This is a review of
Project a Black Planet: the Art and Culture of Pan-Africa
at the Art Institute of Chicago
*********
Colette Omogbai
“Project A Black Planet” is “one of the few occasions
where you’re going to see queerness
show up as central to Pan-Africanism,”.
….Curator Adom Getachew, professor of Political Science and
Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity at the University of Chicago
Nothing wrong with queerness, - but presenting it as central to Pan-Africanism is more like advocacy than history.
“The topic and question of Pan-Africanism has largely been thought of in terms of a political history, sometimes a literary history, but never really through the visual. So this was an opportunity to tell that story in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
A story told with room-by-room attempts to associate artworks to the various social justice concerns of 21st C. academia. If the National Endowment for the Humanities had to answer to the federal administration now in charge, they probably would not have been one of the sponsors.
As will be elaborated later, most of those associations are so farfetched the exhibit ends up proving the reverse of its premise - especially among the African American visual artists who appear to have been much more interested in living as Americans than as Africans.
The entrance gallery attacks the notion of national borders - the exit gallery presents the text of a “Queer African Manifesto”, and in between various programs of Black identity are propagated, So important is the didactic sequence that visitors are prohibited (not just discouraged) from entering the exhibition from its exit. BTW, Pan-Africanism here includes the Arab peoples of Egypt and Sudan but not the Dutch peoples of the sub-Sahara. Evidently, a three hundred year residency was insufficient to qualify them as African.
******
As appropriate for polemic, many objects on display are pamphlets
in glass cases or idea based conceptual art.
But many paintings and sculptures are also being shown, and setting aside the intended lesson plan, this exhibit does serve to introduce many African-American (and a few Egyptian) artists who have not become as famous as Romare Bearden, Horace Pippen, or Jacob Lawrence.
Some contemporary artists are included, but it’s especially good to see the work of earlier generations, back when black identity was marginal instead of central to the artworld.
Alma Thomas
Columbus, GA, 1891-1978, Washington, DC
Starry Night and the Astronauts
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Alma Thomas made this mosaic-like painting as part of a body of abstract works responding to the Apollo space program. It brings to mind the thrust of a rocket ship, a wide expanse of sky, or an aerial view of the ocean. Marcus Garvey's projection of a Black Planet in parallel to the dominant Western one had opened the door to dreams of establishing sovereignty else-where-including in outer space.
Gallery signage
Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged." …. Alma Thomas 1970
Black sovereignty of outer space?
Did the curators seriously think that ever occurred to Miss Thomas?
Her sense of awe and wonder at the Apollo Space Program
is the exact opposite of “Whitey on the Moon”
a 1970 song by Gil Scott Heron.
Alma Thomas, Blast Off, 1970 (not in this show,)
Sure wish the AIC had acquired this one as well
Abd al-Hadi el-Gazzar
Alexandria, 1925-1966, Cairo
Two People in Space Outfits (Shakshan fi Malabes al
Fadaa)
1960s
Oil on canvas
Abd al-Hadi el-Gazzar shared Alma Thomas's keen vision-registered in the adjacent painting, Starry Night and the Astronauts-of outer space as a future site for people of African descent. The round headpiece worn by the figure on the left suggests the helmet of an astronaut but also looks like a beekeeper's hat, an interpretation reinforced by the headgear on his companion. Treating these earthly garments with the status of a space suit, el-Gazzar insists that the hypermodernism of the space age belongs also to newly independent peoples of Africa.
Gallery signage - as shown above - again attributes pan-African values to an artist without offering any evidence that he shared them.
This painting appears to express alienation from the modern world.
Colette Omogbai
The only piece by Colette Omogbai found on the internet, and she made it as a young woman before going to art school in London and New York. Possibly the highlight of her career - it’s interesting how it caught the eye of so many viewers, as well as myself. It reminds me of Bendt Lindstrom, a wild Nordic painter
I’ve written about
Hale Woodruff, Art of the Negro : The Muses, 1952, 144 x 144
Twelve years after Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) portrayed a slave rebellion on the walls of Talladega College, he addressed “The Negro in Art” for Clark Atlanta University. And twelve years after his Armistad murals came to the Chicago Cultural Center (I wrote about them here ), his art history paintings have now come to the Art Institute.
The first thing to note
is that the actual paintings did not make the trip,
but the facsimiles look so painterly,
it probably makes no difference.
What does make a difference, however,
is that the architectural setting,
as shown above, was not recreated,
and it does appear that Woodruff designed within
an inset arch to suggest a deeper space
behind the surface of the wall,
as well as an earth/sky dichotomy ,
much as El Greco had done 500 years earlier:
El Greco , Burial of the Count of Orgaz , 1586
The subject matter may be African , but Woodruff’s painting is European
Woodruff, Parallels, 1950
When Woodruff moved to New York City,
he picked up ABX,
specifically the pictograph style of Adolph Gottlieb.
Adolph Gottleib, The Seer, 1950, 59 x 71”
Hale Woodruff , Native Forms
These painting are not as emotionally charged as the Amistad murals.
They feel more didactic than expressive.
More appropriate for a grade school classroom than an art museum.
Hale Woodruff, Interchange
This one is gorgeous, however.
Hale Woodruff, Dissipation
While this one has an intensity that cannot be ignored.
Specific people are depicted in these murals and it’s curious
that gallery signage did not reveal them.
A complete iconography can be found here
-
Beauford Delaney
This piece is stronger than her
Malvin Gray Johnson 1896-1934, Negro Masks, 1932
Margaret Burroughs
Chicago’s legendary founder of the DuSable Museum.
Sincerity trumps hokeyness.
Palmer Hayden, Fetish and Flowers, 1926
Winner of the Harmon Foundation award for that year,
I love its aromatic ambiance.
Palmer Hayden, study for “The Janitor Who Paints”
Wish this finished version had come to the show instead,
The forcefulness of intention.
James Amos Porter, 1935
Adapting the model to his own concerns, there is an inward pulling sadness
set against a warm glow.
Porter was a pioneering art historian of African American art
which he saw as essentially American.
François "Féral" Benga (Dakar, 1906-1957, Paris) shifted shape like water. A dancer, gay icon, and model, Benga held many identities that a range of artists interpreted. James Amos Porter painted him as unplaceable: a portrait made in Paris that references Benga's Senegalese background nevertheless bears a Spanish title and shows Benga in a snug-fitting North African fez hat and a military overcoat. For a commercial photograph made in the same years Benga struck a limber yet angular pose like a Kota reliquary figure, brandishing a scimitar that duels gleefully with the photographer's own signature.
Richmond Barthé sculpted Benga holding the same weapon but with a contemplative expression, even as his body strains in a sensuous, simultaneous rise and fall.
For me, the most memorable part of this exhibit is the juxtaposition
of these two contrasting pieces taken from the same model
James Richmond Barthe, 1935
A feline elegance
Africa is in the artist and the subject,
but not the sculpture.
Thelma Johnson Streat
Yakima, WA, 1912-1959, Los Angeles
Black Kings
An effective sense of wonder here
with a jazzed up Egyptian vibe
Streat was good at a variety of styles.
Thelma Streat, Medicine and Transportation, 1942-44
(Not in this exhibit)
Wangechi Muta
Nairobi, born 1S72, lives in Nairobi and NewYork
Tree Woman
Paper pulp, wood, rock, and steel
A nice human figure
with the aesthetics of a department store mannekin
Benny Andrews
Plainview, GA, 1930-2006, New York
Revival Meeting
1994
Oil and collage on canvas
Feels like an authentic experience that just crossed over into entertainment
Iba N'Diaye
Saint-Louis, Senegal, 1928-2008, Paris
The Woman Who Cries (La femme qui pleure)
1980-6
Oil on canvas
The Woman Who Screams (La femme qui hurle)
1980-6
Oil on canvas
With large, powerful brushstrokes, Iba N'Diaye's pendant paintings insist on the parallel between the angry catharsis of screaming and the anguished crying of a mourner. Completed after his 1980 exhibition The Cry of a Continent, the paired works speak to rising melancholia across Africa as postcolonial optimism during the 1960s and 1970s was dashed by authoritarian rule and the persistence of apartheid.
Two very expressive heads,
though not sure these screams critique any specific
social situation any more than Munch’s had.
The artist’s career was marked by an ambivalence towards negritude
or being any more Senegalese than French.
Valerie Desmore
Cape Tow, 1925-2008, London
Crab
1961
Oil on board
Did this London woman really identify as black?
That would make an interesting story!
Sure don’t see it in her work.
Detail
Wish more pieces like this were online.
Ebony G. Patterson Kingston, bom 1981, lives in Chicago and Kinston, Jamaice Invisible Presence: Bling Memories 2014 mixed media on painted concrete Dases Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery Ebony Patterson's ornate coffins were carried in a procession during carnival in Kingston, Jamaica. Highly embellished and imposing, the sculptures reference the aesthetics of costuming for the festive annual celebration. They also draw more directly from contemporary funerary practices in working-class Jamaica. Commemorative processions there can involve caskets decked out with a wealth of decorations, accompanied by loud secular music to celebrate the life of the deceased. For Patterson, Jamaica's bling funerals are "one of the most powerful declarations of individuality; insisting "You may not have noticed me when I was alive, but you will damn well see me as I leave.
Festive coffins are fun - I’d love to see them in a street parade - but if you dare distinguish art from craft, I’d rather see art on the walls of an art museum - God knows there’s enough of it that I’d like to see but never will.
Dumile Feni
Worcester, South Africa, 1942-1991,
New York
Chief Albert Luthuli
1968
bronze
Dumile Feni's somber portrait of Chief Albert Luthuli honors the anti-apartheid leader following his death in 1967. While the apartheid government deemed Luthuli's death an accident, many suspected foul play due to his prominence in the anti-apartheid struggle. Imposing and stolid, Feni's portrait captures both the personal and political weight Luthuli bore as part of his activism. The artist eschewed naturalism by vertically elongating the composition and exaggerating the form, resulting in a bold rendering of a figure many South Africans revere as a national icon.
A powerful piece, though I do not enjoy it.
The sculptor led a difficult life in exile
and then died the day before he was scheduled to fly home.
Heitor dos Prazêres
Rio de Janeiro, 1902-1966, Rio de Janeiro
Macumba
1959-63
Oil on canvas
The artist was a professional samba musician who wrote over 300 songs.
His paintings all depict people dancing.
Don’t feel much politics here.
A poor display of what appears to be mediocre portrait busts
Impossible to see them up close.
Wilfredo Lam, study for la Jungla
La Jungla, 1943 (not in this show)
This text accompanies the piece on the museum website.
When the artist returned to Cuba in 1941 he became a strong proponent of Afro-Cuban culture, though he was more Chinese than African. The collector who brought the study to Chicago asked him to explain it but got no answer.
I sure wish he had bought the final painting instead.
It looks to be spectacular.
Loïs Mailou Jones, Boston, 1905-1998, Washington, DC Jeanne, Martiniquaise
1938
Oil on canvas
Loïs Mailou Jones made this painting shortly after arriving in Paris, where she joined a thriving community of Black expatriate artists, musicians, and writers, including Martinican intellectual Jeanne (Jane) Nardal. Here, Nardal's direct gaze and serene expression convey her resilience and self-determi-nation, Pan-African ideals amplified by the work's chromatic symbolism. Not only is Nardal attired in the red, black, and green colors of the Pan-African flag, but she appears before a striated background of skin-tone browns that equate Blackness with epidermal diversity. Jones's portrait pays fitting tribute to a thinker whose writings had widespread influence.
Unpleasant, but it feels like a real person
Meleko Mokgosi
Francistown, Botswana, born 1981, lives in New Haven, CT
Acts of Resistance III
2018
Oil on canvas
The two main figures in this unplaceable interior appear to contemplate their futures with calm and confidence. The woman is famous: South African singer Miriam Makeba, immortalized in a 1955 photograph for Drum magazine that, as reproduced here, fills a prominent wall (a print of the original image is shown in a nearby gallery). Makeba faces the audience with eyes closed as she listens intently to unseen accompanists. The anonymous seated man is at once Makeba's opposite and her possible reincarnation: he might have stepped out of the photograph to squat with ghostly determi-nation, likewise refusing the audience as he offers the viewer his sharply angled back.
A forever connection between the glamorous, belting-it-out performer on the wall and the ordinary young man who’s turning away from her. Somehow the rounded corners of the canvas feel just right
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968)
Ethiopia, 1921
Gallery signage tells that the above piece: “is widely considered the first artwork in the United States inspired by Pan-African ideas. It was a commission for the "Americans of Negro Lineage" display at the America's Making exposition in New York addressing immigrant contributions to the nation. The pharaonic female figure emerges from a mummified lower half with her right hand across her heart as if pledging allegiance.” But though promoting the contributions of immigrants to America might indeed be called a political movement, it’s no more about Africans than Italians, Germans, Chinese etc.
Bessie Harvey
Dallas, GA, 1929-1994, Alcoa, TN
Wash Woman
1982
Painted wood, wood putty, synthetic hair, fabric, and found objects
Twig art is either goofy or scary,
but at least it can be surprising and have inner vitality.
It’s a nice contrast with the elegant Fuller piece shown above.
Every figure sculpture show should include logs and branches.
Just as the making of figure sculpture should proceed from stiff branch to supple human
rather than the other way around.
Beauford Delaney 1901-1979), untitled 1962
Currently, the Zhao Brothers work the same calligraphic territory.
This one feels luminous, tangled, buoyant, desperate.
Self-Portrait in a Paris Bath House
1971
Oil on canvas
In 1953, Beauford Delaney moved to Paris, where he, like many African American expatriates, found greater social acceptance and freedom. By portraying himself in a bathhouse, Delaney, who identified as gay, has highlighted the safe socializing and sexual exploration such spaces provided. Though Delaney never realized his dream of traveling to Africa, he incorporated the continent's diverse cultural traditions into his self-representation by depicting himself wearing Maasai beadwork, seated on an Asante power stool, and surrounded by Egyptian hieroglyphs. This self-portrait-the artist's last-captures the rich complexities of his mind and intersectional identity.
I agree with all of the above,
none of which hints at anything political.
As with the other Delaney piece, I enjoy its glow.
Emma Amos
Atlanta, 1937-2020, Bedford, NH
Sandy and Her Husband
1973
Oil on canvas
Apparently Sandy and husband collected her work,
That’s “Flower Sniffer” (1966)) up on the wall.
The theme is similar to Kerry Marshall’s piece at the Smart Museum - but the music is softer.
Demas Nwoko
Idumuje Ugboko, born 1935, lives in Idumuje Ugboko
Folly
1960
Oil on board
The least European painter in this exhibit
He paints in a wrap around dream space.
The weirdness reminds me of the Chicago painter, Wesley Kilmer
Papa Ibra Tall
Tivaouane, 1935-2015, Dakar
The Warrior (Le Guerrier)
Papa Ives Tall, tapestry (not in this exhibit)
I like this piece so much more.
Like a coral reef. Swimming with ever evolving life forms.
BTW, unlike most of the artists in this show, Pan- Africanism actually did play a role in his bio.
Claudette Johnson
Manchester, England, born 1959, lives in London
Untitled
1982
Gouache and pastel on paper
better known detailed portraits,
Malangatana Ngwenya
Matalana, 1936-2011, Matosinhos
Suicídio do Prisoneiro I and Suicídio do Prisioneiro II
Pen and black ink
Malangatana Ngwenya and Inji Efflatoun channeled their experiences of incarceration into their art, vividly depicting the grim conditions and dehumanizing isolation that they experienced. Malangatana made these ink drawings while serving an 18-month prison sentence imposed by Portugal's colonial regime in Mozambique due to his suspected involvement with the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO). Between 1959 and 1963, Efflatoun was imprisoned in Egypt by President Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime under a decree targeting politically active women. These works poignantly comment on suffering and mental resilience, themes explored with similar existential force in Ibrahim El-Salahi's haunting self-portrait and Dumile Feni's drawing, also displayed nearby.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Margaret
The Art Institute had an exhibit of this artist five years ago.
Scary art for a very scary time.
The line drawings like this were the best
Inji Efflatoun
Cairo, 1924-1989, Cairo
Dreams of the Detainee (Ahlam Al-muetagala)
1961
Oil on canvas
The lady could just as well be sitting in a garden and grasping a tree limb.
Ibrahim El-Salahi, .
B. 1930, Sudan
Self Portrait of Suffering, 1961
Ibrahim El-Salahi, The Tree, 2003 (not in this show)
He painted misery and joy equally well.
Would sure like to see a retrospective.
Ernest Mancoba Johannesburg, 1904-2002, Clamart
in these works, Ernest Mancoba interprets the form of a Kuba mask through a modemist network of chevrons bands, and grids. His paintings imply that abstraction neither transcends nor completely transforms racial and ethnic associations. Mancoba would revisit the Kuba mask as a visual motif for the rest of his career, returning to it often and making it abstract in numerous ways.
Monotype (not in this exhibit)
Mancoba became an abstract painter in France -
which is also where he encountered the Kuba mask from the Congo.
I can’t see any mask here, but masks are more evident in his other work.
I can relate much more to the monotype above which I found online.
Abraham Gebre
Addis Ababa, born 1962, lives in Addis Ababa Next in Line (Teregna)
1979
Oil on canvas
Next in Line shows people waiting for services during the Derg regime in Ethiopia, a military government that ruled from 1974 to 1987. The Derg usurped state power when a popular revolution challenged the government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Gebre has painted an allegory of a people's revolution turned dictatorial: soldiers have cut the line and a regular citizen appears to object. Perhaps to heighten the irony, the artist chose to depict this scene of injustice and resistance using Socialist Realism, the style favored by the Derg and many Soviet-style dictatorships across the world in the second half of the 20th century.
Ale School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University,
Nothing more than narrative here - but who cannot relate to the unfairness of people allowed to cut in line.
Fatma Arargi
Cairo, 1931-2022, Alexandria
Populist Resistance (Al
Mugawma al shaabeya)
About 1956
Tempera and gouache on board
Collection of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
More power than anything else by him found online
Milwa Mnyaluza "George" Pemba Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 1912-2001, Port
Elizabeth
The Agitator
1960
Oil on board
Private collection
Cinematic and dramatic - if only, like Manet, he felt the need to take it further.
Moataz Nasr
, born 1961, lives in Cairo
The People (Elshaab)
2012
Clay
These ceramic figures represent diverse participants in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011-13, part of the broader Arab Spring uprisings at the time. Moataz Nasr says that neighborly generosity had long assured a basic quality of life for most citizens in Egypt, but police brutality and crackdowns on freedom had become intolerable. The Egyptian Revolution brought down two successive leaders of the country. Nasr's family home stood at one side of Tahrir Square in Cairo, the epicenter of the Revolution. During the popular occupation, up to 50 protesters slept there on the ground floor. As he recalled it, "At that moment we were all one, beating with one heart and a shared aim: to end this regime and breathe freely again."
Collection of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Continuing a very ancient Egyptian tradition of small sculptures depicting ordinary human activities.
I like it. The artist has a feeling for human forms in space.
Usually he pursues a more conceptual agenda.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, b 1977, London, Much Maligned of May, 2023
This piece makes no sense to me - either narrative or aesthetic
- yet still it looks like it’s about to go somewhere.
BTW, a painting by this artist appeared in the Joyner collection at the Smart Museum about six years ago. In a different kind of art world , she could become a great painter.
*****************
In reviewing this show for the Chicago Tribune,
Lori Waxman began with:
“How to say “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica,” an ambitious, magnificent, jam-packed survey currently on view at the Art Institute? Put the stress on the first syllable and you have a noun meaning collaborative undertaking; put it on the second and you get a verb denoting the promotion of a particular view. Both are apropos.”
Which is a problem for me, but apparently not for her.
Shouldn’t public art museums try to enable art
to project its own ideas rather than using it to validate their own?
It also appears that we saw a completely different show,
with her paying attention to the contemporary conceptual artists
and me looking at everything else.
And aesthetics were not her concern, so she saw the stepped platform of busts as
“ Sampling the breadth and depth of Pan-African aesthetics"
While I saw it as a disaster of sculptures poorly lit and inaccessible to close viewing.
She ended her review with:
“visitors who, having seen the entirety of “Project a Black Planet,” will hopefully go on to do just that.”
If it’s a black planet, where are the rest of us, including herself, supposed to go?
Obviously, my visit would disappoint her.
I just want a spinning rock
that remains habitable for all God’s creatures.
************
Much more critical thinking is found in Joseph L. Underwood’s review in Art in America:
There is enormous benefit to rendering this who’s who of Black artists, but many seem to be displayed more for the artists’ status than their significance to the Panafrica narrative, such as Wangechi Mutu’s sculpture installed in the entryway niche, or Zanele Muholi’s self-portrait hanging awkwardly in the corner of the final gallery. “PaBP” falls prey to the more-is-more blockbuster model that flattens takeaways by oversimplifying concepts like “Blackness” or “Panafrica” across hundreds of disparate objects.
And like me, he noted the distortion visited upon Alma Thomas:
Underwood is a scholar of Contemporary African Art.
