John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) - Head of a Man, 1777-78
Quite a brave show this, in which a major art institution confronts its own colonial past in a show with over 100 artworks spanning a period of over 250 years from 1768 to the present day. This exhibition opens up conversations about empire, enslavement, resistance, abolition and colonialism through art. It contrasts historical art made by white men with art made by contemporary black British and American artists. One of the artists - John Singleton Copley an academician we learn, was actually a slaveholder, whilst other artists of the time were supported by patrons who would have owned plantations. It does at times make for uncomfortable but enlightening viewing. A prelude to the exhibition situated in the courtyard is the huge black and gold painted bronze sculpture by Tavares Strachan, entitled The First Supper (Galaxy Black), it is a reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, but peopled with significant figures from black history such as Haile Selassi who stands in for the Christ figure. It was certainly popular with both visitors to the exhibition and passers by attracted by the large scale of the piece. Contained within the actual exhibition itself is a contrasting painting by Frederick Elwell which interestingly depicts The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee of 1938. The painting, consists of a group of elderly white men in three-piece suits gathered around a table similarly having a meal presumably before choosing the paintings that would make it to an RA exhibition. The painting serves to show how much things have changed since that period and how much more inclusive the RA is now with their membership and selection committee with regard to race. The RA's President from 1924 to 1928 was artist Frank Dicksee who has a painting displayed here of in which two women represent the ideals of Aryan beauty. We are told that Dicksee regarded avant-garde art by Picasso et al inspired by other cultures at the time as racially impure. He is quoted as saying: 'our ideal of beauty must be the white man's'. A very provocative statement which underpins the need for an exhibition like this. The exhibition itself opens with a darkened room full of historical portraits of black men such as writer Ignatius Sancho by the likes of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. There is also a bust by sculptor Francis Harwood - Bust of a Man, 1758, which is more typical of the time, where black sitters and models weren't given any recognition and were reduced in paintings to mere background details. This marginalisation of black subjects within western art of earlier periods is addressed here in a room further into the exhibition by Barbara Walker's Vanishing Point 18 (Titian), where she emphasises the black figure in a Titian painting and reduces the main (white) characters to ghostly embossings only visible to the viewer from certain angles. There are further examples of Walker's work at the National Portrait Gallery's current show The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure (here) in my previous post. The second room of the exhibition contains Hew Locke's flotilla of model boats of all shapes and sizes, suspended from the ceiling, silently sailing down the middle of the gallery past historical and grand manner portrait paintings in a haunting re-enaction of the Middle Passage. Other personal stand-outs in the show are Betye Saar's subtle but searing I'll Bend but I Will Not Break, which features a wooden ironing board branded with that notorious image of the inhuman conditions endured on slave ships to which an iron has been manacled. Behind this tableau hangs a white sheet onto which has been embroidered the letters KKK. The piece draws you in inviting you for a closer look before delivering its killer punch. It is perhaps the most shocking of all the exhibits here. Another interesting little piece was Keith Piper's The Coloureds' Codex, An Overseers’ Guide to Comparative Complexion, a display case and guide featuring pots of pigment which classify the skin tones of all people involved in the slave trade with a eugenics diagram featuring cranial, facial and other physical measurements of the enslaved person's body. There are still echoes of this shadeism today even within the black community, where lighter complexions are judged as being more preferable, attractive and trustworthy than darker ones. One of the most interesting rooms is titled the Aquatic Sublime and features an immersive John Akomfrah three-screen video installation Vertigo Sea. I'm not usually a fan of film installations but this one gave me pause. It is about the sea and the middle passage, but also about man and his impactful interventions on the sea, the landscape and wildlife and also his cruelty to his fellow man. There are three screens projecting the most gorgeous and melancholy visuals. I was content to just sit and let their beauty wash over me for a while. This room also has a couple of Turner seascapes that contrast nicely with the large colourful abstract of Frank Bowling, and the gorgeous mythological paintings by Ellen Gallagher about the Drexciya myth – the tale of a subaqueous community founded by the unborn children of pregnant enslaved women thrown overboard in the Middle Passage between Africa and the Americas. This is quite an important exhibition which could easily be expanded or extended further into another exhibition. The curators have done a great job striking a balance between the wrongs of the past and current reflections on that troubled history. The exhibition appears to be a statement of intent by the RA that they are taking the subject of decolonisation seriously. Leaving the exhibition there was lots for me to take away and mull over. I stopped to look at the monumental Tavares Strachan sculpture in the courtyard again. The abiding memory of the show though was of that Betye Saar piece. It was brutal and nasty, but slavery and colonialism was a brutal, nasty business.
Tavares Strachan - The First Supper (Black Galaxy)
Francis Harwood - Bust of a Man, 1758
Kerry James Marshall - Scipio Moorhead, Portrait of Himself, 1776
Unknown Artist - Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit, 1740-80
Thomas Gainsborough - Ignatius Sancho, 1768
Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of a Man probably Francis Barber, c. 1770
Hew Locke - Armada, 2017-19
Kehinde Wiley - Portrait of Kujuan Buggie, 2024
Benjamin West - American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain, 1783-1819
John Singleton Copeley - Watson and the Shark, 1778
John Singleton Copeley - Mary and Elizabeth Royall, c.1758
Portrait of George Prince of Wales, later King George IV, c.1787
Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, 1779
Shahzia Sikand - Encapsulated Confrontation, 2011
Shahzia Sikand - Promiscuous Intimacies, 2020
Thomas Banks - The Hindu Deity Camadeva with his mistress on a crocodile, c. 1794
Robert Houle - Lost Tribes, 1990-91
The Singh Twins - Indiennes: The Extended Triangle from the Slaves of Fashion series, 2018
Johann Zoffany - Colonel with his Family and an Indian Ayah, 1786
Yinka Shonibare - Woman Moving Up, 2023
Mohini Chandra - Imaginary Edens/Photos of my Father, 2005-15
Karen McLean - Primitive Matters: Huts, 2010
Kara Walker - Tate Fountain with Venus, 2019
Barbara Walker - Vanishing Point 18 (Titian), 2020
Thomas Rowlandson - Richard Cosway, Maria Cosway and Ottobah Cugoano, 1784
Margaret Burroughs - Black Venus, 1957
William Grainger - The Voyage of the Sable Venus From Angola to the West Indies
Kara Walker - no world, from An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters
Kara Walker - Freedom, A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times
Isaac Julien - Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow
Isaac Julien - Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow
Royal Academy Schools and Ivory Lecture Tickets
William Mulready - The Toy-seller
Thomas Stuart Smith - A Fellah of Kinneh
Thomas Stuart Smith - The Pipe of Freedom
Albert Joseph Moore - The Mother of Sisera
Keith Piper - The Coloureds' Codex, An Overseers’ Guide to Comparative Complexion
Frank Dicksee - Startled, 1892
Betye Saar - I'll Bend But I Will Not Break
Frederick William Elwell - The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee 1938
Frank Bowling - Middle Passage
El Anatsui - Akua's Surviving Children
Ellen Gallagher - Surviving Spheres
J.M.W. Turner - Whalers
J.M.W. Turner - Seascape with Buoy
Lubaina Himid - Naming the Money
Yinka Shonibare - Justice For All
Olu Ogunnaike - I'd Rather Stand
until 28th April
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington house
Piccadilly
London
W1
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