CHRONICLES ON PAPER AND CANVAS
From February 4 to March 11, 2023, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba presents the exhibition, CHRONICLES ON PAPER AND CANVAS, a significant gathering of work by mostly African American painters and printmakers. Representing five generations, it reveals that the historic vestiges of slavery, as in the Great Migration, have been a constant narrative in the work of Black artists.
The 36 artists are: Charles Alston, Henry Wilmer “Mike” Bannarn, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Betty Blayton, Sir Frank Bowling, Elmer Brown, Margaret Burroughs, William S. Carter, Richard Dempsey, Aaron Douglas, Allan Freelon, Lamerol Gatewood, Palmer Hayden, Humbert Howard, Albert Huie, Will Harvey Hunt, Clementine Hunter, Mary Howard Jennings, Wilmer Jennings, Sargent Johnson, Frederick D. Jones, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Joe Overstreet, William Edouard Scott, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mildred Thompson, Dox Thrash, Ann Dolly Wallace, Georgia Warren, James Lesesne Wells, Charles White, Ellis Wilson, John Wilson and Hale A. Woodruff.
A selection of remarkable paintings by 19th century artists memorializes locations significant during the period of Slavery and Reconstruction. Bannister’s rural and urban seascapes, Maine Coast and Providence River, respectively, were places where historical incidents occurred. Tanner’s Saranac Lake was a principal site on the Underground Railroad. Some works mark The Great Migration of African Americans out of the South, as in Howard’s Port Haven, 1944, the first black township in the north, and Menemsha Shacks, Martha’s Vineyard by Jones that pays homage to the fishing village that provided refuge to slaves escaping the south.
Early 20th century artists employed in the Federal Arts Project (WPA) documented the Industrial era and landmark buildings, such as Freelon’s Elverson Building. Other early artists recorded cotton farming, like Burroughs (Picking Cotton) and Scott (Untitled, Cutting Cane). The WPA’s employment and infrastructure program provided labor prospects, shown in Freelon’s Welding and Road Menders, Huie’s Road Mending, Wilmer Jennings’ Plowman and Ellis Wilson’s Turpentine Farm. Works such as Jacob Lawrence’s From the Builders Series give an episodic account of the role Blacks played in the development of the country.
In addition, many of the Depression-era artists apprenticed with Mexican muralists Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. The works of Charles White (Etta Mae), John Wilson (Campesinos), Mary Howard Jennings (Mexican Fruit), Will Harvey Hunt (Siesta), Sargent Johnson (Singing Saints) and Woodruff (who apprenticed with Rivera), reflect an awareness of the power of volumetric simplification of human form, a stylistic technique employed by the Mexicans in their large-scale public murals.
Artists for whom music and improvisation are integral to experimentation with different materials and abstract techniques include Overstreet (In the Garden of St. James),whose paintings function as dimensional, sculptural objects; Gatewood (Untitled from Energy Series), with squares, circles and rectangles creating a complex symbolic language; the perceived language in multidisciplinary and multimedia artist Mildred Thompson (Helio Centric #1) whose work exposes her study of physics and astronomy; and Richard Dempsey, whose Blue City exemplifies how drawn lines and marks can communicate with little association with representational imagery.
Although techniques and styles vary, many of the paintings and prints, covering 150 years of production, connect to themes significant in African American history and culture, up to the present time. This exhibition is organized by Debra Vanderburg Spencer, Curator-at-Large.
Kenkeleba programs are funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Mosaic Fund and many generous friends.
