The Whitney’s “Black Male” — watch Yolo Akili Robinson testify on Black Masculinity in America | 1994-12

PROMISE EXCEEDS PERFORMANCE

Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art is a widely heralded, eagerly awaited, well funded show that promises far more than it delivers, and covers far less than it should. This exhibition will probably be best remembered for what it leaves out and misinterprets, and for the debates it provokes. It tells more about a select group of artists, curators and interpreters than it does about blacks, African-Americans, masculinity and the business of image making.

“Black Male” is a small show of uneven quality, but — through its sponsorship of supportive activities, such as discussions and film presentations — the Whitney casts a wide net. A study in contradictions, the show is Eurocentric and colonial in its protest mode, even as it rails against both of these attributes; it seems to protest against the popular depiction of men of color as objects of sex, crime and sports, yet it uses the very same images. At times, “Black Male” is a clever, witty and incisive show, as demonstrated by Carl Pope’s installation From the Trophy Collection of the Indianapolis Police Department and The Office of the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. At other times, however, it sinks to the level of purposeless grossness, such as in its inclusion of numerous works by Mapplethorpe.

Yet, for a number of reasons, despite its serious limitations, this reviewer recommends that you see the “Black Male”. Attendance will breed response, which, in turn, may prompt the Whitney Museum to address some of the serious issues regarding access, thrust and outreach that it frequently chooses to ignore. ‘The show underlines the fact not much has changed in the close to 25 years since Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of Negro Intellectual, was published: some black artists and cognoscenti are still in crisis.

Moving through this exhibition, smart viewers will note that black males are still largely invisible — the strivers, the parents, the friends, the home boys, the saga boys, and the working class folk, the men who live out their lives in wordless desperation remain uncaptured in their human luminescence.

“Black Male” tries to tackle a serious societal problem, one of the direct consequences of the society’s structural inequality, but it uses the basic model (colonial) and the same old venue (downtown) from which to send its message. To live up to its intriguing title, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, the show needs breadth and depth, but it delivers superficiality by emphasizing a single segment of AfricanAmericans — the Hip Hoppers — at the cost of a substantive penetration of the world of black males.

At the Heart of the Matter, “Black Male” will probably raise the hackles of the homophobic, because its organizers focus the show’s intensity on the gay black male, leaving little room for images of the heterosexual, except for those who loudly protest, those who are the most athletic, and the super machos. This emphasis also betrays the promise inherent in the exhibition’s title.

The exhibition also fails to link the threads and patterns of African-American, Black, Negro, Colored Life, and art. A New York Times reviewer asked rather plaintively where the works of Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neil and Kerry Marshall were. Are not these figures a part of the art picture of the past thirty years? Does their work not represent the life and times of African-Americans?

This is not an ordinary, installed exhibition in which the works speak for themselves. In fact, the brochures, press releases, film showings and lectures form an intrinsic part of the overall exhibition. Important components of this weave are a host of films from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, as well as conversations, seminars and teacher workshops led by some of the leading names of black art, literature, and academic disciplines. So much is going on at so many different times that few people will actually see the entire show. Most of the articles in the attractively crafted catalogue are well-written, but there are also inclusions of dense, academic prose,

The catalogue’s last quarter is devoted to the hip hop phenomenon. It is difficult to accept these new warriors and troubadours of rhyme as anything more than a fusion of the Sixties’ Soul Brother Pretenders and the Seventies’ five-percenters with the reincarnation of the “get over” dudes from every era since Emancipation. What seems to distinguish this “new segment” is their technine mentality, a seeming disdain for thought and study, and a thinly disguised wish to repel everyone.

The battle lines will surely be drawn by this show, which I recommend that you attend with open eyes and your mind tuned to what there is to blackness, masculinity, and contemporary American Art. Don’t be taken in by the surroundings. Let your eyes behold and your mind absorb the images and their meaning. If you are of African descent, it matters not so much whether you like the show or not, the important thing is that you understand how you are being viewed. The show is not just about art or politics — it’s also about the limits of our acceptance.

by Charles E. Wilson

DON’T GET ANGRY

The exhibit Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art through March 5 and curated by Thelma Golden, director of the Whitney’s Philip Morris branch and one of a handful of African-American curators in the United States, sets out to explore aesthetic as well as personal and political questions about how black men are represented in art, media and society. The social construction of black masculinity is key here and the images selected are intended to serve as presentations of these “faulty” constructions as well as critiques of them.

While the exhibit is immensely successful in presenting the stereotypes of the black man as athlete, criminal and stud [heterosexual and homosexual], it does not fare so well in its critiques of these stereotypes, at least not in the art portion of the exhibit. I do not, by any means, want to suggest that there is no value here. Many provocative works are featured in the exhibit. The issue I have is with the context in which they are presented.

Special Assistant to the President, an oil portrait of Willie Horton, the inmate furloughed by 1988 presidential hopeful Massachusetts’ governor Michael Dukakis who became a recurring image in the Republican campaign to portray Dukakis as weak on crime at the expense of perpetuating the stereotype of “African-American men as licentious and criminal,“ doesn’t help either. Instead. it propels the motif of black men as criminal thus reinforcing the only options are jail or the NBA. And considering that there are several pairs of sneakers and only one poster of Moses Malone, even in this limited world of options, more than for the Garden.

In the catalogue, Golden, herself, says “Media fascination around concentrated in three areas: sex, crime and sports” so presumably her job here is to dispel this. But how does one dispel by reaffirming? The preponderance of the Rambos and the Willie Hortons dilute some of the ‘most emotionally charged pieces in the exhibit. In Carrie Mae Weems’s Untitled (Kitchen Table Series) a black working class couple, seated at a kitchen table, grope with everyday, I personally love this piece in the context of this exhibit — even it can be misconstrued. When I viewed this work for a fourth time, a middle-aged white woman standing nearby explained to her husband that this piece unlike other pieces in the exhibit was a positive portrayal of black men. “It shows the black man loving and caring,” she cooed. And yes it does, but it also alludes to domestic violence and the strains can easily view Untitled as a portrait of the “down and out” black man who continues to try but is doomed to fail without ever identifying the substantial barriers blocking his success, without ever seeing how she or he contributes to the fortification of those barriers.

In all fairness, however, there are points. A number of Adrian Piper‘s works successfully identify white paranoia concerning black men. Particularly poignant is Piper’s Vanilla Nightmares #18. Here Piper draws a sea of ghost-like black male faces onto an American Express ad featured in The New York Times which reads “Membership has its Privileges.” Here “privileges” can be construed in a number of ways. It — can symbolize the economic oppression of black men as well as articulate white fears of the potential havoc of that oppression. And while I do agree that these are important — statements to make, what is really missing in this exhibit is the black He is so much more than Robert Mapplethorpe’s sometimes erotic — but often exploitative nude images of him. What of the black man who is a father, a lover of both men and women, a businessman, a farmer or a college professor? The Whitney’s answer to this question is a tiny room off to the side at the very back of the third floor where the exhibit is housed, called, the Contributions’ Room. Here pictures of black men as insurgents, bankers, congressmen and so forth lay alongside a timeline of major achievements, considerably small given the enormity of the black man’s contributions to just the United States. Even then, there are mistakes. Particularly disturbing is a description of John Singleton’s remarkable depiction of everyday black male urban existence in Boyz-N-the-Hood as a breakthrough film “about gang violence.” Where are the pictures of the black men with their children, their fathers and grandfathers, their mothers and grandmothers? Why is he alone in this struggle?

The ultimate question is not does the Whitney do a good job of representing black men. We, as black people, cannot look to the Whitney to represent us. If you go to the exhibit with the understanding that “Black Male” is about how White America views black men then you won’t be shocked; the message here is as consistent as the covers of Time and Newsweek. To make the experience worthwhile, might I recommend that you view the exhibit by alternating between seeing the excellent film series, reading the mostly well written and extremely provocative catalogue and then look at the art. Otherwise you will only get angry.

by Rhonda R. Penrice