Willie Cole's Africa Remix

Willie Cole’s Africa Remix Trickster and “Tribe”

Jean Borgatti illie Cole (Fig. 1), like many African- American artists of his generation— those born or spending their early All PiCtures With PerMission of Willie Cole childhoods in the 1950s—reflects on the necessarily intertwined subjects of sub-Saharan Africa and the history of Africans in the Americas in his work in ways that take fullW advantage of personal history, the twin developments of the fi elds of American Studies and African Studies in the 1960s, and overall increased access to information. Indeed, he may be seen as an exemplar of this larger phenomenon in his appropriation of African forms and his use of African philosophy, particularly in his works that draw on the imagery of Eshu-Elegba, and his “tribal” identifi cation with Africa through inscribing in graphic form a stereotypical African identity on his own body. The topic of (re)capturing Africa in African American art is complex and rich, and well beyond the scope of this paper.1 Certainly, art-school or university trained African-American artists have refl ected on Africa and the lives of Africans in the Americas since Edmonia Lewis created her versions of Cleopa- tra and Hagar in the late nineteenth century. However, addressing sub-Saharan Africa came later, in the early to mid twentieth century, as a result of the debate in France, where there was a lively and infl uential community of African and African-Ameri- can intellectuals. Th is debate centered on the ideas of Negritude and pan-Africanism proposed by Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Leopold Senghor and, later, Frantz Fanon. Indeed, travel to sub- Saharan Africa to experience heritage became part of an Afri- can-American coming-of-age ritual in the United States, at least beginning in the late 1950s as African countries began reclaim- ing their independence. Th e expression of history, particularly the delineation one’s relationship to sub-Saharan Africa and (re)claiming an African identity, became an important focus for African-American artists, although taking such diff erent forms as Jeff Donaldson’s definition of a distinctive black aesthetic and Fred Wilson’s postcolonial critiques. It has not been not an easy or comfortable trip “home,” however. Howardena Pindell (1994) comments acerbically that racism in America deprived her of learning about African art. It was as taboo a subject in her middle-class environment as was, according to Michael Harris (2003:14), wearing a red dress or eating watermelon in public. 1 Willie Cole Since having Africa as a conscious reference point is hardly

12 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 12 11093 • 20902122 novel in African American art history, why Willie Cole rather 2 Perm-Press (hybrid) (1999) Metal, wood, and wax; 96.5cm x 20.3cm x 27.9cm than some other artist? First, his wit and treatment of canoni- (38" x 8" x 11") cal African forms in distinctly non-canonical ways makes his Private collection work simultaneously recognizable yet refreshingly original and Photo: Courtesy of AlexAnDer AnD Bonin, neW york thus it has great visual appeal to an Africanist audience. Second, 3 Ironmaster/GE Male Figure (1998) his work is not well known in the African art community. Renee Metal iron parts, cord, wood, and wool; 91.4cm x 35.6c x 38.1cm (36" x 14" x 15") Stout and Alison Saar are probably the two best-known African- Photo: Courtesy of AlexAnDer AnD Bonin, neW york American artists in this community as a result of the exhibitions “Astonishment and Power” (MacGaff ey and Harris 1993) at the National Museum of African Art and “Body Politics” (Roberts and Saar 2000) at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, in which their well as to icons of American pop culture. His fi gures made from work was shown in conjunction with African sculpture.2 Th ird, commercial irons, deconstructed and reconstructed, recall the the economy with which Cole’s work communicates rich layers proportions, stance, and gestures of African fi gure sculpture, of meaning makes his work more African than neo-African. well illustrated by Permanent Press (1999; Fig. 2) as well as Iron Because Willie Cole’s work is not as well known among Afri- Master (1998; Fig. 3), which evokes the Dogon seated fi gure of canist scholars as that of Renee Stout or Alison Saar, it seems a Hogon or community leader from the Rockefeller Collection useful to provide a quick—but hardly exhaustive—overview, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Phillips 1995:pl. 87), an particularly of his Africa-related pieces.3 He is the quintessen- institution that Cole oft en frequented as a resident of New Jer- tial postmodern artist in his eclecticism, his conversation with sey’s Newark area and a university student in New York during art history, and his themes that interweave African and Ameri- the 1970s. In Gas Snake (2002; Fig. 4), Cole plays with “ready- can ideas, forms, and experiences in ways both personal and mades” like the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, but Cole invests his universal. He takes full advantage of the license postmodernism ready-made with a social message, as did African artists histori- provides, to paraphrase anthropologist Adam Kuper, for selec- cally. In this case, it is about energy use, pollution, and the trou- tive autobiography in the guise of honest “art.”4 Th us, his work bled relations between the United States and the Middle East. combines references, both intended and serendipitous, to Afri- Cole’s Steaming Hot (1999; Fig. 5) evokes Man Ray’s surreal and can art, to the adoption of African forms by modern artists, to threatening Gift (1921)—an iron rendered incapable of anything Dada’s ready-mades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as but destruction if used—but is a much more playful work, while

summer 2009 african arts | 13 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 13 11093 • 20902122 4 Gas Snake (2002) Aluminum tubing with gas nozzle; 184.2cm x 88.9cm x 203.2cm (72½" x 35" x 80") Photo: Courtesy of AlexAnDer AnD Bonin, neW york

5 Steaming Hot (1999) steam iron and feathers; approximately 25.5cm x 11.5cm x 31cm, Plexiglas case 36cm x 36cm x 36cm (10" x 4½" x 12"; 14" x 14" x 14") edition of 25, published by Artists space, 1999, to benefi t the organization’s endowment fund Photo: Courtesy of AlexAnDer AnD Bonin, neW york

such super-sized works as Kanaga Field Iron (1995; Fig. 6)— named for the Dogon Kanaga mask suggested by the carving of its handle—recall the pop art sculptures of Claus Oldenburg: his giant baseball glove or Swiss Army Knife. Despite this element of play, Cole invests his work with meaning and history that is deadly serious, and both personal and com- munal. However, he would say that he rediscovers meaning that is already present (Brody 1997). Irons and ironing boards evoke the role of many African-American women as domestic workers in other peoples’ homes. Scorch marks suggest branding, and the intertwined histories of slavery and plantation culture that marked early economic development in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. Th e shapes of the iron and board themselves suggest boats, and thus the iniquitous Middle Passage where so many died in their forced move from Africa. Cole notes that his work Stowage (1997; Fig. 7a) is based on a diagram of a slave ship from a book he had in childhood, a well-known image showing the most effi cient “packing” of persons into the ship (Fig. 7b) that he has seen as an ironing board since the middle 1980s (Brody 1997). Visual puns and verbal play characterize his work, creating layers of meaning. However, Cole himself maintains that his work is not about representing the life of Africans or African- Americans but to compress time, to speak about the past, the present and the future all in one stroke (Shaw 2006). Th us Cole’s work is not simply quotation, document, or intervention.5 Willie Cole was born in 1955 in Somerville, New Jersey, but spent most of his childhood and much of his adult life in or around Newark. He was in high school in the late 1960s, as Afri- can studies came into its own as a discipline and percolated into secondary school curricula. Newark itself was an enclave where interest in Africa fl ourished, linked to an established African- American community. Newark is also the home of the Le Roi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) Spirit House, a center for theater and performance established in 1966 that kept Newark “very African,” according to Cole (Shaw 2006), and of the Newark Museum, with its excellent collection of African art, where Wil- lie Cole began taking art classes at the age of 12. Questioned by Renee Shaw in a 2006 interview in Lexington, Kentucky, regarding his interest in Africa, Cole noted that his art

1 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 14 11093 • 20902122 instructor at the Arts High School in Newark, where he spent his high school years, used African art to teach his students form, requiring that they create a replica of a traditional work. Ironi- cally, in the light of later developments in his work, at 14, Willie Cole carved a Tji Wara headdress out of Styrofoam. He went on to say that although he was fascinated by African art from his youth, it did not affect his fine art until he began studying it as a university student in New York with Rosalind Jeffries (Shaw 2006). He was at the School for Visual Arts between 1972–1976 and continued studying with the Art Students’ League through 1979 (Cole and Sims 2006). This was a critical period when public awareness of African art surged—the Museum of Primitive Art was incorporated into the Metropolitan Museum and the economic value of African works began to climb. But it was his friendship with the Newark-based African art dealer, the late Lawrence Ramsey, which began in 1982, that helped that interest grow by giving him a prolonged and more intimate exposure to African sculptural forms than could be had simply by visiting them in museums (Shaw 2006). His first “iron” work was not made until 1988, after he had seen an iron flattened in the street and was struck by its resemblance to an African mask. Neo-Senufo (1988; Fig. 8), an assembled work, evokes for Cole the well-known composite animal helmet masks of the Senufo (hence, his title—see Sims 2006:32–33 for a comparative illustration of Neo-Senufo and a Senufo prototype helmet mask) and marked a shift in his work from a graphic 6 Kanaga Field Iron (1995) and narrative approach to an additive method, along with his Wood; 11.5cm x 198.1cm x 95.5cm (4½" x 78" x 37½") Collection of the Worcester Art Museum embracing of African culture as a core, and increasingly com- Gift of Donald and Mary Melville plex, element in his visual production (ibid.). Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York Like many artists (and Africanist art historians) of his gen- 7a Stowage (1997) eration, Willie Cole comes to African and diaspora cultures Woodblock on kozo-shi paper, edition of 16; Image 125.7cm x 241.3cm through study and observation. They provide an important part (49½" x 95") of his visual and intellectual resource base, just as the industrial Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York sectors and thrift shops of urban America have come to provide 7b A detailed drawing of the slave ship Brookes, showing how 482 his working materials. If he has “mined” the Western Sudan for people were to be packed onto the decks. The detailed plans and cross form in his “iron” made figures and bicycle tji waras (2002; Figs. sectional drawing was distributed by the Abolitionist Society in England as part of their campaign against the slave trade, and dates from 1789. c ourtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-44000

summer 2009 african arts | 15 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 15 11093 • 20902122 8 Neo-Senufo (1988) Assemblage of found objects and concrete; 54.6cm x 50.8cm x 23.5cm (21½" x 20" x 9¼") Collection of Dennis A. Derryck Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

9a Vetta Pinnacle tji wara (mother and child) (2002) Bicycle parts; 126cm x 58.5cm x 23cm (49½" x 23" x 9") Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

9b Speedster tji wara (2002) Bicycle parts; 188cm x 38cm x 56.5cm (74" x 15" x22¼") Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Sarah Nor- ton Goodyear Fund. Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

9a–b), he has been drawn inexorably to the theology and philosophy of the Yoruba Religion, as Santeria is called by its Afri- can-American adherents in New York city (Curry 1997)—and particularly to the character of Eshu-Elegba. Among the Yoruba in Africa, Elegba is the trickster, the principle of chance present where choices have to be made—at the door, at the crossroads, in the marketplace, during divination. He is also gatekeeper, in that he must receive the first offering in order to permit the other gods to receive theirs. Robert Far- ris Thompson (1984:19) suggests Eshu-Elegba’s importance in the Black Atlantic world stems from his transcendence of ordi- nary affiliation, since he is the messenger-companion of every deity and every devotee, and he expresses the power of potential and change. Henry Louis Gates aligns Eshu-Elegba with double-voiced discourse in his seminal work The Signifying Monkey

16 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 16 11093 • 20902122 10a The Elegba Principle (view with Lawn Jockey) (1995) Capp Street Project—San Francisco Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

10b The Elegba Principle (overview) (1995) Capp Street Project—San Francisco Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

(1989), emphasizing his verbal trickery and double meaning. possession becomes the “horse” mounted by the deity. The lawn Willie Cole’s Elegba is based on the lawn jockey, appearing jockey extending the reins of the horse to the rider thus takes on alone as well in pairs or groups. The lawn jockey is a form of stat- Elegba’s role as gatekeeper, mediating access between the natural uary suggesting servility and the low status of African servants and supernatural worlds. Thus, color and role association—gate- as “boys,”6 linked to Elegba by color symbolism and character- keeper and trickster—align the lawn jockey with Elegba. istic functions, just as forced African migrants to the Ameri- Willie Cole first used this figure in a 1995 installation called The cas identified Yoruba spiritual forces with Catholic saints (Cole Elegba Principle (Fig. 10a), where it was positioned at the entry (as 1995). Red, black, and white are the colors of Elegba in the Yor- Gatekeeper) to a labyrinth comprised of seventy-two old painted uba Religion. The lawn jockey’s innocuous quality allowed it to doors, each inscribed by a word and installed in groups of four be subverted for use, it is said, to indicate safe passage along the that pivoted when pushed (Fig. 10b; see also http://www.youtube. Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century (Goings 1994, com/watch?v=zw9CPDwiWcg). Cole, in an interview with Mary- Sims 2006:63)—trickster behavior at its best.7 Cole (2005b) fur- sol Nieves in 2001, said of this piece: “The Elegba Principle is a ther free-associates jockey and horse with Maya Deren’s Divine symbolic interpretation of Elegba as the presenter of choices. The Horsemen of Haiti—where the worshipper in a state of trance door or doorway is a symbol. The act of making choices is what

summer 2009 african arts | 17 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 17 11093 • 20902122 11 House and Field (1997) 12 To Get to the Other Side (2001) Mixed media; House: 66cm x 48.3cm x 25.4cm (26" Installation view of “Game Show: Installations and x 19" x 10"), Field: 73cm x 48.3cm x 25.4cm (28¾" Sculptures by Willie Cole,” Bronx Museum of the x 19" x 10") Arts, Bronx, April 12–Sept. 9, 2001. Private collection Photo: Mark Lutrell courtesy of Alexander and Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York Bonin, New York

Elegba compels us to do” (Cole 2005a). Holland Cotter, New York and shirt with a red vest and cap, shown holding a cross; the Times art critic and reviewer, describes his own passage through other, wielding a knife, is Africanized with the accumulations the doors as a process of “selecting random signposts in a free- and reflective eyes of Kongo power figures (minkisi). House and associational maze, for each door bears a word that serves as a Field refers simultaneously to the general and the particular, trigger for thoughts, pieces of an episodic, morally loaded con- like so many of Willie Cole’s other works. It refers to the class, crete poetry” (2001). economic, and cultural distinctions that arose between slaves It is, indeed, the perfect visualization of Elegba’s action as who worked in the house and those who worked in the fields described by John Mason, theologian of the Yoruba Religion and to his own family history, field hands on his father’s side and in New York City. He refers to it as a decision tree where each domestic servants on his mother’s (King-Hammond 2006:92). choice produces a repercussion, each choice is an opportunity House and Field by virtue of its name also calls to mind Malcolm carrying with it the cost of missed opportunities in those choices X’s 1963 “Message to the Grass Roots” in which he railed against not taken (Edwards and Mason 1998:12, Curry 1997:67). More- this historic cleavage in the African-American community and over, grouping the doors in multiples of four, an important num- the consequent pitting of one group against the other in historic ber in the Yoruba divination system, implies order, the other side terms (Sims 2006:63–64). of chance. Ifa, the principle of order, is Eshu’s complement in In this piece, the figures are shown as moving in different Yoruba philosophy; the two are inseparable.8 directions, as those populations did, and their juxtaposition The total number of doors, according to Cole, is not sym- evokes multiple, and sometimes conflicting, interpretations. This bolic but circumscribed by the space available in the galleries is pure Elegba. Their juxtaposition is the Cuban tale in which where the work is installed. He started with seventy-two and he Elegba appears in different guises to two friends in order to pro- has added doors to the work with each subsequent installation. voke a quarrel and teach a lesson about seeing beyond the super- There are now twice as many doors in the work, and his ultimate ficial (Thompson 1971:Ch. 4, pp. 3–4; 1984:19). goal is a permanent installation in which the participants can Cole raises the issues of insight and foresight by giving “House” actually get lost, forcing choices that have real consequences9— (and “Gatekeeper” in the Elegba Principle) “diviner’s eyes,” cowry creating a truer representation of the Elegba principle. shells, the tools used by the Diviner himself to cast the oracle, or In 1997, Cole produced a work featuring two Elegba figures or “to see.” In the case of “House,” the eyes refer to looking forward, lawn jockeys titled House and Field (1997; Fig. 11)—loaded terms to “seeing” what life will be like for Africans forcibly brought to to be sure. In this work, one figure is neatly attired in white pants America.10 In the case of Elegba as Gatekeeper, the eyes of the

18 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 18 11093 • 20902122 13 yoruba Elegba figure Detail from Epa mask (aguru epa), Nigeria, Yoruba people, Ekiti Region Wood, black brown and white paint. H. 121cm (47½") Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Gift of the Wellcome Trust. p hoto: courtesy of the Fowler Museum at UCLA

14 Detail: King and Queen from To Get to the Other Side (2005) Worcester Art Museum Installation Photo: Jean M. Borgatti

15a–b Detail: Knight and Rook from To Get to the Other Side (2005) Worcester Art Museum Installation Photo: Jean M. Borgatti

diviner imply knowledge, and in an Africanist reading, suggest order as the complement of chance, as it is in Yoruba philosophy. In the African Yoruba context, the eyes of Elegba figure on the rim of the Yoruba diviner’s tray (opon ifa), since chance must always be present when order is imposed on the making of choices through the casting of the oracle. It is perhaps serendipitous, but the eyes of order and the eyes of chance are perfect counterparts.11 Holland Cotter (2001) too talks about “house” and “field,” not in relation to this work, but in relation to Cole’s giant game of chess titled To Get to the Other Side (2001; Fig. 12), where he implies that unadorned lawn jockeys are pitted against African- ized ones: More than two dozen lawn jockeys—old emblems of vernacular racism—face off [on a giant steel chessboard] as if in combat. Some are unembellished; others have been transformed into African-style power figures with cowrie-shell eyes and bodies bristling with spikes. The meaning of the game is uncertain. Is it about aspects of Ameri- can ‘’black’’ identity at war with one another?

Certainly, this is the gist of Malcolm X’s diatribe. However, Cotter seems to have misread the piece, or read a particular meaning into the piece that is not entirely justified, since photographs do not show a team of unadorned lawn jockeys con- fronting a team of Africanized ones.12 Certainly, in the Worcester Art Museum’s installation of this work, unadorned (House) and Africanized (Field) versions of Elegba (or lawn jockey) made

summer 2009 african arts | 19 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 19 11093 • 20902122 up both teams, with the unadorned play- ers serving as the pawns, the front men, and the Africanized ones following—suggesting the role of those first acculturated Africans, free men and women as well as domestic servants, who were in the van- guard working for freedom and estab- lishing equality. Following this thread of thought, the unadorned jockeys (acculturated Africans) preceding the African- ized ones (less acculturated) inverts a Western hierarchy, where the important go first, to an African one, where the most important and senior are preceded by members of their retinue, and it subverts the color game often associated with these two groups,13 since domestic servants were often the children of white fathers and black mothers. A direct question to Willie Cole about a possible variation in the installations brought an immediate response: That was just Cotter’s interpretation. There is only one version of To Get To The Other Side. And it is not about a battle between house and field anything.14 Elegba at work again. Certainly there was a cleavage in the black community along these lines historically. Certainly there were situations in which they were pitted one against the other. Equally certainly, the more acculturated African- Americans had the skills to succeed independently in Euro-American culture and become leaders in successive waves of asserting an African-American identity. Certainly one can also read To Get to the Other Side as peopled by individu- als who could employ different strategies to achieve a common goal. Elegba is after all a symbol of unlimited potentiality, of “boundless possibility” (Edwards and Mason 1998:12). In talking about this work himself, Cole explains that the title is the answer to the question “Why did the chicken cross the 16 G.E. Mask and Scarification (1998) 2 panels, sandblasted glass with wood; 35.6cm road?” This may seem like a non-sequitur, x 58.4cm x 5.7cm (14" x 23" x 2¼") but it is what I would call a “classic Cole” Collection of Catherine Woodard and Nelson tangential answer designed to make you Blitz, Jr. Photo: peter jacobs, courtesy of Alexander think. He goes on: The chicken is the sac- and Bonin, New York rifice that opens the way for people to get to the Other Side in the Yoruba Religion, 17 Men of Iron (2004) Collaborating Printer: Josh Azzarella that is, to communicate between the nat- Digital print on Epson 9600 using Ultra Chrome ural world and the world of the spirits. Archival Inks; 55.9cm x 73.7cm (22" x 29") More specifically, “Getting to the Other Produced at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper Side” means addressing Eshu-Elegba, Photo: jack abraham, courtesy of Alexander the gatekeeper—through the sacrifice of and Bonin, New York

20 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 20 11093 • 20902122 a chicken to open the way (Cole 2005b). “Getting to the Other Side” can mean achieving a spiritual transformation or communion; it can mean death and escap- ing this vale of tears, as spirituals were so often (mis)interpreted by white listeners; or it can mean freedom, and therefore a coded reference to the other side of the river that separated slave and free states, or the other side of the border between the US and Canada, once the free states began to return escaped slaves. Sims suggests that this work refers as well to a personal “other side” for Cole, achieved through the acquisition of knowledge and experience as well as through his art practice, an “‘other side’ where one can be possessed by height- ened meanings and metaphors” (2006:25). And the game board is populated with lawn jockeys, Elegba personifications with their forward-moving, asymmetric stance recalling an African Yoruba visualization depicted as part of the tableau atop an Epa headdress—asymmetric, rudely gesturing, painted so that one profile shows “one” face to a viewer; the opposite, a different one (Fig. 13).15 These personifications also take different forms, as characters on a chessboard, with the pawns being acculturated (or unadorned lawn jockeys) but the named characters Africanized in different ways: Kings and Queens embellished with beads and crowns reminiscent of the Benin Kingdom and draped with the “power cloth” of American business: overlap- ping neckties; the knights with reflecting ancestral eyes and bristling with nails like Kongo power figures; the rooks and bish- ops wearing strands of raffia that mark space out as sacred in Africa along with clanking pots and bottles for medicine, suggesting traditional African religious practice (Figs. 14–15). 18 Domestic Shields XX–XII (1992) Thus, To Get To The Other Side draws Scorched canvas on wood with ironing board legs; each ca. 243.8cm x 40.6cm (96" x 16") upon Elegba not only in his role as gate- Photo: courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York keeper but in his guise of game-playing trickster and master of double discourse— 19 Facing Each Other: Prints Concerning Identity or Man Spirit Mask (1999) bringing to the fore this aspect of Elegba’s Collaborating printers: Randy Hemminghaus, Gail character so critical for African-American Deery Triptych: survival during the period of slavery, where Man: Photo-etching, embossing and hand-coloring to conform was required for physical sur- on Somerset Antique White paper; Spirit: Screen- vival; to know that you were pretending to print with lemon juice and scorching, and hand- applied heat gun on Rutgers handmade paper; conform was necessary for psychological Mask: Photo-etching with woodcut on Somerset survival; where double meanings allowed Antique White paper; 67.3cm x 99.1cm (26½" x 39") communication in the face of political and Photo: bill orcutt, courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York

summer 2009 african arts | 21 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 21 11093 • 20902122 social oppression—as it continues to do today, especially in black tribesmen who fit into a larger ethnic category and art workMen street culture. of Iron (Fig. 18)—a reference to African origins, strength, and In another group of work, Cole comes to grips with the Africa endurance—and of course his own identity now linked inexo- in his African-American identity, using the scorch marks of rably with irons.17 Playing on the ideas of ethnic identity and irons to imprint a stereotypical, primitive identity upon his own culturally defined notions of beauty, Cole depicts himself as a face and body. Favorite Brands, the subtitle of the catalogue of member of two different iron ethnicities, Silex and Sunbeam— Cole’s recent retrospective, is centered over the iron face plate the steam vent markings and face plate configurations covering that masks Coles face. The combination of word and image sum- face and body and creating a distinctive coiffure or headgear. The marizes a complex interweaving of ideas and forms running strict frontality and symmetry of the views (front and rear views through his career to date. Indeed, he is fond of noting that the contrasted), the passive stance, and such labeling as “Fig. 1 and 2. iron has become his brand, punning on the ideas of twentieth Silex Male, Ritual” suggest an early twentieth century anthropo- century product-identity and the processes of scarring in Afri- logical textbook reference, rather than a late twentieth century can culture and branding in African-American history.16 celebration of traditional culture, as often found in artful ethno- GE Mask and Scarification (Fig. 16) had its inception in 1994 graphic documentary photographs from the 1970s onwards.18 during Cole’s residency at Pilchuk Glass School. According to Silex Male, Ritual; Sunbeam Male, Ceremonial; and the work the story, as a photographer was documenting his working pro- Men of Iron (Fig. 17) that combines these two must be read in the cess, Cole held one of the sheets of steam-iron-embossed glass light of Cole’s earlier works, both Domestic Shields (1992; Fig. 18) in front of his face, painlessly “branding” it (Sims 2006:68). Not and Stowage (1997; Fig. 8). Cole used a different electric steam iron until 1998, however, did he make use of this, producing GE Mask model for each “shield” as he uses a different model to create the and Scarification. In this work, he juxtaposes two photographic scorched “faces” representing the ethnicities carried to the Amer- portraits of himself placed behind two sandblasted pieces of glass icas on slave ships. Indeed, twined through his work is a fictive imprinted with a GE ironprint: one clear with the steam vents Africa whose elements are given visual form through irons and solid, revealing his face “branded” or “scarified” with the charac- scorch marks, asserting African identity along with African-Amer- teristic footplate imagery, and the other showing the footplate as ican history (Cole 2005b). Facing Each Other: Prints Concerning a solid mask over his face, with the steam vents clear, suggesting Identity or Man Spirit Mask (2002; Fig. 19)19 makes the connection eye-holes and the decorative elaboration of a mask. Cole’s face explicit and personal. It is Willie’s Cole’s face; an iron face-plate; emerges from the misted glass with the markings of one of his a mask. It is Willie Cole’s face branded by an iron’s scorch and an favorite iron brands, so identifying him with the form that has iron’s form creating a de-contextualized African mask. Willie Cole made his reputation as an artist, indicating his identity and suc- is the Man, scarified by the Spirit which is the flipside of this Mask. cess, as ichi marks on the forehead of an Igbo titled elder indicate These three images and the ideas underlying them reverberate to his social and economic achievements. Masked by the iron, he “compress time, to represent the past, the present and the future also assumes the role of performer, behind the mask, taken by simultaneously” (Cole 2006). men who showed the appropriate talent and skill, in numerous cultures in Africa and by many African-Americans as masters of Jean Borgatti has a faculty research appointment at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she taught from 1984–2004. In Spring 2009, double discourse. she taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. jborgatti@ GE Mask and Scarification is a precursor to his 2004 “tribal” gmail.com images, self-portraits in that he uses himself as the model for

Notes 2 Mel Edwards, Howardena Pindell, Martin Untitled (1950; ibid., Fig. 78), or through more direct Puryear, Lorna Simpson, Merton Simpson, Renee Stout, visual quotations, such as Palmer Haydon’s Fetiche et This paper was first presented at the 14th Triennial and Fred Wilson all received some publicity in this com- Fleurs (1926; ibid., Fig. 47), Lois Maillou Jones’ Ubi Girl Symposium on African Art held at the University of munity through the Museum for African Art’s “Western from Tai Region (1972; Farrington 2005:Fig.4.15), or Florida, Gainesville, March 28–March 31, 2007 on a panel Artists/African Art,” though less for their use of African Barbara Chase Riboud’s Africa Rising (1998; ibid., Figs. titled “(Re)Claiming Africa in the Diaspora,” chaired by forms than for their feelings about African art. 8.4–8.7). Documentary views, abstract or naturalistic, Heather Shirey (University of St. Thomas) and it grows 3 For a more comprehensive look at Cole and resulted from residencies in West Africa, such as Jacob out of work done for the Worcester Art Museum in con- his work, see the catalogue of the retrospective exhibit Lawrence’s Meat Market or Street to Mbari from his junction with the exhibition. I thank the Worcester Art organized by Patterson Sims for the Montclair Art 1964 Nigeria series (Wheat 1986:Pls. 62–63) and John Museum for introducing me to Willie Cole and his work, Museum in 2006. Also visit his pages on the Alexander Biggers’ Jubilee-Ghana Harvest Festival (1959; Wardlaw and Dr. Shirey for putting the Triennial panel together, and Bonin website, http://www.alexanderandbonin. 1989:248–49), and burgeoning knowledge about African thus spurring me on to explore Willie Cole’s work further. com/artists/cole/cole.html. culture enabled literary and historic references to be Most of all, I thank Willie Cole for his generosity in 4 The paraphrased statement reads as follows: worked into titles, if less obviously into the visuals, as reviewing this paper, suggesting the title, and giving his “The most obvious attraction of postmodernism is in Jeff Donaldson’s Wives of Shango (1968; Painter 2007: permission to reproduce his works, and his gallery, Alex- surely the license it provides for selective autobiography Fig. 14.2). Interventions characterize recent approaches, ander and Bonin, for providing the actual illustrations. in the guise of honest scholarship” (Kuper 1999:18). particularly those of Fred Wilson, who uses actual 1 Both Nell Painter (2007:3–19), as an historian, 5 Numerous African American artists have ref- African masks to raise questions about authenticity and and Edmund Barry Gaither (1989: 17–34), as an art erenced sub-Saharan Africa in some way in their work appropriation, for example his Colonial Collection (1990; historian, chronicle black America’s changing focus on since the 1930s—indeed one would be hard pressed Flam and Shapiro 1994:93–94) and complex installa- Africa and the nuancing of the reference through the to find a mainstream artist who had not, whether tions like Martin Puryear’s Bodark Arc (1982; Patton twentieth century. Four other useful sources include through formal or ideological reference, as abstract as 1998:Fig. 122), that makes use of the formal properties of the major exhibition “Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: modernism’s African-derived shifting planes reappro- a Dan “chair.” The African Impulse in African-American Art” (1989) priated in the early work of Romare Bearden such as He 6 The appropriation of racist memorabilia curated by Alvia Wardlaw, as well as Patton 1998, Powell is Arisen (1945; Patton 1998:Fig. 75) or Charles Alston’s in order to deconstruct visual stereotypes is also a 2002, and Farrington 2005.

22 | african arts summer 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 22 11093 • 20902122 widespread practice, beginning in the 1970s with the 19 This work is titled Facing Each Other: Prints Collectibles and American Stereotyping. Bloomington: revamping of the “Mammy” image, with Aunt Jemima Concerning Identity (Philadelphia Print Collaborative, Indiana University Press. as a particular focus (see, for example, Harris 2003:84– www.printcollaborative.org/press/pressppccfestival. Harris, Michael. 2003. Colored Pictures: Race and Visual 124). Cole seems less interested in overtly revising the shtml, accessed May 17, 2007) but is known more com- Representation. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- lawn jockey’s image than in making it into a visual pun monly as Man Spirit Mask. The first title makes the lina Press. in the manner of the Yoruba trickster himself. relationships explicit. 7 It is important to stress here that whether the Gates, Henry Louis Gates. 1989. The Signifying Monkey: stories are true or not, they are part of the “lore” sur- References cited A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New rounding the figure, and it is this common interpreta- York: Oxford University Press. Bascom, William. 1969. Ifa Divination: Communication tion that helps build the Elegba persona for Cole. between Gods and Men In West Africa. Bloomington: King-Hammond, Leslie. 2006. “Talking Through the 8 William Bascom, in the first major book on Indiana University Press. Mind Fields: An Interview with Willie Cole.” In Anxious Yoruba divination, writes: “Ifa is a system of divina- Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands, ed. Patterson tion based on 16 basic and 256 derivative figures (odu) Borgatti, Jean. 2005. Multi-Tasking with Willie Cole, or Sims, pp. 89–99. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum. obtained either by the manipulation of sixteen palm Through Africanist Eyes. Gallery Guide for “Afterburn— nuts or by the toss of a chain consisting of eight half Willie Cole: Selected Works 1997–2004,” Worcester Kirk, Malcolm. 1981. Man as Art: New Guinea. New seed shells ... The identity of sixteen figures is a neces- Art Museum Nov. 13, 2005–Jan.6, 2006. http://www. York: Viking Press. sary and inevitable derivative from three principles: worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/afterburn.pdf. Accessed Kuper, Adam. 1999. Among the Anthropologists: His- First, the figures involve four items; second, each of April 25, 2007. tory and Context in Anthropology. New Brunswick NJ: the items can take two different forms; and third, their Brody, Jacqueline. 1997. “Every Action is Political and Athlone Press. sequence is important making sixteen and only sixteen Spiritual: An Interview with Willie Cole.” ArtNet, Febru- basic figures possible ...” (1969:3, 10). MacGaffey, Wyatt, and Michael D. Harris. 1993. Aston- ary 14. http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/fea- 9 Willie Cole, personal communication (e-mail), ishment and Power: Kongo Minkisis and The Art of tures/brody/brody97-2-14.asp. Accessed March 9, 2007. February 16, 2008. Renee Stout. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. Cole, Willie. 1995. Artist’s Statement: Elegba Principle. 10 Ibid. Painter, Nell Irvin. 2007. Creating Black Americans: http://www.cca.edu/library/capp/prop_r95b001.pdf. 11 Cowry shells feature as eyes on terracotta and African-American History and its Meanings 1619 to the Accessed April 23, 2007 cement votive figures of Eshu-Elegba in Africa as well Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. as in Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban related traditions, ______. 2005a. “Gropius Master Artist Exhibition: Patton, Sharon. 1998. African American Art. New York: and as they have migrated to urban America (Thomp- Willie Cole January 29–March 20, 2005.” Huntington Oxford University Press. son 1984:18–33, Pls. 11–13). Museum of Art press release. http://www.october- 12 It is out of respect for Holland Cotter’s writing gallery.com/paintmagazine/pages/mg_hmoa.html. Phillips, Tom. 1995. Africa—The Art of a Continent: 100 on African sculpture, and recognition of his enormous Accessed April 25, 2007. Works of Power and Beauty. New York: Guggenheim influence, that I raise the issue in order to clarify Willie Museum. Cole’s intent. ______. 2005b. Gallery Talk. November 12–13. Worces- 13 With reference to the status and hierarchy of ter, MA: Worcester Art Museum. Pindell, Howardena. 1994. Western Artists/African Art: The Artists Speak. Videorecording. Produced, shot, and color in the African-American community, Michael Cole, Willie, and Patterson Sims. 2006. “A Personal and directed by Catherine Saalfield, directed by Daniel Sha- Harris records a ditty that he remembers being used Artistic Chronology.” In Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s piro. On-line editor, Regi Allen. New York: The Kitchen, during his childhood: “If you’re white, you’re alright, Favorite Brands, ed. Patterson Sims, pp. 10–14. Mont- Museum for African Art. if you’re yellow, you’re mellow, if you’re brown, stick clair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum. around, if you’re black, get back” (2003:180). Powell, Richard. 2002. Black Art: A Cultural History. Cotter, Holland. 2001. “Art in Review: Willie Cole– 14 Willie Cole, personal communication (e-mail), London: Thames and Hudson. March 14, 2007. ‘Game Show.’” New York Times, June 22. Princenthal, Nancy. 2004. “Willie Cole: Irons in the 15 Robert Farris Thompson says of this figure, “to Curry, Mary Cuthrell. 1997. Making the Gods in New Fire.” In Afterburn—Willie Cole: Selected Works 1997– the right of the horseman appears without question, the York: The Yoruba Religion in the African American Com- 2004. Laramie: University of Wyoming Art Museum. trickster himself in one of his more famous guises—half munity. New York: Garland. black, half red, arms disposed with calculated asym- Roberts, Mary Nooter, and Alsion Saar. 2000. Body Edwards, Gary, and John Mason. 1998. Black Gods: Orisa metry. The right hand of this image is up, the left down” Politics: The Female Image in Luba Art and the Sculpture Studies in the New World. Brooklyn, NY: Yoruba Theolog- (1971:Ch. 9, p. 4). of Alison Saar. Fowler Museum of Cultural History ical Archministry. Work originally published 1985. 16 This message comes through clearly in Cole’s Monograph Series no. 29 Los Angeles: Fowler Museum public speaking, but for a specific reference, see Prin- Farrington, Lisa E. 2005. Creating Their Own Image: The at UCLA. centhal 2004:1. History of African-American Women Artists. Oxford: Shaw, Renee. 2006. Interview with Willie Cole. http:// 17 As noted earlier, many African-American artists Oxford University Press. touch base with Africa through references to African art www.ket.org/video_index.htm. Accessed January 27, 2007. Flam, Jack, and Daniel Shapiro. 1994. Western Artists/ or ritual in their work. Ben Jones’ 1971 Black Face and Sims, Patterson. 2006. Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s African Art. New York: Museum for African Art. Arm Unit Two is an interesting precursor to Cole’s work, Favorite Brands. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum. though not embedded in as complex or specific a narra- Gaither, Edmund Barry. 1989. “Heritage Reclaimed: An Thompson, Robert Farris. 1971.Black Gods and Kings: Yor- tive. A more interesting parallel may be found in Renee Historical Perspective and Chronology.” In Black Art, uba Art at UCLA. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History. Stout’s re-casting herself in Kongo “power figure” form Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-Ameri- in 1988—a move that took her own art and her life in a can Art, ed. Alvia J. Wardlaw, pp. 17–34. New York: ______. 1984. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro- new direction. Harry N. Abrams. American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage. 18 The reference to the images associated with Wardlaw, Alvia J., ed. 1989. Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: physical anthropology are intentional, but the com- Galembo, Phyllis, and Gerdes Fleurant. 1998/2005. The African Impulse in African-American Art. New parison to the work of studio-style ethnographic pho- Vodou: Visions And Voices of Haiti. New York: Ten York: Harry N. Abrams. tographers like Galembo 2005 or Kirk 1981 I believe to Speed Press. Work originally published 1998. be coincidental, and an artifact of my own reading and Goings, Kenneth. 1994. Mammy and Uncle Mose : Black Wheat, Ellen Harkins. 1986. Jacob Lawrence: American imagination. Painter. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

summer 2009 african arts | 23 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021

Page 23 11093 • 20902122