The 30 Americans show is touring art museums countrywide on the pretense that these institutions can't curate, acquire, or have the courage to show art by black americans all by themselves. According to the press release of the Rubell museum who curated the show, "30 Americans showcases works by many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades".
The NBMAA claims "30 Americans showcases works by some of the most significant artists of the last four decades" but who's counting? Well, I am. It's 2022 and if the claim is that the work represents art from the 1960s onward then the arithmetic is still missing a decade or two. Be that as it may...
The show is further -cough- "supplemented" by the museum's own social justice warrior contributions.
Museums are often criticized for their "white cube" display facilities but what this show manages to do is to turn the exibition space into a space resembling a psychiatric ward with the wall coverings serving as padded walls.
Within these walls exist the psychological demons that haunt these individuals and - we are being sold they are the important African American artists!
Many are not only somehow important but troubled as well. We can't blame the afflicted for this condition, its a by-product of the system that advances such "airing of the grievences" work to be marketed as representative of black and native american art. After all, this is a half century of work with so little to show. In fact, this show in many ways wholly explains why so little art from "people of color [who, btw, must conditionally vote democratic]" is shown. This stuff is just not very good.
Things that every art patron already knows entering this exhibit are that:
- Racism is bad - check
- Poverty is bad - check
- American history is violent, filled with injustices, and uneven at best - check
- Capitalism is cruel when you are at the bottom of the barrel - check
The obligatory artistic, bingo card categories are of course race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, identity, race, gender, glug, glug, glug.
One would think an art show doesn't have to condescend to illustrating, yet again and again, these worn out artistic tropes but, oh yes!, they do. One more time with feeling. Ah one, ah two...
Black face rants, appropriation celebrations, and "who me?" are three of the ways these walls scream.
Kara Walker's wall length, silhouette narrative is a rant against the Camptown races minstrel song that devolves into an imaginary trip into the seven rings of hell, most of which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual song, little to do with the occasions when it was commercialized by black-faced and black performers, and which distorts beyond all scope the behavior of most human beings.
And if Walker's piece jumps the proverbial shark, Nina Chanel Abney's piece yells, "Hold my beer!". In "Class of 2007" painted her whole MFA class in black face because she was the only black MFA student in her class and, oh by the way, she was also upset by the number of black prisoners in jail so that kind of makes it okay.
The fictional histories of imagined oppressions doesn't end there. Kehindre Wiley's "Equestrian Portrait of the Count Duke of Olivares" - a finely executed piece of craftsmanship - smacks of a historical envy for a tradittion that never was. Standing alone in an actual art for art's sake show it would convey mockery. Here the context of grievance swallows it whole.
Appropriation when exercised by people of color whose color happens to be white is universally scorned by the Woke/feminist/decolonialist social media stream media. In shows like 30 Americans its a downright obligation to appropriate until you drop. You won't hear a word of, "Wait, didn't you just say that this was a bad thing?" from anyone. Nope. Uh, ah.
Wiley, Kerry James Marshall, Shinique Smith, Rozeal, Basquiat, Simmons, Weems, and Colescott's textual complements all admit as much.
I have to confess I'm not being critical. Appropriation in art is like a glass of lemonade on a hot day. The groups claiming ownership of cultural ambient influences need to get a life.
Confused about your identity. Hey, me too. Give me a break, our own baggage is more than enough.
Ironically, this show oozes of oppression envy. In the 21st century, true poverty is being reduced daily, racism stops no one from getting ahead if they want to, and brow-beating patrons with guilt trips don't change a stinking thing.
Having said all that, there is some very nice work, some mediocre but big-name work, and, like all of life, some real crap in this show. Go see it. It's like avisit to the Cabinet of Dr. Caligary. Bring a sense of humor, you'll need it.