Whitfield Lovell is a contemporary African American Artist that discusses the heritage and history of the African American using a medium called installation. Installation is a term used for art where the work doesn’t necessarily stop at the edge of the canvas, or the curve of the sculpture. It is a full environment that activates the entire spectrum of vantage points from the viewer. The viewer, then, becomes a part of the work, offering a new experience every time with which the piece is viewed or interacted. Any media may be used in installation art. It often works on the theory that “less is more,” and depending on the artist’s intentional concept, will vary in objects used to represent the concept.
The very first time I encountered Lovell’s work was in a magazine where the images printed on the slick paper caught my eye, heart and head simultaneously. I found in these images a sense of reverence for life. They remind me of the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance in that they had a self-sufficient beauty attached to them. The images Lovell creates are mysterious and reverent, quiet and confrontational. In a word: stunning.
The installations are without question complete. Lovell obviously takes his time and makes considerations for every possible encounter – in a way, he dictates what he wants the viewer to feel, not unlike most other artists; but Lovell does it by altering the viewer’s environment. It’s easy to look away from a painting. It’s even relatively simple to step away from a sculpture. But what happens when the viewer is encompassed in the work? What happens when the viewer becomes a part of the work’s dynamic?
In an interview with Lovell, he discusses his arrival at installation art and his expression of African American identity:
Because of a series of dramatic events, my outlook on life and my goals as an artist changed. Many of my personal issues began to surface in my art—I was dealing with formal issues prior to that time… I was leaning toward an art form which was more integrated with my life experience… When I encountered Edvard Munch and much later, Frida Kahlo at the Grey Art Gallery in 1984, it was a real fuming point for me. I would say they became mentors in that they gave me the license to work autobiographically and explore personal and psychological visions.1
The “personal and psychological visions” that Lovell expresses is what reaches out to the viewer. He continuously examines the histories of people, specifically the people he feels most connected to: the historic African American.
Lovell is different in a couple of aspects regarding installation art. First, he uses charcoal drawings, which from my experiences of installations, is rarely used. More often found objects arranged in such a way that it provokes new ways of seeing them. Certainly Lovell provides new ways of seeing, but it’s interesting that he uses very traditional media (like charcoal drawing) in a very non-traditional manner (such as installation). This could represent Lovell himself, in that he might find himself as his own representation of his work: a progressive traditionalist.
Nancy Princenthal says about Lovell, “These drawings’ evident origin in photographs of people now certainly long dead makes them doubly ephemeral – shadows of shadows, elegant and ghostly.”2 The installations and drawings emulate a dual history – one which is taught and one which is actual. It reminds us that what we are told is truth may very well be the opposite of it. The fact that the drawings are referenced from photos offers the viewer a choice in defining what they believe to be actual as opposed to fictional.
The effect is due not just to the installation’s furnishings and scale, but, above all, to the portraits Lovell has drawn in charcoal directly on the unpainted, weathered wooden walls. Based on photographs selected from among thousands in a Texas archive, they depict men and women who might have occupied such a house. Because the drawings derive from images produced in commercial studios, they are in a sense representations of self-portraits; they show the sitters as they wanted themselves seen, unlike so many of the most familiar images of the old rural South, photographs taken to document its poverty and often its shame. Lovell’s drawings, by contrast, are records of dignity, however hard-won it may be imagined to have been.3
Whitfield describes a cultural experience and relates that experience to the viewer in a manner by which no other method could surpass. “He motivates speculation about the subjects‚ lives and experiences. A sense of personal history is incorporated into these assemblages that reflects the artist’s African American heritage.”4 The layered use of several media choices that interact to the image and then with the viewer conjure representations of memories told or experienced by the viewer depending on their personal heritages. For instance, in the image to the center of the previous page5 we can see a charcoal rendering of a man in period dress. Upon inspection one could guess he is from the early twentieth century. Instantly this puts the image in context of history – he is dressed rather well, or fashionable for the times. He is clean and handsome. Underneath his image, hangs a series of objects as utensils from the same period. It reminds the viewer that these objects were functional tools of the period; it lends to the idea that also he was a functional tool of the period.6 The image and the object exchange identities. Who or what is the object? Who or what is functional? Who or what defines what is functional or representational of anything? It assimilates images of prosperous, hard-working black history, instead of the formally taught white history of slaves and subordination.
Someone like Lovell bends racial barriers because African Americans can relate on an intimate level to the work, and other peoples can relate without feeling like they’re being personally blamed. The images he presents show people who are proud and simple, groomed and pious. It’s not defensive, it’s not offensive, rather it’s contemplative and beautiful. It offers layered metaphor within its walls: any person can “get” at least a part of it, regardless of “art world” knowledge. It is generates an aesthetic of class without succumbing to “dumbing down” his work to make it accessible to the non-traditional art viewer. It just so happens that it can be accessed by them.
In fact, there has been much talk lately about how to get the “non-traditional” museum visitor to actually visit the museums. African American patrons are a targeted group. According to Pamela McDonald, director of audience development and civic affairs at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, African Americans only make up around 1% of the annual museum audience. “When I first came [to San Francisco],” she remarks, “they said black people don’t go to museums; they’re not educated.” 7
The problem, obviously, is not that the African American population is uneducated. It’s mostly because the exhibits that museums offer do not appeal to the contemporary African American culture. It might house some interesting artifacts from Africa, but does it often recognize the culture of the African American living today? The Brooklyn Art Museum, in fact, promoted an exhibit on “hip-hop” culture and found that when the museums catered to another culture, the culture responded with astounding results. “You couldn’t move in those galleries”8 due to the immense amount of people crammed into the BAM, says Sally Williams, spokesperson for the BAM.
While I can recognize the difference between Lovell’s work and an exhibit that showed mostly posters of L.L. Cool J, there are a lot of people who cannot. That’s okay, art is not their field. The point is, that these kinds of exhibits get people to actually go to the museum for leisure – they make art important, and when Lovell’s show comes to the BAM, possibly more people would have a chance to see it because they’re familiar with the establishment.
- Susan Hoeltzel. “The Bronx Celebrates: Whitfield Lovell” [Online. Internet.] http://ca80.lehman.cuny.edu/gallery/web/AG/whitfield_lovell/essay.htm. Accessed June 6, 2003.
- Nancy Princenthal. “A World in One Room.” Art in America, May 2001.
- ibid.
- Absolute Arts. Indepth Arts News: “Whitfield Lovell: Portrayals” Online. Internet. http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2001/02/01/28024.html Accessed June 6, 2003.
- Image: Wise Like That, 2000. Charcoal on wood, found utensils. 45×23.5×10” Metropolitan Museum of New York.
- Pamela Newkirk. “Searching for the Black Audience” (ARTnews, May 2001), 184.
- ibid.
- ibid.