Whitfield Lovell Autour Du Monde Julie L
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WHITFIELD LOVELL Autour Du Monde Julie L. McGee Whitfield Lovell, After an Afternoon, 2008. Radios with sound, 59 × 72 × 11 in. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. © Whitfield Lovell Journal of Contemporary African Art • 26 • Spring 2010 48 • Nka DOI 10.1215/10757163-2009-005 © 2010 by Nka Publications I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all and World War II–era studio photographs, though and every nation. Battleground, part of Lovell’s larger installation David Drake Visitation: The Richmond Project (2001), portrays a Civil War–era Union soldier.4 Pago Pago is among he American artist Whitfield Lovell has been the most recent works of this sort and was exhibited Autour Du Monde collecting and using vintage accoutrements with At Home and Abroad (2008) and Autour Du T — the material culture of late-nineteenth- Monde (2008) in Lovell’s Kith and Kin exhibition and early-twentieth-century African American life, at DC Moore Gallery in New York.5 Embedded in Julie L. McGee including photographs — for many years. He is best each reworked image are the oppositional histories known for his installations and tableaux, combina- of the black body in relation to uniform, rank, ser- tions of superb charcoal and Conté crayon draw- vice, opportunity, self, and nation. Developed indi- ings on weathered wooden planks or cream paper, vidually, the tableaux relate to an expanded instal- and found objects.1 Lovell’s sustained engagement lation concept that Lovell envisions, part encomium with historical subjects and themes was evident in and part memorial. His interest in blacks in the his 2008 exhibition Kith and Kin, which included military is multilayered: his maternal grandfather, several large-scale images of World War I and Eugene Glover (1904–84), traveled from his home World War II servicemen whose likenesses first in Winnsboro, South Carolina, to the state’s capi- spoke to Lovell through intimate, vintage studio tal, Columbia, to try to enlist. He wanted to see the photographs; they form part of an ongoing project world, travel to Africa, become “more worldly.” For that began nearly ten years ago. Pago Pago (2008) is many, the U.S. military did provide a conduit for an alluring, seductive, and otherworldly image: a travel abroad. But Eugene Glover was rejected on debonair figure with an air of nonchalance reclines the dubious grounds of physical height: he was told in a late Victorian cane or bamboo armchair. The he was too short, while a different prospective black title situates our thoughts: Pago Pago, the capital of enlistee was told he was too tall. Glover’s rejection American Samoa in the South Pacific, is a village reflects the American armed forces’ considerable located on the island of Tutuila, near Pago Pago resistance, at that time, to full racial integration. Harbor. Long a service port for the U.S. Navy, the The United States entered World War I in 1917, harbor was shelled by a Japanese submarine in 1942. two years after the release of the racist film Birth of To enhance the languorous, horizontal repose of a Nation, and the same year as one of the worst inci- the figure, Lovell executes the Conté crayon draw- dents of racial violence in the history of the armed ing across two wide plywood panels rather than the forces: a series of riots at Fort Logan, near Houston, narrow, vertical wooden boards more customary in Texas. The Fort Logan race riots stemmed from his tableaux. The seated figure wears the uniform interracial conflict and claimed the lives of many, of an Army Air Force Enlisted Technician, Fourth black and white; but ultimately they were blamed Grade, and arranged before him are fifteen vintage on the black soldiers of the Third Battalion, Twenty- radios that emit a sound track of Billie Holiday fourth Infantry, stationed outside Houston to guard singing “I Cover the Waterfront.” A soulful song of the construction of Fort Logan.6 White fear kept longing, waiting, and watching the sea for a love’s black enlistment low and battalions small.7 African return, Holiday recorded it multiple times between Americans have fought for their country in every 1941 and 1956, turning it into a jazz standard.2 battle since the Revolutionary War, but even within As an artist who draws inspiration from the the armed forces they have been subjected to seg- past and its material culture, Lovell does not set regation, prejudice, discrimination, and at times out to teach us history, but the subjects and objects brutality; during the first two world wars, they were he brings together encourage us to deepen our assigned to lower-ranking noncombat positions knowledge of African and American history and and posted overseas, to places such as France and culture. Pago Pago is one of several depictions of the Philippines. It was not until 1948 that President figures in military uniforms in Lovell’s oeuvre.3 Truman issued an executive order to end discrimi- Of these, most are developed from World War I– nation in the armed forces, and not until 1950, dur- McGee Nka • 49 Autour Du Monde, 2008. Conté crayon on wood panels with globes, 102 × 189 × 171 in. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. © Whitfield Lovell ing the Korean War, that integrated units were sent figures have an artistic life beyond pictorial narra- into combat for the first time. tion and outside the history of and within the pho- For Lovell, the haunting history of the Fort tograph. In her essay “The Site of Memory,” Toni Logan incident and his grandfather’s disappoint- Morrison describes the intrinsic role imagery plays ment at the enlistment office fuel his historical and in her fiction writing. “It’s a kind of literary archae- personal engagement with the vintage photographs ology: on the basis of some information and a little he collects of figures in military uniform. Rooted in bit of guesswork you journey to a site to see what historical studio portraiture, infused with his artis- remains were left behind to reconstruct the world tic sensibilities and intentions, Lovell’s final tableaux that these remains imply. What makes it fiction is oscillate between factual and ethereal histories. the nature of the imaginative act: my reliance on the Though embedded in the tangible, photographic image — on the remains — in addition to recollec- image — and thus the life of the portrayed — Lovell’s tion, to yield up a kind of truth.”8 50 • Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art • 26 • Spring 2010 Morrison works within the realm of human grating American forces, they were deployed with truths, not verifiable facts, and thus draws a criti- French troops. The 369th Regiment, known as the cal distinction between fact and truth: “So if I’m Harlem Hellfighters, was the first all-black regiment looking to find and expose a truth about the inte- to be on combat duty in World War I. rior life of people who didn’t write it (which doesn’t mean they didn’t have it) . then the approach The entire unit was given the distinguished Croix de that’s most productive and most trustworthy for Guerre by the French national government for their me is the recollection that moves from image to service. Yet, despite the sacrifices and courage dis- text. Not from the text to the image.”9 Like Mor- played by African American soldiers during the war, rison, Lovell’s creativity is fed by the human truths they nevertheless encountered a virulent backlash of white racism upon their return to the United States. he locates within the portraits in his collection of A number of newly discharged soldiers — still wear- vintage photographs. Both artists draw inspiration ing their uniforms — were lynched by white mobs.10 and creativity through deep truths that come from feeling connected to a larger ancestral history. As implied by the South Carolina potter David Drake, it is an ancestry that stretches back, through, and across epochs and geographies. Finding the right object to set in relation to his drawn images — in what Lovell calls “the place where the formal and artistic elements meet” — is both a formal and intu- itive process and one that can, and often does, take years to be resolved. As with many of Lovell’s tableaux, the added ele- ment is nearly always an abstraction, formally and narratively placed, and intended to subvert literal readings of the work. The material nature of Lovell’s completed tableaux is visually seductive: elegantly rendered images in Conté crayon become one with the surface of the weathered wooden boards, pep- pered with accents of previous use and surfacing: fabric, wallpaper, nails. In At Home and Abroad (2008), three male figures, two standing and one seated, are dressed in World War I–era U.S. Army brown wool double-breasted greatcoats. Two of the figures hold cigars, and, as in Pago Pago, there is an air of formality befitting the uniform and the occa- sion, yet the very concept of “uniform” is belied by each soldier’s countenance and bearing. Attached to the chest of the seated figure is a small target, and to either side of him hang fabric scraps pierced by nails. Important yet understated formal elements, they add visual balance and cadence and extend the compositional space beyond the environs of wood boards. The small target is a poignant reminder that all soldiers are targets abroad; so too are African American soldiers at home. During World War I, At Home and Abroad, 2008. Conté crayon on wood with some forty thousand black troops were deployed target, nails, and fabric scraps, 65 × 45 × 3½ in.