Rehistoricizing The Time Around Abstract Expressionism » African-American http://rehistoricizing.org in The San Francisco Bay Area, 1950s-1960s Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:40:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Robert Colescott http://rehistoricizing.org/robert-colescott/ http://rehistoricizing.org/robert-colescott/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:57:00 +0000 admin http://rehistoricizing.org/wordpress/?p=51 Colescott Crow in Window 513x720 Robert Colescott
Crow In Window
Acrylic on Canvas, 4″ x 5″, 1978
Through the use of a unique figurative vocabulary, Robert Colescott lures the viewer into his work, examining interpretations of history, race, religion and popular culture. He depicts worlds of contradictions – the dramas of women and men, black and white, the oppressed and the oppressor, past and present, all with a sense of humor and humanity. His use of humor, gender and race reversals, while parodying art history, has made his work evocative without losing its critical edge.

–Jandava Cattron

The surging crest of Robert Colescott’s work, its interconnectedness no less then its pulsating and continuous confrontational thrust, has catapulted viewers into self-questioning bordering on discomfort. This discomfort affects everyone. Over dressed-men and under dressed-woman are both black and white; so are misogynists, murderers, philanderers, and just plain lazy bums. Not only does he “mock our anxiety” about race but he “never doesn’t talk about race and he never talks about it only;” his joyous state, replete with “sonorous tumbling, shady joy, sex, love, money, music, art, memories, and comfort food” are present in all their glory, yet so are racism, sexism, poverty, murder, hate, avarice, envy and deceit. All, propelled by an overreaching consumerism, twirl through a spectacular frenzy of color and form to become paintings so masterful on so many levels that one’s breath is taken away.

Robert Colescott was born in Born in Oakland, California in 1925. He received his undergraduate degree in art at University of California, Berkeley in 1949 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952. During a sojourn to Paris (1949-50), Colescott studied with Fernand Leger.

Colescott is represented in numerous public collections listed including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as well as many private collections. Colescott was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1997. He was the first African-American artist to represent the U.S. in a single-artist exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

– Phyllis Kind Gallery

Colescott Eat Dem Taters Robert Colescott
Eat Dem Taters
Acrylic on Canvas, 59″ x 79″, 1975

]]> http://rehistoricizing.org/robert-colescott/feed/ 0 Dewey Crumpler http://rehistoricizing.org/dewey-crumpler/ http://rehistoricizing.org/dewey-crumpler/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:46:10 +0000 admin http://rehistoricizing.org/wordpress/?p=28 Crumpler Untitled 12 520x386 Dewey Crumpler
Untitled #12
Mixed-Media on Paper, 24″x32″, 1998

Early in his career, Dewey Crumpler painted murals focusing on African American social and political issues. His skill at structuring dynamic wall-sized compositions was honed from studies with Pablo O’Higgins and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexico City. But Crumpler was increasingly drawn to the expressive possibilities—visual and emotional—of abstract images, which he has pursued in paint, prints and sculpture for nearly 30 years. He will investigate an image relentlessly—such as the bulbous shape of a tulip or Monet’s lily pond at Giverny, France—and extend the form into myriad directions and mediums. Thematically, Crumpler has sought to address the history of slavery in America and explore how Africans “transformed their experience of subjugation into … cultural self-fulfillment and spiritual development.” The concept of metamorphosis becomes actual practice through his artmaking. Crumpler takes shapes derived from instruments of torture—leg irons, neck collars, and chains—and employs them “as abstracted vehicles that become transmuted into organic materials like tulip flowers and other malleable substances.” This symbolic conversion is most apparent in the decorative wood sculptures he calls Meta Objects. These are life-sized transfigurations of slave collars. Echoes of this form appear in Crumpler’s latest paintings and drawings. Born in 1949, Crumpler is a Professor of Art and Art History at San Francisco Art Institute, where he has taught since 1990

-Flintridge Foundation

Crumpler Giverny 46 520x335 Dewey Crumpler
Giverny #46
Charcoal, pencil and pastel on paper, 40″x68 1/2″, 1988

CrumplerJ.B.at Giverny Dewey Crumpler
J.B. at Giverny
Pencil on Paper, 22″x30″, 1988

Dewey Crumpler Interview with Professor Carlos Villa of San Francisco Art Institute

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