STARGAZER: Elizabeth Catlett in the Stride
April 30, 2011 by Patricia Spears...
I took a break from literature/poetry world/AWP application making/job seeking & well my life to get to the Bronx Museum where a chatfest between Elizabeth Catlett and three of the artists in this groundbreaking show were to chat. Well, they did, but she didn't. Ms. Catlett is 96 and 96 means you get where you need to go or you stay put. She stayed put.
But her art does not and in this exhibition organized by a celebrated curator named Isolde Brielmaier (who does not look like that name), her work is the generous terrain upon which many others look at with love, puzzlement, desire, estrangement (as if this shit is strange what am I gonna do about it) and respect. For some reason I like the sculptures more. Their are solid and delicate-well made almost always the female body and one that is very African American-no slim hips here. And the prints range over decades of distilling images and ideas of being Black, female, American born, Mexican domiciled (she married a Mexican artist) and deeply committed to social justice and humanists concern. The aesthetic is not separate from race, gender, etc. But then why should it be? If race is a concept, than why is the assumption that being of the Black race automatically a negative. I see in Catlett, how pride is nurturing, power giving. Like Gwendolyn Brooks she is no sentimentalist about Black people or the plight thereof. She revels in the sophisticated rendering of her images and continues to do so. She is in it for the fight and for the beauty.
There are some really interesting juxtapositions in the show (and a few duds, so be it). I loved the wall w/ two photos by Carrie Mae Weems and Xaviera Simmons; the video by Wangechi Mutu, Robert Pruitt Negro es Bello riffing off her famous Black is Beautiful pro Black Panther print-which I remember being on the cover of The Black Scholar and Renee Cox's photos that scream Black Privilege.
Sanford Biggers large scale print is fascinating. More fascinating was his commentary. It is refreshing to hear younger (under 60) artists talk about legacy, lineage and creating out of and away from a tradition as did he, Xaviera Simmons and to a lesser degree Renee Cox-I think she is a lineage all her own. I know that issues of representation, performance, symbolism are fraught when in the hands/minds of Black artists--we remain relentless criticized and ignored at the same time (what a hat trick). But as Renee Cox pointed out you have to do what you want to do-damn everything else (I am heavily paraphrasing). But she's right. And Catlett's long, illustrious career within a range of communities around the world bears that out.
Many good people were in attendance tonight: Betsy Sussler, Sandra Payne, Ron Kavanaugh, Marilyn Nance, Clarence Reynolds, the lovely gallery director Ruth Phaneuf from Nicole Klagsbrun where Xaviera Simmon has a show, to name a few. The Bronx Museum which now has a new larger gallery space building next to its older cramped quarters is like a 10 minute (if you are a slow poke like me) walk from the 161st Station-you watch people get off to go Yankee Stadium. I hope you see this important show by one of the 20th and now 2lst centuries great artist-who made being Black female and interested in the figure not a problem but a solution.
Peace and power as they used to say back in the day.
