Big Art in New York

By Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic

The National Black Fine Art Show, held this year Feb. 1-3 in New York City, is a hodgepodge of many things: 42 galleries from around the country displaying the work of more than 400 artists, and an unseemly range of quality, from the marginal to the truly fine. It is less a show that surveys the state of African American art—not every important artist or gallery is represented here—than a show that surveys the business of selling African American art.

Though there were fears about the ripple effects of the Sept. 11 attacks on this year's show, just under 10,000 people poured through the doors of the historic Puck Building in Soho, and galleries reported sales totaling $11 million. The turnout and sales were among the best ever in the six-year history of the show, according to Keeling Wainwright Associates, the Maryland-based sponsors of the show. The three-day exhibition, spread throughout the spacious first floor of the building, is typically so packed during the weekend that it is nearly impossible to get a good view of all the art. Because it is not organized for content or theme, or assembled overall by a curator, the show itself is also literally a hodgepodge: works by masters like Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett hang next to fledgling, emerging talents, the baldly commercial bump against the experimental.

Sure, depending on your viewpoint, it's easy to gaze here and see a mess. But it is also possible to see gems amid the clutter and the fitful state of an art community, and a community of art buyers, making their way outside the White art world—and on their own terms. The power of community representation and history, as opposed to abstract and conceptual works, is strong here. And there is a long history of much of what is represented here grating the sensibilities of the art establishment anyway.

Carrie Mae Weems bold, large-scale photographs stood out this year in the exhibits of more than one gallery. Her untitled work from the 1995-96 series, "From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried," features, beneath sandblasted text on glass, two enlargements of the famous profile of a Congolese woman with her bare breasts, elongated head and headdress. Not far away were cartoon-like paintings by Claude Clark Sr. illustrating collusion between Uncle Sam and the Ku Klux Klan and, in others, the force of the federal government as a boulder flattening Black bodies.

"Earth," A bold clay bust bristling with energy by the artist Chukes, was displayed by the Thelma Harris Art gallery of Oakland, Ca. One of the mainstay's of New York's art scene, Savacou Gallery, exhibited a fine new work of collage and paint by Lisbeth Hamlin and eye-catching paintings by Glen Martin. Martin's work was inspired by the biblical verses reminding that there is a season for everything, including "A Time to Pray" and "A Time to Embrace."

There was a healthy representation of African art, including a wide selection of Shona stone sculpture from the Zimbabwe Gallery 1 of Oxford, Pa., a tiny town near Lincoln University. The gallery's owner, Colin L. Thompson, said that he is planning to open a space in New York. Until then, he, and other galleries here, find this show to be a straight line between themselves and the Black art-buying public.

Esther Iverem is the film and arts critic for BET.com and founder of SeeingBlack.com.

-- February 21, 2002

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