African
art controversy
photo: Costanza
Art expert Howard
Nowes (r.) examines artifacts found by Nick DiMola.
African Art Bugs: Feds seize new
artifacts from hit show 'Survivor'
If I have to believe this story, buying contemporary African Art can be very
dangerous for your health! David Norden
Picasso failed to acknowledge his debt to African
Art Emphasising an association between Pablo Picasso's works and the art of
Africa, as the Standard Bank exhibition does, not only highlights the tenuous
relationship between the two but might also have the artist rolling in his
grave.
Clarity of Hindsight: Five centuries of African
influence on Charleston art
BY KEVIN MURPHY SEPTEMBER
10, 2008 found at charlestoncitypaper.com
Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art
On view through Nov. 30, 2008
Gibbes Museum of Art
135 Meeting St.
(843) 722-2706
www.gibbesmuseum.org
For the Gibbes Museum of Art, the past is never far behind.
Rather than shunning Charleston’s history as a major hub of the slave
trade, the museum embraces controversy and shapes it into provocative exhibits.
Arriving on the heels of last spring’s Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation
in American Art, an exhibit that used the landscape as a lens through which to
examine the South’s distinct and peculiar institution, Grass Roots: African
Origins of an American Art, focuses on Africa’s impact on Charleston’s
culture.
If the Gibbes is antiquated in its artistic substance, it is innovative in
using well-known historical landmarks to more completely understand who we are
and where we come from. Grass Roots offers the clarity of hindsight by exposing
the complexities of the past and by providing a method through which
contemporary viewers can see, feel, and comprehend how the past shapes our
present-day lives.
Documenting nearly five centuries, Grass Roots tells the story of how
millions of enslaved Africans augmented their experience with the artistry of
their homeland.
Sculpture, video, photography, and paintings, as well as scores of handmade
baskets assault your senses as you move through the exhibit. The work serves as
a cultural bridge connecting Charleston’s African Americans to their African
ancestors.
Visually sharp and well-edited videos follow local men and women as they tear
sweetgrass from the ground and pack it into bushels. The basket makers discuss
their processes and lead us through a basket’s tedious construction.
Photographs called stereoscope cards document farmers working on plantations.
The photographs are richly preserved in a caramel light. The farmers work with
baskets and shovels but also possess a level of stoicism that transcends their
circumstances. Before books and magazines could readily reproduce photographs,
these stereoscope cards were the primary source for people outside of plantation
life to see southern slaves at work. Presented here, they are exquisite
composites of the fledging days of photography. They also powerfully register
the land and the people from centuries past.
The baskets on display are intricate and practical, dazzling and telling. As
the videos explain, individual baskets can take weeks to complete. It’s during
this period that personal artistry takes shape. Whether a basket is woven or
coiled, made from sweetgrass or synthetic fabric, the finished product is a
personal artistic achievement.
They are a genealogical thread that stretches across generations and
continents.
Baskets were used to celebrate marriage and births, to mourn deaths and ward
off evil spirits. In fact, for each of life’s major influences — family,
work, environment — baskets represent a small but significant moment in the
broad scope of human experience.
Stirring black and white photographs taken in the 1970s by Greg Day help to
bolster that. Day immersed himself in Charleston’s basket making community,
hitching up with the people who sold their wares on Highway 17 in Mt. Pleasant.
His photos capture life outside of basket making. They show people dancing in
juke joints, casting nets for shrimp, and the ghostly remains of abandoned
plantations. The strength of Day’s work lies in his unfettered access to
people in their place, without added drama or manipulation.
Set aside ample time for Grass Roots. The exhibition is an ambitious pastiche
that can enlighten as well as overwhelm. The gallery is so crammed with
artifacts, with crisscrossing alleys and dead-ends that the experience feels
like you are wandering through an archeological office building. But if you
investigate all that Grass Roots has to offer, you’ll be glad you did.
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