Playing the Race Card

This weekend was such an art filled weekend. I went to three seminars at the Hammonds House Galleries. There were two seminars focused on appraising art and one on estate planning. Later that evening I went to the play, Permanent Collection. After the play I got to thinking, do blacks jump to conclusions?

Let me back track a bit. Permanent Collection is a play that pulls from the incident at the Barnes Foundation. In the play the founder of the foundation dies and the new director is a black businessman appointed by a black college who is now in charge of the foundation. The foundation, similar to the Barnes Foundation, has an immense collection of Modern art and a wonderful smaller collection of African art. The new director wants to bring eight African art pieces into the galleries, but the director of education, a white man, disagrees and believes that is not only illegal (the will states the galleries could not be changed), but incongruent with the founder’s vision. The director of the foundation immediately states the fact that African art is not in the galleries is decimator and fights to get the eight pieces out of storage. Later after the white man repeatedly denies his racist perspectives, he does say that Modern art is superior to the African art.

One fact they failed to mention was how African art is extremely significant to Modern art history. African art and culture should always be included in the discussion of Modern art. The very fact that artists like Picasso would seek out these sculptures and masks for inspiration and studies, should have at least been mentioned.

So back to my idea, do blacks, jump to conclusions about racism? Maybe, I am not sure. At one of the seminars an appraiser said that because art made by black artists are normally priced lower in the art market, she looks at their peers who share the same resume, and raises the price of that particular black artist’s work on the same level. So, could the devaluing of art made by a black artist be attributed to race, could it be that since for hundreds of years people of this wonderful nation have devalued the lives of black people that these same people view products made by blacks aren’t worth much. Maybe I’m wrong, it must be that blacks aren’t that talented or because, hell, their own people don’t even value it that much (it seems blacks rather buy a coach bag than invest in their own cultural history), so why even bother with raising the bar.

If the demand is not there how are higher prices for art made by blacks justified? Of course we must understand why the demand may not be that high. It could be that it is not part of black culture to think of collecting art once you reach a certain economic level. Whites and other races may not want a black figure on their walls, or they don’t understand black culture enough to relate to their art, or it’s just too black, because if a black person did it, it must be speaking to black people or about black culture. For some reason it can never just be a universal sentiment, but that is a whole other discussion.

When there are New York Times critics becoming lazy about the work they are seeing and refuse to dig deep, we have a problem. One critic’s shallow critique was how Sol’Sax’s work was reiterating the sculptural forms of Alison Saar and Stephan Balkenhol’s work. Her critique indicated that she was not only ignorant of the cultural complexities and symbolism in his work, but lazy about trying to figure it out. Was that racism? If Sol’Sax was white would she have been more familiar with his cultural references enough to give a more knowledgeable review? Maybe she gives everyone off the mark critiques and I am being a bit sensitive.

I do understand the laziness. I admit that I don’t try that hard to figure out why there are so many photographs of lower class white people in less than desirable settings. I attribute it to why blacks focus on the “ghetto” in pop culture. However, Chelsea has become ridiculously saturated with this type of photography. It is just like the songs about the “ghetto,” it becomes unoriginal, repetitive and boring. I just want to scream, “Move on!”

I would like to point out that the art world easily speaks about sexism. There have been a few articles on how at auction a female artist does not demand the high prices of male artists. However, racism is a whole other hush-hush issue, one that no one really wants to discuss openly in well-respected publications like the New York Times or say Art Forum. I could be wrong. I would like to be wrong. To prove me wrong though I would like to know who has, that is in a power position that everyone listens to, white or black or whatever, spoken about this in depth. Send me the articles even and I will gladly distribute them. Until then I will work on moving on past race and try not to jump to too many conclusions, but sometimes you have to admit, it’s racism.

Comments

[Cinque Hicks]

Interesting discussion. Check out Greg Tate's writings. He does a lot with visual culture and race. Also, it seems like Jerry Saltz (Village Voice) comes back to this topic periodically.

Here's one article, though it's not the one I was thinking of:

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/jsaltz/saltz10-20-04.asp

Also, Joy Garnett used to cover black art specifically at Artnet, but that hasn't been active in years.

As you know, I think there's a huge hole in the critical establishment, which I'm personally working to help fill. In the meantime, I think it's coming down to underground discussions, like the one happening here.