by Christopher Hutchinson

“Postcolonial Thoughts: Notes on Ellen Gallagher, Part 1” is here.

karen kilminik
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01193/arts-graphics-slid_1193581a.jpg

A certain fragility, shading into deliberate feebleness in the case of Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilminik, has been quite a trait of US painting in recent years. Ellen Gallagher has it too, if put to a quite different and much more serious end. But her intricate and ever-evolving aesthetic draws too much attention to itself. She has said that her work makes people “uncomfortable”. If only it had that power. –Laura Cumming  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/05/ellen-gallagher-axme-tate-review

Fragility, Feebleness & Woman

Cumming’s astute inclusion of Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilminik is a valid assessment of their work in relation to the current trend by painters to have this feeble aesthetic. It does appear that many women artists subscribe to this to notion of feebleness as representation of ephemerality and womanhood. There are a plethora of artists using this faux “folk-like” attempt at painting and claiming it to be an interest in the act of painting. Whatever the reason, it is ugly.

This ugliness may be the point. These anti-paint painters may be challenging the history of the Western canon by accessing one of the Feminist agendas denying the “object” comparison to women. That is possible. However that would still be an overarching narrative that has nothing to do with paint. That narrative would alleviate the fact that these are ugly paintings.

Elizabeth Peyton
https://rfc.museum/images/stories/BtC/Peyton-E/Peyton-E_JohnRiddy.jpg

Neo-Primitivism

primitivism

1. a recurrent theory or belief, as in philosophy or art, that the qualities of primitive or chronologically early cultures are superior to those of contemporary civilization.
2. the state of being primitive : the primitivism of the Stone Age peoples.3.

the qualities or style characterizing primitive art. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/primitivism

This ugliness is akin to the Primitivism of the past in the west. Those initial primitivisms were interested in how to loosen up the rigid practice of painting. It was just as guilty of this faux primitive ugly aesthetic that went largely unchecked under the banner of investigating and appropriating other cultural practices without being accountable for the cultural authenticity of the work.

Paul Gauguin
http://www.hatjecantz.de/paul-gauguin-793-1.html

This apathetic trend towards painting over the last 30 years is contagious. It aligns itself with disingenuous legacy of primitivism. It also spurs legions of followers who are now identifying this lackluster trend with what it takes to be an artist. These artists then produce generations of students believing this is the type of commitment required to be an artist.

These faux paintings should never have been created in the first place. Why choose to cheat your pursuit as an artist by creating faux objects that requires icons, and narratives to squeak by as a possible art object.

Many are called

Why subject yourself to anything other than love? Everything has to feel, smell, taste–and measurements, whatever your rubric–must feel right in art-making process. Regardless of professors, classmates, wives, children, activism and whatever else that may be reasons to compromise that love. It takes time to recognize it, nurture it, and master it. One must hold that love closest to the breast.

Choosing to become an artist means this love is primary. No one has forced anyone to be an artist, painter, sculptor or whatever and one may naturally grow out of one discipline into the next. But to make work simple out of spite for a particular medium or topic is a waste of time. The only possible outcome is betrayal to your being. This trend of continuous cynicism and disdain of mastery in art is an attack at one’s core. These artists like Ellen Gallagher engage in this betrayal.

Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

by Ana Bayon

Artist: Ana Bayon

Ana Bayon is a Argentine draftsman living New Hope, Pennsylvania. She studied fine arts in Buenos Aires and New York. Her work was recently featured in the contemporary drawing publications  ‘Strokes of Genius – 8’ and in the upcoming ninth edition. Her work was also selected for the book  “Art Journey: Portraits & Figures, The Best of Contemporary Drawing.” Her work is in collections throughout Philadelphia area.

by Hilde Goossens

Artist: Hilde Goossens

I paint characters in waiting rooms or transit zones, and scenes of waiting crowds. My goal is
to paint an impression that insinuates and suggests rather than defines, so the viewer has
the task to search and decide for himself what he or she sees.

My preferred material is acrylic paint, and I really enjoy the process of mixing colors. The
typical process is to dilute my paint with water and add (a) drop(s) of black Chinese ink
rendering toned-down and mostly transparent colors. In my work, I am well aware of the
opaque/transparent properties of the colors, and I use them smartly. However, I have a
strong preference for transparent paint as it gives the opportunity to add many layers and
suggest even more.

Because I love to experiment, I often add collage and photography to my work, but the result
of these experiments always ends as a painting. When I use photography under my paint, it
makes these artworks more realistic, but realism is not what I’m looking for, simplification
and a step towards abstraction is what I’m looking for. When I’m painting, I’m envisioning
that I’m watching a moment of scene with my eyes almost closed so I can remove details but
still capture the essence of the scene and its characters.

by Gavin Garcia

Ana – oil on canvas

KB Bed

KB with cushion – pen and paper

Life model I – pen on paper

Lying with her – Mono print

Self-portrait

KB II – pencil on paper

Ana portrait – mono print

KB

Drypoint, self-portrait

KB with cat – pencil on paper

Where there used to be a theatre.

Neil Young

Dylan

For Francis

Artist: Gavin Garcia

I am an artist and a musician from Gibraltar, living and working in London. Within my work I try to explore the human form through the study of individuals whilst hoping to create images which capture the vulnerability and beauty of people. At times I focus on the surrounding landscape and its encompassing attraction, be it man made or crafted by nature. By drawing, painting and printing I use the strength of line as well the power of colour to create images that hold meaning.

Website: www.gavingarciaart.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gavingarciaart

Twitter: @gavinkgarcia

Video to recent interview: https://www.facebook.com/gbcthehub/videos/1168111816606273/

by Christopher Hutchinson

Ellen Gallagher
https://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/23lewi.xl.jpg

The American artist Ellen Gallagher is admired to the point of reverence on the other side of the Atlantic. Her distinctive combination of politics and prettiness has been catnip for collectors and critics alike these last 20 years. For the latter, there is always so much to talk about – her range of references from Moby Dick and Sol LeWitt to Black Power and Detroit techno, her trademark restyling of 50s ads and 60s sci-fi movies, her evident if excessively elusive intellectualism – all appealingly couched, to collectors, in the delicate aesthetic of her paintings and prints.

It is worth knowing about this high regard when visiting Gallagher’s retrospective at Tate Modern. It helps to explain the sheer scale of the event: almost 100 works, many of them multi-part, accompanied by a catalogue of eulogies by some of America’s finest art writers, and all kicked off by a gigantic blown-up reprise of Man Ray’s famous photograph of Matisse sketching an odalisque in harem pants on a couch with Gallagher’s own face pasted on to the model and Sigmund Freud in the role of Matisse.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/05/ellen-gallagher-axme-tate-review

Note1-Painter & Videographer

This investigation comes about after an Atlanta,GA based non-profit Smoke School of Art’s weekly homework assignment and is primarily based on the “Brilliant Ideas” video and the well written review of her retrospective by Laura Cummings. Cummings does an excellent job of sifting through the multiple layers of sentiment and projections heaped unto this mediocre artist that validates Gallagher as the “most recognized African American painter since the nineties”. These notes take the well-articulated points by Cummings and the fodder present in Gallagher’s dialogue and points out the inadequacies that are consistent through Gallagher’s career.

Gallagher’s work makes one think fondly on the kitsch-laiden work of Romare Bearden. Once again this cut and paste mediocre practice of collage is proven to be the breeding ground of knick knack collectibles.

The gridded, collaged canvases of Gallagher’s ’90s works deal in eyes and lips borrowed from American minstrelsy, repeated as patterns across canvas http://waaaat.welovead.com/upload/rss_download/20130622/600_0/201306220003272123.jpg

The gridded collage above, Gallagher’s breakthrough piece, is an indicator of her true interest which has nothing to do with painting. No painter’s painter would be satisfied with this attempt at painting. Collage does not operate on the interest of painters who enjoy painting. So why does Gallagher retain “reverence” status as a painter? Cummings answers this question with nods to minimalist artists such as Agnes Martin’s still abstract grid paintings. It is a stretch of the imagination to include this comparison as valid because the success of Martin’s work is due to the primacy of paint. Martin would never cut and paste these transitions.

That distinction may not seem like much of a distinction but Martin never felt the need to move to the violent act of cutting a canvas to apply such a coarse transition as Gallagher. When an artist feels the need to abandon the primacy of a medium to plop down texture it is an indicator of lack of mastery. It is an indicator of an obvious inadequacy. This inadequacy then begs to be overlooked relying heavily on sentiment and the projection of others to overcome it. Without mentioning “minstrels” are these paintings good? No.

Agnes Martin
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b8XHmLcfdI4/VW4GkhqdtaI/AAAAAAAAJzY/hrQaVFhT9RQ/s1600/Untitled%2B1977%252C%2Bby%2BAgnes%2BMartin..jpeg

Minimalism

1. A school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme simplification of form, as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary colors, objectivity, and anonymity of style. Also called ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, rejective art.
2. Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature, or design.
3. Music A style of music marked by extreme simplification of rhythms, patterns, and harmonies, prolonged chordal or melodic repetitions, and often a trancelike effect. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Minimalist+art

Gallagher’s rough application is an aversion to minimalist practice, an aversion to Martin, Lewitt, and many others. Again, this comparison to these amount to nothing more than name dropping to force a conversation that is not there. Minimalist seeks to reduce and subtract mediums and ideas to its purest form. Gallagher’s laborious, often clumsy steps, amount to a contrived additive process where emphasis is placed on the quantity of labor not an interest in a stringent pursuit in her praxis.

Note 2.5-sentiment

Prior knowledge for this show. An entire gallery, for instance, is hung with numerous editions of what appear to be pretty much the same work: sheets of lined exercise paper glued to canvases, sometimes lacquered, sometimes painted fetching colours and sometimes featuring racial caricatures of big lips and bug-eyes. These mouths and eyes are always tiny and sometimes so faint as to be spectral, which carries its own meaning. Gallagher describes them as “the disembodied ephemera of minstrelsy”.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/05/ellen-gallagher-axme-tate-review

Cumming’s articulates the above observation of Gallagher’s well. If Gallagher’s work requires prior knowledge of all sorts turns out to be a requisite to be received, then how can she be a great artist? A great resource maybe, like the Dewey decimal system–a way to access library books on several unrelated topics that have minute correlations to each other. Research should be a prominent part of every artist’s practice, but if it is a requirement for the viewer to do the same then that artist has not communicated properly, or it so generic and populous that everyone can create their own narrative. The sprinkling of buzzwords that are racially charged with advertising amounts those unimaginative juxtapositions of surrealists who exploited the indigenous primitive imagery to access their subconscious. This type of practice is just lazy.

This essay continues next month with “Postcolonial Thoughts: Notes on Ellen Gallagher, Part 2.”

Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

by Petra Lea

Waterfall

Silence Again

Enchanted Forest

The Ascent

Substratum

Still Life With Glass

Blind Ambition

Sight Unseen

Artist: Petra Lea

I am a professional artist based in the UK at The Electric Picture House Artists Cooperative. I exhibit throughout the UK and USA including New York, London and Oxford. My artworks are housed in collections in the UK and USA. I have also had my artwork published in magazines, including Rapsodia Independent Literary Review based in Italy and Capitol No in Switzerland.

I am a member of Collagistes Collective, an international group of collage artists. I am represented by The August Agency in New York and the Artbank in China.

I participate in an average of ten exhibitions per year, these include group and solo exhibitions.

Weblinks:

http://lelu-designs.mysupadupa.com/

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/petraleaart/

https://www.instagram.com/petralea_art/

https://twitter.com/PetraLeaArt

by Lynn Price

‘Pages of a Landscape’. 2017 Paper, stitch installation.

Pages of a Landscape paper stitch installation 1

Pages of a Landscape paper stitch installation 2

Pages of a Landscape paper stitch installation 3

Pages of a Landscape paper stitch installation 4

Pages of a Landscape paper stitch installation 5

‘Fragments of a Landscape’.  Paper, stitch, wax, wall-piece. The Nelson Regional Award, Changing Threads Contemporary Fibre Awards 2017.

Fragments of a Landscape Detail Paper stitch wax

‘Unknown Territory’.  A 25 piece, paper, stitch wax installation. The images depict ‘openings’ representing metaphorical windows into the unknown, designed to evoke a feeling reminiscent of a first encounter with somewhere unfamiliar and new. Winner of Dame Suzie Moncrieff Judges Award, Changing Threads Contemporary Fibre Awards 2016.

Unknown Territory paper stitch wax 1

Unknown Territory paper stitch wax 2

Unknown Territory paper stitch wax 3

Unknown Territory paper stitch wax 4

Unknown Territory paper stitch wax 5

‘When I Think of Home’ 2015. Machine embroidery, glass, wax installation.

When I think of Home II (1)

When I think of Home II Detail (2)

When I think of Home II Detail (3)

Artist: Lynn Price

I’m an English artist, from semi-rural Derbyshire, living and working in New Zealand’s beautiful South Island. I graduated with a BA Hons degree in Ceramics and Glass in 1984 and have been apprenticed trained in Siena, Italy during 1995. Since emigrating to NZ in 2006 I have found that living with a foot in two worlds offers endless scope for creative expression. Drawing was an integral part of my art training and I frequently feel the need to express my ideas through mark-making. I work in both glass and mixed media.

Uprooting myself from my homeland, took some courage, energy and faith in the future. As an artist, the experience also makes for complex influences that, willy-nilly, manifest in one’s work.

‘the power of a place where formative experiences helped shape identity lives on, a power more remarkable since it relies not on physical presence but only the act of remembering’.   John Percival, Return Migration in Later Life

From a migrant’s perspective, this quote resonates deeply for me. Through my art practice I address memory and nostalgic association with the landscape I call ‘home’, yet it references a narrative that can be read as personal or generic. I’m interested in the fact that we are able to bring associations to places and landscapes which, through memory, hold a resonance throughout our lives.

As I revisit these themes, memories ‘fine tune’, shift and idealise and I’m always surprised at how entangled I become in both the depth of the memory and the emotive response to it.

www.lynnprice.co.nz

www.instagram.com/lynnpriceart

www.facebook.com/lynnprice.nz

Lynn welcomes commissions and her studio is open by appointment.

by Wal Keck

A ragtag bunch of statements that between them might be relevant:

Then

John Renshaw taught me (and others):

“You can tame a wild goose, but a tame goose never goes wild,” he said. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry to bring it under control.”

He looked at work and said “You were coming out from under the table and ‘oooooh,’ you’ve banged your head”

and walked away.

Another time he looked and said “You’re skating, lad. Skating. Oo – Thin ice”

and walked away.

All was metaphor and all, eventually, sank home.

He took some of the students, who had spent the previous two weeks in the printmaking department, outside to the yard and had them build a large framework, to which they were instructed to attach their previous two weeks’ work. He then set about setting fire to the frame, instructing the students to grab a piece of A1 paper and to start to draw as their efforts went up in smoke. Most students grabbed their work off the frame and ran. Those that grabbed their paper and drew, went on.

He talked in terms of mark making. He talked of lines. He talked of it all being about space. He packed us off to look at Velázquez.

He taught us to avoid being precious, to be prepared to overwork a picture to derive more from it. The next picture was the thing.

At the end of the year he brought in some of his own work. I was surprised, given the sort of things he encouraged us to do, at how small the paintings were. I said, “I thought they would be big paintings?” He said “They are big paintings, lad, they are big paintings.”

Now

I look at the work I produce 33 years later and wonder where, in all of the excessively tight control that an I-Pad gives me, lie the ripples of those lessons?

Process

My involvement with the process and its impact upon me are still what interest me most.

Working digitally, it is always possible to retreat in time and to follow a different seam.

I have always in my mind, somewhere, the thought that this is all leading up to “The Picture,” the image that, for me, stands head and shoulders above all others. The product of all of it. The outcome. The result. I hope that I never produce “The Picture” as it ends there.

Potential

I’ve always been more thrilled by potential than realization.

Looking

The images are subservient to the act of looking.

I cannot look at an image as well as I look through the process of cutting, reassembling and/or erasing that image.

I recall J.G. Ballard saying that he did not want his children to read his books as it was too intimate a relationship for them to have with him.

When I am erasing areas of old paintings it can also feel too intimate. I enter a room in the National Gallery and seeing one of ‘my’ renaissance paintings across the room, blush slightly with the feeling that others know.

Momentum

At full tilt I feel that were I to lay upon the cold wet morning grass then I would sizzle.

The loss of momentum brings the leaden drag of gravity.

Images

The images are diary entries that trigger a recollection of an experience and/or a sequence of thoughts.

Sometimes they are markers, or signposts, of another seam of ideas, sometimes of dead ends.

Mining

Like a hunter, I track images to use. I gather them together and then mine them until I have extracted all that I can currently use.

The potential of a newly struck seam can take years off.

Inevitably the slagheaps pile up around me, making it difficult to find anything and to choose only 15 images.

N.B. No canaries were harmed in the production of the work.

It is all just the act of looking and of being engaged with a process.

It is all process and the impact of the process on the act of looking.

I am not focussed on the images. They interest me, but not as much as the process and the act of looking that they involve.

I see my work as debris, as fall out from my involvement with a process. The pictures were always subservient to the process and the act of looking.

Artist: Wal Keck

See more of his work on Instagram: wal616.

by Thomas Donaldson

Artist: Thomas Donaldson

Thomas is an English figurative painter and Lecturer based in Asia. He received his Master’s degree from Newcastle University in 2000 and since then has taken part in numerous exhibitions globally. His visceral works depict the portrait/nude which has been a traditional subject within the history of painting, which is easily recognizable and has been painted over and over again. This familiarity with the subject and the ideal of beauty in an increasingly over photo-shopped media allows Thomas to develop the process of painting through abstraction, mark making and impasto and at the end of the process still have something that remains familiar although imperfect and slightly awkward.

Website: http://www.thomasdonaldson.biz

Facebook   https://www.facebook.com/thomas.donaldson.art

Instagram   https://www.instagram.com/thomasdonaldsonart/

Twitter       https://twitter.com/thomasdonaldson

Pinterest     https://www.pinterest.com/thomasdonaldson/

Tumblr       http://thomasdonaldsonart.tumblr.com/

by Christopher Hutchinson

http://africanah.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/BeardenYoungStudents1964.jpg

Romare Bearden is considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. He depicted aspects of black culture in a Cubist style….Born in North Carolina, he landed in New York City and studied with George Grosz. His early paintings were realistic with religous themes. Later, his works depict aspects of family culture in a semiabstract collage and Cubist style. He was also a songwriter and designed sets for the Alvin Ailey Company. http://www.biography.com/people/romare-bearden-40540#synopsis

Collage

col·lage noun 1. a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing. https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Romare Bearden has left a significant mark on the African American art community many years after he has gone. He is the most prolific semi-abstract collage artist to be recognized in the realm of art. His influence cannot be easily dismissed. This article will attempt to do just that.

Being the most prolific semi-abstract artist means absolutely nothing in the pursuit of art. Anyone can manufacture a ton of crap, but production is not the sum of what makes a great artist. If production alone were the criteria to be successful many artists would have met and exceed Bearden’s position in the “Black canon.” This article questions his status as the major influencer he is to the African American art community.

There is an argument that Bearden is in many ways the first abstract art introduced to the African American art community. That is simply not the case. Harlem Renaissance artists like Aaron Douglas’ s cubism preceded Bearden by decades and is certainly more an artist. The collage practice period is a gross attempt at creativity. To cut and paste imagery is an ugly mode of praxis.

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936 http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/mosaic-hurston/files/2011/07/into-bondage.jpeg

Any artist who likes the foundation of the arts (drawing, painting, and 3-D works) could never appreciate such a practice void of artistry. Collage as a medium is an offense to these foundations. If this is an artist’s entry point these artists eventually will need to return to those foundations. Bearden’s accomplishment is the fact that he produced this collage farce for his entire career repeatedly with little to no change. The fact that he could dredge through this monotonous cutting and gluing speaks to a kind of attrition that has not to do with art, rather a kind of masochism.

Kitsch

Kitsch noun 1. art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: “the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch” adjective 1. considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: “the front room is stuffed with kitsch knickknacks, little glass and gilt ornaments”https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Kitsch is a more appropriate discussion for Bearden’s prolific production. Knickknacks of African American culture scrapbooked on a large rectangle for consumption. The Harlem renaissance was not Kitsch. They were interested in realism. They used analytic and synthetic cubism to access an abstract realism. Those artists used their art to literally build a vernacular of tangible African American history not to be scrapbooked, rather a present lived moment. Bearden’s work subverts and erases the very foundation the Harlem renaissance built and reduced it to a postcard.

Bearden is used as a model for many artists to aspire to, and many artists succumb to his success as the rubric of their own practice. Many “Black galleries” are saturated with this dated knickknack art that only succeeds as a poor copy of an original consumable. These artists that choose to pick up the mantle of Bearden waste their lives never developing work for themselves. Why do “Black galleries” and collectors support this obvious cliché as the pinnacle of African American contribution? Especially when Bearden himself credits European study as his major source of influence, not the “Black canon.”

Collections
By Maynard Eaton

Jerry Thomas Jr. and Alan Avery may have engineered Atlanta’s single most significant black art exhibition ever this past weekend. Their unprecedented collaboration produced an historic cultural event for dozens of the city’s Who’s Who art aristocrats to admire and purchase rare original works by Romare Bearden, America’s preeminent African American artist.

The Lamp, by Romare Bearden

“We are the first two art dealers – regardless of color – that have collaborated,” says Alan Avery, owner of the Alan Avery Art Company in Buckhead. “It doesn’t happen in Atlanta. But, I think it is even more significant that we are from different races and that we come from different backgrounds, but that we are collaborating for the strength of Atlanta, the Atlanta art scene and the Atlanta collector base.”

“Bearden is one of the all-time great artists,” adds Jerry Thomas, the owner and highly regarded impresario of Jerry Thomas Arts. “He would not only enjoy the prices that his works are bringing but also the mixed audience of both blacks and whites. I think that would have been very important to him. What makes it ever more significant is the collaboration between me and Alan Avery. Hopefully this will not only be the beginning of such collaborations, but will set a new mold for the country in terms of blacks and whites working together to produce more shows.”

Bearden’s work now commands a hefty price tag, with the pieces on display at Alan Avery’s gallery ranging from $40,000 to $400,000. It was an uptown show for an upscale cross-section of Atlanta’s elite, and the metro area’s sophisticated art connoisseurs. They didn’t blink at the prices. Six of Bearden’s prize pieces were sold the first day, and the exhibition continues through January. http://saportareport.com/romare-bearden-exhibition-the-tipping-point-of-atlantas-black-arts-renaissance/

From a financial standpoint $400,000 is a great investment, but at what cost. To train the next generation to replicate this means of production is appalling. An artist in 2017 doing a copy of Bearden, believing it to be a true representation of the African American community is beyond delusional yet many Black artists are doing just that. The stagnation located in the African American art community can be placed squarely at the feet of these collectors and galleries that praise the romanticized kitsch element present in all of Bearden’s production. There are many artists within the “Black canon” which would be more suitable as an entry point for African American artists.

Georgette Baker http://premierart.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/GB-Randoms-for-New-Site.jpg

Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.