How I’d love to own a sculpture by artist Elizabeth Catlett. But the pieces that have come up at the auctions I’ve attended in New York have been way way out of my reach.
So, I have to admire them in settings other than my home. I had the chance to drool over several recently at an exhibit at the Bronx Museum in New York. They were among artwork by young artists who have been influenced by the 96-year-old icon.
Called “Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists,” it will remain at the museum until May 29, 2011. The exhibit includes 40 prints and sculptures from the 1960s to the present.
The contemporary artists are from around the world and, according to the museum, were chosen for their “attention to practice and technique as well as passion for exploring such issues as race, gender, history, memory, politics.”
They include Lalla Essaydi, Sam Durant, Patricia Coffie, Renee Cox, Sanford Biggers, Carrie Mae Weems, Roberto Visani and Patty Chang.
Catlett, Cox and Biggers will be part of a panel discussion at the museum on Friday, April 29. Another exhibit “Digame: Elizabeth Catlett’s Forever Love” is being offered at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University until May 26.
Catlett is a world-renown artist known for her timeless sculptures. Her works are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of American Art, to name a few.
Anyone who’s ever seen Catlett’s works knows that her predominant theme is women, especially African American women. You can see her love for them in the strength she embodies in her art. Her sculptures have an unabashed boldness that speak to many of us.
“I’ve learned a lot from women,” she said in the video interview (you can watch an oral history video here). “They’ve inspired me.”
Catlett looked to women as her inspiration while a student of artist Grant Wood (of “American Gothic” fame) at the University of Iowa in1940. Wood told his students to sculpt what they knew, and she knew about black women, children and everyday people, she said in the video. One of her creations was a work with three women – black, white and yellow.
She was also an artist who produced in various mediums: sculptures, lithographs, wood-block prints, linocuts, paintings and drawings.
The sculptures on display at the museum were testament to her philosophy. Like the 1968 red-cedar sculpture “Homage to My Black Sisters.” Or the 1981 lithograph “Glory.” Or the 2006 bronze “Reclining Woman.” Or the 1997 terracotta “Elvira.” Or the 2008 bronze “Standing Strong.” Or the 1982 lithograph “Madonna.” Or the 1995 bronze “Webbed Woman.” Or the 2000 bronze “Stepping Out.”
Some of her works were also political – “Homage to the Panthers,” a linocut from 1970.
Most of the Catlett sculptures I had seen were pretty representational – what you see is what you get. At the exhibit was a piece in orange onyx titled “Mask (2007)” whose color was breathtaking under the room’s overhead lights.
She also painted and sculpted around the theme of black families, displaying them in positive images in such sculptures as “Family (2002).”
When I entered the gallery, a docent was talking to a group of adults about Catlett and her sculpture “Stargazer (2007),” pulling and pushing them into a discussion about the black marble image of a woman looking up at the stars. Moving on, I noticed another docent with a group of children in one corner of another room. She tried to engage them as much as possible, but some of the children – all of whom looked to be younger that 8 – were having a hard time standing in one place.
Both groups came together later, and I realized that they were actually parents and their children getting a lesson in the genius of this magnificent artist. They stood with the docents in front of a mirrored artwork with the words “Let’s Behave Like Americans” written backwards in red lettering. It was a 2009 painting by Durant called “Reversed Americans.”
The docents asked them to pose individually as a family to show their interpretation of the words. In the first pose, a mother hugged her two boys in what they called a family portrait. In the second, a family stood with clenched fists indicating that the words meant power and strong.
Afterward, they all went upstairs to create their own sculptures of family.
