The nearly one hundred works assembled at the Rubell Museum DC for the exhibition American Vignettes: Symbols, Society and Satire include five of Robert Colescott's paintings found in the section labelled "Satire". They represent a mature stage of his practice, when in his sixties he reached the height of his career. Born in 1925, following a seemingly unremarkable childhood, Colescott went through tempestuous decades in his professional as well as his personal life before settling in Tucson, Arizona, in 1985. Never associated with art movements or groups of artists, he refined his unique technique along his peregrinations, from Paris where under the influence of Fernand Léger he adopted a figurative style to Cairo where he discovered Egyptian art and the rich colors of North Africa. The core of his practice was centered around a theme born from a deep family rift overshadowing his early childhood. On his mother's side, his ancestors were slaves from Southern plantations and his father was of mixed black, white and Native American descent. The couple moved from New Orleans to Oakland, California, looking for better opportunities as "white", leaving their "black" roots in Louisiana. Success unfortunately did not concretize. Colescott who was a light-skinned black person identified as white until his mid-forties, including while in the Army during WWII. Racial identity went deeper than his skin color, and shaped his career.
New Orleans was the perfect setting to discover Colescott a decade ago at the Arthur Roger Gallery and during the travelling exhibition 30 Americans in 2014 at the Contemporary Art Center. The Crescent City's vibe in sync with his work made it relevant, like being home. This time, the gathering of five of his large paintings in one room is the occasion to revisit his legacy. Starlet (1976), the earliest, reflects his cartoonish style of the seventies. The poster-like composition features a white Hollywoodian starlet on a snowy background wearing only scarf, woolen hat and gloves, bathing in the light of a projector, as she is pursued by a half-naked suitor under the lewd gaze of the black director. The unabashedly pornographic scene includes in the lower left corner a clapperboard labelled: "Sex On The Slope Scene II" and on top the title written with penises. Funny? Tasteless? Shocking? The previous year, the artist had produced a painting still considered revolutionary and recently bought by The Lucas Museum in Los Angeles (opening in 2026). In George Washington Carver Crossing The Delaware: Page From An American History Textbook (1975), Colescott introduces appropriation to revisit history and challenge the cultural values of the classical painting from Emmanuel Leutze Washington Crossing the Delaware, (1851). At the time, he began a very productive period of his career as he underwent pivotal personal changes, embracing his blackness.
No subject is off limit for Colescott, including religion. Modern Day Miracles (1988), the title of the next painting hints at a divine intervention. The composition features two different worlds. At the top a white leonine figure with abundant hair and a beard, God in his immaculate gown, ready to have intercourse with a black lady wearing only a pink bra. A blue brushstroke like a slash isolates the scene from a group of smaller black characters at the bottom. The snippets of their domestic life provide a glimpse into black communities aspiring to be part of the American Dream: electricity, food, kitchen appliances, medical care. Fishes are found in a sandwich, in a frying pan on top of a stove, veiled hint to the Christian religion and its beliefs in miracles. The protagonists appear naïve even submissive and abide by the stereotypes of black portrayal. Only one happy fellow holding a bottle of wine shows his missing teeth through his wide smile. Could God be the artist?
Most likely inspired by Colescott's sojourns in Egypt in the mid-sixties, Arabs: The Emir of Iswid (How Wide the Gulf) (1992) treats of history, international politics, wars and economies. At the bottom of the painting, two nude females shackled at the wrists sit on oil drums labelled Arabia on the left side and heaps of bananas labelled Africa on the right. In the background, armed soldiers and a group of men wearing keffiyehs surround the captives. Towering the group, the portrait of a powerful figure with two stars on his shoulders profiled on a map of Egypt oversees the brutal scene. Red and green banners with yellow stars complete the setting. Scribbles in Arabic, el-Iswid (an archeological site on the Nile Delta) spelled on the map, three minute silhouettes of oil rigs, bring more to the story which takes a while to decipher. The title gives a clue referring to the Gulf War of 1990-1991, Operation Desert Storm. The black figures could also represent allegories of two cultures: Arabs on the left side, Africans on the right in this attempt at history painting.
Mythology is a boundless source of inspiration for artists and the story of Pygmalion, the sculptor falling in love with his creation is represented in a number of well-known chef d'oeuvres from Gérôme to Rodin and was made popular by the famous musical My Fair Lady. At the center of Pygmalion (1987), Higgins/Colescott dances with his black Elyza. The couple is surrounded by a black face version of two females defining the canons of beauty, Mona Lisa on the right and the Venus de Milo on the left. Accessory characters in the process of beautification are represented with curlers at the hairdresser or in front of a mirror. Neglecting scale or perspective, the interwoven portraits, white or black, appear to float on a tight background of geometric abstract patterns or blue skies. A lonely wide-eyed male at the bottom center raises his eyebrows, disapprovingly. The lively round of personages contributes to a story about the pressure on the black community to conform to white European standards of beauty, smothering their culture. The story of Pygmalion fits the artist who claimed "I am playing God with a woman".
A commemorative medallion of the Louisiana Purchase, historic treaty between France and the United States in 1803, overshadows Sunset on the Bayou (1993). Two white males exchange a purse filled with gold coins to seal the casual transfer of land and its people as a brown pelican, Louisiana's State Bird, looks on. In contrast to the official portraits, quintessential New Orleans scenes fill the rest of the painting. A mother cuddles her daughter as the caption mentions quadroon and octaroon and another caption in French reads "we do not talk about these things". These "things" are drops of blood which defined status in a complex creole society. The personal struggle of Colescott, tormented by his racial background which tore his family apart, is reflected in this very Southern story. Always deflecting the pain with a touch of humor, he includes a po'boy for a smile and also a caricature of the "black" person as seen by white people.
In 1997, the selection of Robert Colescott, first African-American artist to represent the United States with a solo show at the Venice Biennale, brought its share of controversy, and the nineteen paintings on view were qualified as "kind of competent American regionalist narrative painting" by the art advisor Allan Schwartzman. In 2022 the first retrospective of Colescott's work in thirty years took place at the New Museum in New York City. Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott allowed to revisit his legacy in today's context. He was a pioneer, unwavering in his mission to give black culture a voice in history. He chose appropriation, satire, and in an obsessive way treated of race and sex, introducing transgressive art through bold narratives, regardless of cultural sensitivities. He paved the way to a new generation of artists like Carrie May Weems, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall,... the list goes on.
Just remembering Colescott's quote when looking at the five paintings: "I am not a writer. I present an image that can leave it to you to write the story."
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