 

Fine Art Reproductions Sale

For a limited time (maybe until Christmas), buy three prints at a reduced price. Click here to order.

 

Biennial 2011 Essay

THE POST-MODERN SENSE OF REGIONALISM
A Shift Of Consciousness
By Mary Bentz Gilkerson

Statewide art exhibitions like the TRIENNIAL, produced by the South Carolina Arts Commission and the South Carolina State Museum between 1992 and 2004, refl ect more than current trends in the state’s contemporary art community. They reveal deeper shifts in how the culture of the area perceives itself. Even as recently as the TRIENNIAL 2004 there was degree of self-consciousness about the way that both the curators and artists approached their regional position. The result was the selection of work that for the most part focused on the universal and mainstream rather than a regional sense of place.

In the intervening seven years the South Carolina art community has become much more comfortable with a greater postmodern sense of regionalism: a strong connection to place revealed in the way that artists freely mine themes and media that have been considered traditional for the area – landscape and figurative narration, clay and craft traditions – combined with an awareness of the national and international art dialogue. This initial Biennial, produced by 701 Center for Contemporary Art, reflects that shift of consciousness.

At its most fundamental level, place is topographic landscape, a mapping of geographical features that illustrates a culture’s relationship to the space it inhabits. Working from aerial photographs, Mary Edna Fraser maps the South Carolina coastline from great perspective distance, using traditional batik processes on oversized silk panels. Jarod Charzewski explores landscape topographically as well, creating installations that use precisely folded and stacked clothing or books to mimic the undulations of the earth and its interaction with man-made structures. Kim LeDee creates sculptural installations from carefully woven constructions that move from the flat surface of the wall into the gallery. Small plastic toys fill her miniature environments revealing the absurdities of communal conflict.

Landscape and place extends beyond topography in the multimedia installations of Gwylene Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet. Their work is deeply rooted in the particularities of a community, going beyond simple documentary or social commentary to explore the complex intersections of place with traditions, histories, stories and spirit. Their process of working intimately within a community gives their work insightful depth regarding the paradoxical nature of human relationships.

Figuration and narration go hand-in-hand to invoke personal memory, trauma and history as well as direct challenges to examine our communal relationships to issues of race and sexuality. Winston Wingo’s sculptures use combinations of organic and geometric shapes to address the relationship of humanity to nature and technology. But they also address the dehumanizing factors that have effectively “erased” minorities from the broader dialogue within the culture.

What is subtle in Wingo’s work is exquisitely direct in Damond Howard’s and Colin Quashie’s.

With wit and passion Quashie uses the language of media marketing to dissect stereotypical views of cultural relationships and expose them as separatist constructs. He uses the seduction promised by contemporary advertising to lure the viewer into a conversation that can be haunting in the depth of the issues raised.

Howard incorporates some of the most heinous examples of 19th century illustrations and caricatures into self-portraits that reflect on the conflicted sense of identity and self that dominant culture imposes on minorities – in his case, an African-American man from South Carolina. Like Quashie, he uses humor to leaven the harshness of the commentary without diluting his message.

The narrative is also very personal in the work of Aldwyth and Peter Lenzo. While the literal figure is absent from many of Aldwyth’s works, it is implied through the multiple narratives she creates in her collages and sculptures. Although she resists categorization and rejects labels outright, the many little biographies that fill any one of her works form larger statements that are certainly astute social observation if not commentary. Lenzo’s clay sculptures are heavily embellished reliquaries of triumph over suffering. Building on the South Carolina craft tradition of the face jug, Lenzo creates self-portraits that contain all the pathos of the human condition.

Jim Arendt, JRenée, Stacey Davidson, Karen Ann Myers, Jon Prichard and Lucy Bailey pursue shared communal narratives, both traditional ones and those created by the disjunctions of contemporary culture. Arendt uses multiple layers of faded denim, the very fabric of the working class, collage together to explore connections to work and place. Using a similar narrative tradition, JRenee’s vivid paintings on glass contain echoes of Romare Bearden’s collages and cutouts and pull from the shared myths and traditions of the African-American community of New Orleans. Lucy Bailey’s figurative work is a quiet counterpoint, exploring the human body using forms that have an archetypal, archaic quality.

Davidson sculpts dolls that she then arranges in scenarios. These fictional narratives become the subjects of her subsequent paintings. There is an uncanny quality to the painted dolls, a level of fiction within fiction, both innocent and vaguely disturbing. Myers’ subjects inhabit a similarly charged psychological space, one that focuses on our cultural obsession with youth, beauty and glamour. The stories she tells of cocktail parties and power games are off set by a deep sense of loneliness. That absence is filled in Prichard’s drawings and performances by the ceremony and ritual of the fictitious society he creates his work around.

Thomas Whichard and Marshall Thomas create very ambiguous, loosely defined narratives based on the dialogue between artist and model. The stories are potential fictions, slices or moments, removed from their contexts.

Chris Todd’s sculptures imply a human presence through her use of exaggerated and distorted chair forms as surrogates. There is a whimsical quality to the sculptures that is off-set by the precarious nature of the predicaments that she places them in.

Abstraction, the modernist ideal, has become one of the many genres available to contemporary artists. Alice Ballard and Jim Connell both reference ceramic craft traditions in creating organic, abstracted works that move beyond traditional vessels to function as sculptural objects.

Shaun Cassidy, James Busby and Katie Walker pursue an art of pure abstraction where the subtle relationships of shape, surface and color invite contemplation. Busby and Cassidy reduce or eliminate many of the formal elements to focus our attention on the remaining ones. Mike Gentry’s grid-based collages give an aesthetic order to the jumbled visual bombardment of junk mail advertising and transform these fragments of media culture into relatively benign colors and textures.

The South Carolina Biennial 2011 reflects a shift in consciousness and perspective, a step away from the mainstream/regional dialectic. The sense of regional inferiority seems to be giving way to a synthesis of regional concerns – landscape and figurative narration, clay and craft traditions – with a more global awareness of the interconnection of all places to each other.

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Mary Bentz Gilkerson is an artist, critic and curator. Her reviews regularly appear
in the Free Times weekly in her hometown of Columbia, S.C., where she teaches art at Columbia College.

Joe Norman at Benedict College

My wonderful friend Tyrone Geter is curator of the art gallery on Benedict College in Columbia, SC. I really hope the students understand the depth and uniqueness of the exhibits he seeks out and brings there. His upcoming show with the printmaker Joe Norman is such an exhibit. Here is an overview:


Joseph Norman and the Middle Passage Doc Promo from Leasa Fortune on Vimeo.

Invite to the inaugural SC Biennial 2011

"With wit and passion Quashie uses the language of media marketing to dissect

stereotypical views of cultural relationships and expose them as separatist constructs.

He uses the seduction promised by contemporary advertising to lure the viewer into

a conversation that can be haunting in the depth of the issues raised."

- Mary Bentz Gilkerson
The Post Modern Sense of Regionalism
A Shift of Consciousness

First A La Carte event at the studio

This has been a dream of mine for quite some time; to have a lecture series of African-American artists in my studio presenting their art to the public. With the help of Sandra Campbell, Brenda Lauderback-Wright and Garcia Williams, we are about to pull off the first one.

I met Michaela via facebook and later met her in person at the opening of the Triennial Revisited exhibition. I absolutely love this woman and her art. Very provocative and informative. She is the perfect artist to set the tone and pace for the artists I want to bring to Charleston. I hope the audience is ready for her!

Charleston City Paper Article

Many local black artists struggle to fit in at MOJA
This Ain't My Festival
by Joy Vandervort-Cobb
My original intent was to write an article about the MOJA Festival and its impact on the African-American arts scene in Charleston. Makes sense. MOJA is atop us, I am an artist, and I like talking to other folks in the arts. Easy, right? Wrong. I've had more off-the-record conversations in the last week than I ever anticipated. There is disenchantment with the lack of local performing artists being featured. There is a sense, as one anonymous source put it, that "This ain't my festival." And according to a number of people — from musicians to thespians to technicians — the local buy-in from our community of African-American artists is about as flat as the economy.

But let me start with the easy, non-confrontational stuff. This is the 28th year that the festival is celebrating African-American and Caribbean arts. Those of you who have been in Charleston for any amount of time at least know that during MOJA, the culture and history of African-American and Caribbean people is celebrated through art, music, theater, dance, and literature. There are loads of free things to do, including the popular Caribbean Street Parade and the Reggae Block Party.

Brooklyn transplant and Mt. Pleasant resident Marlene Gaillard, an avid arts fan and longtime MOJA supporter, is torn about the festival this year. News of the 2011 schedule wasn't announced until just a few weeks ago, and Gaillard is disappointed with the seeming lack of organization. "First and foremost, could you explain to me why I just received my program booklet yesterday?" she says. "September 20 for a large event that begins nine days later? How does one plan for that? And there are enough 'TBAs' in this booklet that I had to ask myself if it was the name of a group I'd never heard of but was increasingly popular from the amount of times it's listed." The major R&B concert that's usually a highlight of MOJA was one of the TBA casualties.

The Office of Cultural Affair's Ellen Dressler Moryl explained that a number of factors, including a diminished staff, promoters backing out, and other events like the 9/11 commemorations, got in the way of planning. Perhaps most significantly, the MOJA program coordinator position was vacant this year, and a programming committee was tasked with the planning. Elease Amos-Goodwin, who formerly held the position and recently retired, served on the committee. "This year it has just been an occupational hazard that things didn't happen as one might want," Moryl said.

Gaillard also bemoans the lack of local talent represented at MOJA. "Why aren't there things in local venues with local musicians? Happens all the time during the big festival," she says. Moryl responded that she'll address that concern next year. "That's an interesting perspective," Moryl said. "I'll address it with the committee. As you know, we don't dictate from this office what should or shouldn't be in MOJA. We offer advice, give input, and support."

Colin Quashie is one local artist that has had some negative experiences with the festival. He's been a screenwriter, sketch comedy writer for television (MAD TV), a filmmaker, novelist, and contemporary artist. He's a bit of a provocateur, both in his work and his thought process. From the moment I met him in 1996 at my first MOJA, in which I performed with a San Francisco theater company, he has intrigued me. There he was at the end of the table, angry and loud and ready to spar with anybody crazy enough to challenge him.

New Art - Plantation Digest

I have been in the process of using a 3D architectural program to put together the Plantation exhibition at REDUX Studios. I wanted to include the J. CROW Advertisements but somehow they didn't seem to fit within the overall context. After staring at all of the pieces with a couple glasses of wine for clarity (in vivo, veritas!), I understood what was wrong and what needed to be done. Needless to say - 1 piece was destroyed (Black Tie Affair) and another modified (Blaccessories). The logic behind the destruction and rebirth was simple: if the stand alone panels were to be combined as one piece they needed to support an overall narrative which was missing. They needed two other pieces in support. If these were indeed intended to be ads in a fictional magazine that may have existed in that era - then what was the magazine? Enter ---> Plantation Digest!

Plantation Digest
36" x 48"
Gel and acrylic on board

As you can see - one of the teaser articles on the cover is 'J. CROW - Dressing for Succession' - which relates directly to the fake ads. The overall piece will have five panels with the cover going first, followed by 'Look Solid With Stripes'. It is meant to represent the first five pages of the Digest as though you were actually reading it. The next missing piece is being planned as I write and will be a letter from the editor. The corresponding text will help to shed some insight into the piece (not too much - let the viewer bring something to the piece!). I am finally happy with the display and can't wait to see it completed! Now I just have to figure out where it should be hung in the exhibition.

Plantation Coloring and Activity Book

I went by REDUX Studio's today and met with Karen Myers (Director) and showed her my proposed layout for the upcoming exhibition. I used a wonderful program - Live Interior 3D Pro - to draw a schematic of the gallery and place many of the paintings on the wall. It allows you do a virtual walk thru of the exhibition and see everything. I highly recommend it to anyone. Here's what a screenshot looks like:

With this program I can place work on the walls in their actual sizes so I can see how the flow will work. Karen is basically allowing me to curate my own exhibit so I want to keep her up to date with everything. I should have everything completed by Thanksgiving - unless I decide to change - which will probably happen.  I'm about 4 works short right now and made a couple changes to the Plantation Coloring Book. I wasn't happy with a couple of the panels so I painted over and redesigned them. Here are the two newest panels:

I dumped the Jim Crow and Draw the Aunt Jemima panel. They were a bit soft my taste - this is supposed to be a very cynical piece and I needed every panel to hold it's own.