Rashid Johnson
Encyclopedia
Rashid Johnson is an African American
socio-political photographer who produces conceptual post-black art
. Johnson first received critical attention when examples of his work were included in the exhibition "Freestyle", curated
by Thelma Golden
at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001—when he was 24. He has studied at Columbia College Chicago
and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited around the world and he is held in collections of many of the worlds leading art museums.
In addition to photography, which is where Johnson began, he presents audio (mostly music), video and sculpture art. Johnson is known for both his unusual artistic productions and for his process. He is also known for combining various science with black history so that his materials, which are formally independent, are augmented by their relation to black history.
. A photography
major, he earned a 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts
from Columbia College Chicago
and a 2005 Master of Fine Arts
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After obtaining his Masters degree, he moved to the Lower East Side
in New York City, where he teaches at the Pratt Institute
. Although he is generally referred to as a photographer and sometimes referred to as a sculptor, in certain contexts, he has been referred to as an artist-magician.
Johnson followed a generation of black artists who focused on the "black experience" and he grew up in a generation that was influenced by hip hop
and Black Entertainment Television
. Because of his generation's high exposure to black culture within pop culture, his contemporary audiences have a greater learned understanding of the "black experience". The basic exposure of many to the black experience has enabled him to achieve a deeper race and identity interaction.
His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago
; the Whitney Museum of American Art
, New York; the Detroit Institute of Arts
; the Walker Art Center
, Minneapolis; the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC; the Institute of Contemporary Photography, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
. His art is in the collections of most of these museums, and he is represented by art dealer
s in Milan
, Naples
, New York City
and Chicago
. By 2000, his work was held by the Studio Museum in Harlem, and by 2001 he had two photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2009, Johnson collaborated with the local Chicago apparel company Flux Collection. Works utilized in Flux products include "Space" (2008, Spray Enamel on Mirror), which was turned into a tee-shirt design.
publication, Johnson works in a variety of media with physical and visual materials that have independent artistic significance and symbolism but that are augmented by their connections to black history. According to the culture publication Flavorpill, he challenges his viewers with photography and sculpture that present the creation and dissemination of norms and expectations. However, the Chicago Tribune describes the productions resulting from his processes as lacking complexity or depth. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
writer Regina Hackett described Johnson as an artist who avoids the struggles of black people and explores their strengths, while inserting himself as subject in his "aesthetic aspirations" through a variety of forums.
Johnson has garnered national attention for both his unusual subject matter and for his process. In addition to portrait photography, Johnson is known for his use of a 19th century process that uses Van Dyke brown
, a transparent organic pigment
, and exposure to sunlight. He achieves a painterly
feel with his prints with the application of pigment using broad brush strokes. He uses a 8 by Deardorff
, which forces him to interact with his subjects.
; the Chicago Sun-Times
referred to his 2000 collection of portraits of homeless men "stunning", and he was noted for a series of large-scale photos of feet that serve as his interpretation of human migration in 2001. Then, he exhibited in the notable 2001 Freestyle show, a show that is credited with having launched Johnson's career. The curator of the show, Thelma Golden, is credited with coining the term post-black art in relation to that exhibit, although some suggest the term is attributable to the 1995 book The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson
, who is a favorite of Johnson. The term post-black now refers to art where race and racism are prominent, but where the importance of the interaction of the two is diminished.
Johnson's most controversial exhibition was entitled Chickenbones and Watermelon Seeds: The African American Experience as Abstract Art. The subject matter was a series of stereotypical African-American food culture items such as watermelon
seeds, black-eyed peas, chicken bones, and cotton
seeds placed directly onto photographic paper and exposed to light using an iron-reactive process.
In 2002, he exhibited at the Sunrise Museum in Charleston, West Virginia
. The exhibit, entitled Manumission Papers, was named for the papers that freed slaves were required to keep to prove their freedom. The exhibition was described as being as much a cultural commentary as an imagery display, and it related to the previous "Chickenbones" exhibit. He geometrically arranged abstraction
s of feet, hands, and elbows in shapes such as cubes, church windows and ships. This was a considered as study in racial identity because the body parts were not identifiable. Also in 2002, presenting his photographic work using chicken bones, Johnson exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
, as part of the UBS 12 x 12: New Artists, New Work series.
In 2002 he exhibited his homeless men in the Diggs Gallery of Winston-Salem State University
. The exhibit was entitled Seeing in the Dark and used partially illuminated subjects against deep black backgrounds. He also exhibited his homeless men work, including George (1999), in Atlanta, Georgia
as part of the National Black Arts Festival
at City Gallery East in July and August 2002. George was part of the Corcoran Gallery of Art November 2004 – January 2005 Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections From the Collection of Julia J. Norrell exhibition. George and the Common Ground exhibition appeared in several other places including the North Carolina Museum of Art
in 2006.
He took part in the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs artist Open Studio Program rotation in the Chicago Landmark
/National Register of Historic Places
Page Brothers Building
during the summer of 2003 with a three week exhibition. He explored the "historical and contemporary nature of photography". At that time, he was represented by George N'Namdi, who owned G.R. N'Namdi, the oldest African-American-owned, exhibiting commercial gallery in the country.
In conjunction with the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago
, Rashid Johnson exhibited The Evolution of the Negro Political Costume in December 2004. He presented replicas of three outfits worn by African-American politicians. He included a late 1960s dashiki
worn by Jesse Jackson
, a 1980s running suit worn by Al Sharpton
in the '80s and a business suit worn by then United States Senator-elect Barack Obama
. The presentation, which invited inspection, was as likely to evoke humorous response to the Jackson dashika as well as critical commentary about the presentation of political attire.
Johnson explored the theme of escapism at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art in a show entitled The Production of Escapism: A Solo Project by Rashid Johnson. He addressed distraction and relief from reality through art and fantasy. Johnson used photos, video and site-specific installation to study escapist tendencies through often with a sense of humor that bordered on the absurd.
artist exchange program exhibition featuring five emerging Chicago contemporary art
ists and five from Kaohsiung, Taiwan
. Half of the ten were women (four from Taiwan). As part of the Crossings exhibition almost all artists had their first chance to exhibit in the country of the others. In this forum, Chicago Tribune
art critic
Alan G. Artner said Johnson's audio selection imposed his artistry on all the other exhibits since he chose a rap song combined with a blunt video. Artner became a Johnson detractor in 2005 when Johnson had this and another simultaneous exhibit appearing in Chicago. He described Johnson's exploration of the politics of race as "sloganeering or cute self-advertising" in his two-dimensional works, and his apolytical three-dimensional installations as "glib and superficial" representations. He classified Johnson's work as more suitable for the audience seeking nothing more than American pop culture. The following year, in 2006, Artner derided Johnson's short video contribution to the Art Institute of Chicago's Fool's Paradise exhibition as a "conflation of gospel singing
with beat boxing...that says nothing worth saying about race." Other Chicago critics describe Johnson's subsequent work as relatively hip.
In an ensemble 2006 showing entitled Scarecrow, Johnson exhibited a life-sized photographic nude self-portrait
that was supposed to be menacing and abrasive, but that was perceived as interesting and amusing. His Summer 2007 "Stay Black and Die" work in the The Color Line exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery left one art critic
from The New York Times wondering whether he was viewing a warning or exhortation. However, at the same time he participated in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art's For Love of the Game: Race and Sport in America exhibition that seemed to clearly address manners in which questions about race have been asked and answered on American sports fields of play.
In Dark Matters, a 2007 exhibition at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, Washington
, Johnson is said to mimic Édouard Manet
's Olympia
in a work called White Girls and Sam Gilliam
and Richard Tuttle
in his skyspace backdrops that are perceived as sweeping perfection.
As a post-black artist, his mixed media work, such as his Spring 2008 The Dead Lecturer exhibition, plays on race while diminishing its significance by playing with contradictions, coded references and allusions (E.g., The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Emmett), right). The exhibit was described as "a fictional secret society
of African-American intellectuals, a cross between Mensa
and the Mason
s" that that was a challenge to either condemn or endorse.
Despite Artners' generally negative reviews of Johnson in earlier years, Johnson was near the top of Artner's list of exhibitions that he wanted to see in late 2008. Artner promptly reviewed Johnson's simultaneous September 2008 showings in Chicago. He claimed that The New Escapist Promised Land Garden and Recreation Center did not come across as either a land garden or recreation center due to the in part because of Johnson's overwhelming presence and in part because of the long, narrow, cramped venue. He saw too much of the artist in his own work such as Bruce Conner
-like paintings and Johnson's photographic impersonation of tennis
champion Jimmy Connors
. He perceives the nostalgia as somewhat autobiographical and possibly fictionalized. He perceived part of the work as graffiti and felt the work was unchallenging. Artner described Cosmic Slops, which featured 11 paintings of black soap and wax, plus one simulacrum
of a Constructivist
canvas made of an animal pelt
with glittery ribbons, as descendants of century of history of monochromatic abstractions that discards by titling his work as representations of the heavens. Artner feels these sculptural waxes are inferior to encaustic painting
s in terms of artistic quality despite their three-dimensionality. In 2008 he continued to view Johnson less seriously as an artist but felt his work had attitude. However, some experts spoke highly of Johnson's work in the same newspaper during its run. Reviewers in Time Out Chicago spoke of how he transformed a "space associated with white privilege into a sanctuary for black traditions," although they note the exhibition seems uncoordinated.
Johnson's work stood out from the 200-piece 30 Americans at the Rubell Family Collection to be singularly mentioned in The Miami Herald
. His work was described as a fusion of "portraits, sculptures and photography bathed in the color black...[that] represent a fictional secret society of African-American intellectuals". Johnson described his work as a demonstration of the complexity of the black experience.
In 2009, Johnson began collaboration on apparel designs with the Chicago-based company Flux Collection.
In April 2012, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
, presents Johnson's first major museum solo exhibition. MCA Pamela Alper Associate Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm curated the exhibition in close association with the artist. The exhibition, a survey of the past 10 years of the artist's work, will focus on major works from the past five years. Additionally, new work and a new MCA commission are debuted.
Johnson is currently represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; and moniquemeloche gallery in Chicago.; and Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
socio-political photographer who produces conceptual post-black art
Post-black art
Post-black art is a phrase that refers to a category of contemporary African American art. It is a paradoxical genre of art where race and racism are intertwined in a way that rejects their interaction. I.e., it is art about the black experience that attempts to dispel the notion that race...
. Johnson first received critical attention when examples of his work were included in the exhibition "Freestyle", curated
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
by Thelma Golden
Thelma Golden
Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, USA. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding Dr Lowery Stokes Sims, the Museum’s former Director and President, in 2005.-Early life and...
at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001—when he was 24. He has studied at Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited around the world and he is held in collections of many of the worlds leading art museums.
In addition to photography, which is where Johnson began, he presents audio (mostly music), video and sculpture art. Johnson is known for both his unusual artistic productions and for his process. He is also known for combining various science with black history so that his materials, which are formally independent, are augmented by their relation to black history.
Background
Johnson was raised in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois as well as Evanston, IllinoisEvanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
. A photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
major, he earned a 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
from Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
and a 2005 Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After obtaining his Masters degree, he moved to the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
in New York City, where he teaches at the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
. Although he is generally referred to as a photographer and sometimes referred to as a sculptor, in certain contexts, he has been referred to as an artist-magician.
Johnson followed a generation of black artists who focused on the "black experience" and he grew up in a generation that was influenced by hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
and Black Entertainment Television
Black Entertainment Television
Black Entertainment Television is an American, Viacom-owned cable network based in Washington, D.C.. Currently viewed in more than 90 million homes worldwide, it is the most prominent television network targeting young Black-American audiences. The network was launched on January 25, 1980, by its...
. Because of his generation's high exposure to black culture within pop culture, his contemporary audiences have a greater learned understanding of the "black experience". The basic exposure of many to the black experience has enabled him to achieve a deeper race and identity interaction.
His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
; the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York; the Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a renowned art museum in the city of Detroit. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally owned museum in the United States, with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars...
; the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis; the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC; the Institute of Contemporary Photography, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
. His art is in the collections of most of these museums, and he is represented by art dealer
Art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
s in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. By 2000, his work was held by the Studio Museum in Harlem, and by 2001 he had two photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2009, Johnson collaborated with the local Chicago apparel company Flux Collection. Works utilized in Flux products include "Space" (2008, Spray Enamel on Mirror), which was turned into a tee-shirt design.
Techniques and processes
Johnson uses "alchemy, divination, astronomy, and other sciences [sic] that combine the natural and spiritual worlds" to augment black history. According to a Columbia College ChicagoColumbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
publication, Johnson works in a variety of media with physical and visual materials that have independent artistic significance and symbolism but that are augmented by their connections to black history. According to the culture publication Flavorpill, he challenges his viewers with photography and sculpture that present the creation and dissemination of norms and expectations. However, the Chicago Tribune describes the productions resulting from his processes as lacking complexity or depth. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
writer Regina Hackett described Johnson as an artist who avoids the struggles of black people and explores their strengths, while inserting himself as subject in his "aesthetic aspirations" through a variety of forums.
Johnson has garnered national attention for both his unusual subject matter and for his process. In addition to portrait photography, Johnson is known for his use of a 19th century process that uses Van Dyke brown
Van dyke brown
Van Dyke Brown is an early photographic printing process. The process was so named due to the similarity of the print color to that of a brown oil paint named for Flemish painter Van Dyck.-Printing:...
, a transparent organic pigment
Pigment
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...
, and exposure to sunlight. He achieves a painterly
Painterly
Painterliness is a translation of the German term , a word popularized by Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin in order to help focus, enrich and standardize the terms being used by art historians of his time to characterize works of art...
feel with his prints with the application of pigment using broad brush strokes. He uses a 8 by Deardorff
Deardorff
Deardorff, specifically, "L.F. Deardorff & Sons, Inc." was a manufacturer of wooden-construction, large-format 8"x10" and larger bellows view cameras from 1923 through 1988. Various models were constructed and used mostly by professional photographic studios.-History of the Camera Company:Laben F...
, which forces him to interact with his subjects.
Early career
As a college junior, he opened his first show at the Schneider Gallery. By 2000, he had earned a reputation for his unique photo-printing process and his medium and large scale works were priced at up to US$3,000. In 2000, some of his early black-and-white photography work was described as "spectacularly rich" by The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
; the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
referred to his 2000 collection of portraits of homeless men "stunning", and he was noted for a series of large-scale photos of feet that serve as his interpretation of human migration in 2001. Then, he exhibited in the notable 2001 Freestyle show, a show that is credited with having launched Johnson's career. The curator of the show, Thelma Golden, is credited with coining the term post-black art in relation to that exhibit, although some suggest the term is attributable to the 1995 book The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson
Debra Dickerson
Debra J. Dickerson is an American author, editor, writer, and current contributing writer and blogger for Mother Jones magazine. Dickerson has been most prolific as an essayist, writing frequently on race relations and racial identity in the United States.-Early life:She dropped out of Florissant...
, who is a favorite of Johnson. The term post-black now refers to art where race and racism are prominent, but where the importance of the interaction of the two is diminished.
Johnson's most controversial exhibition was entitled Chickenbones and Watermelon Seeds: The African American Experience as Abstract Art. The subject matter was a series of stereotypical African-American food culture items such as watermelon
Watermelon
Watermelon is a vine-like flowering plant originally from southern Africa. Its fruit, which is also called watermelon, is a special kind referred to by botanists as a pepo, a berry which has a thick rind and fleshy center...
seeds, black-eyed peas, chicken bones, and cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
seeds placed directly onto photographic paper and exposed to light using an iron-reactive process.
In 2002, he exhibited at the Sunrise Museum in Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...
. The exhibit, entitled Manumission Papers, was named for the papers that freed slaves were required to keep to prove their freedom. The exhibition was described as being as much a cultural commentary as an imagery display, and it related to the previous "Chickenbones" exhibit. He geometrically arranged abstraction
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
s of feet, hands, and elbows in shapes such as cubes, church windows and ships. This was a considered as study in racial identity because the body parts were not identifiable. Also in 2002, presenting his photographic work using chicken bones, Johnson exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
, as part of the UBS 12 x 12: New Artists, New Work series.
In 2002 he exhibited his homeless men in the Diggs Gallery of Winston-Salem State University
Winston-Salem State University
Winston-Salem State University , a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina, is a historically black public research university located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. It is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.Winston-Salem State has been...
. The exhibit was entitled Seeing in the Dark and used partially illuminated subjects against deep black backgrounds. He also exhibited his homeless men work, including George (1999), in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
as part of the National Black Arts Festival
National Black Arts Festival
The National Black Arts Festival was founded in 1987 after the Fulton County Arts Council commissioned a study to explore the feasibility of creating a festival dedicated to celebrating the work of artists of African descent. The study provided compelling reasons why the Atlanta community was the...
at City Gallery East in July and August 2002. George was part of the Corcoran Gallery of Art November 2004 – January 2005 Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections From the Collection of Julia J. Norrell exhibition. George and the Common Ground exhibition appeared in several other places including the North Carolina Museum of Art
North Carolina Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, featuring paintings and sculpture representing 5,000 years of artistic work from antiquity to the present. The museum features more than 40 galleries as well as more than a dozen works of art in its Museum Park...
in 2006.
He took part in the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs artist Open Studio Program rotation in the Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark is a designation of the Mayor of Chicago and the Chicago City Council for historic buildings and other sites in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Listed sites are selected after meeting a combination of criteria, including historical, economic, architectural, artistic, cultural,...
/National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
Page Brothers Building
Page Brothers Building
The Page Brothers Building, 177-91 North State Street in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States, features the city's last remaining cast iron front on the north facade facing Lake Street...
during the summer of 2003 with a three week exhibition. He explored the "historical and contemporary nature of photography". At that time, he was represented by George N'Namdi, who owned G.R. N'Namdi, the oldest African-American-owned, exhibiting commercial gallery in the country.
In conjunction with the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, Rashid Johnson exhibited The Evolution of the Negro Political Costume in December 2004. He presented replicas of three outfits worn by African-American politicians. He included a late 1960s dashiki
Dashiki
The dashiki is a colorful men's garment widely worn in West Africa that covers the top half of the body. It has formal and informal versions and varies from simple draped clothing to fully tailored suits. Traditional female attire is called a caftan, or kaftan...
worn by Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
, a 1980s running suit worn by Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...
in the '80s and a business suit worn by then United States Senator-elect Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
. The presentation, which invited inspection, was as likely to evoke humorous response to the Jackson dashika as well as critical commentary about the presentation of political attire.
Johnson explored the theme of escapism at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art in a show entitled The Production of Escapism: A Solo Project by Rashid Johnson. He addressed distraction and relief from reality through art and fantasy. Johnson used photos, video and site-specific installation to study escapist tendencies through often with a sense of humor that bordered on the absurd.
Post graduate career
During the summer of 2005, he took part in a Chicago Cultural CenterChicago Cultural Center
The Chicago Cultural Center, opened in 1897, is a Chicago Landmark building that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park...
artist exchange program exhibition featuring five emerging Chicago contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ists and five from Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. Half of the ten were women (four from Taiwan). As part of the Crossings exhibition almost all artists had their first chance to exhibit in the country of the others. In this forum, Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Alan G. Artner said Johnson's audio selection imposed his artistry on all the other exhibits since he chose a rap song combined with a blunt video. Artner became a Johnson detractor in 2005 when Johnson had this and another simultaneous exhibit appearing in Chicago. He described Johnson's exploration of the politics of race as "sloganeering or cute self-advertising" in his two-dimensional works, and his apolytical three-dimensional installations as "glib and superficial" representations. He classified Johnson's work as more suitable for the audience seeking nothing more than American pop culture. The following year, in 2006, Artner derided Johnson's short video contribution to the Art Institute of Chicago's Fool's Paradise exhibition as a "conflation of gospel singing
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
with beat boxing...that says nothing worth saying about race." Other Chicago critics describe Johnson's subsequent work as relatively hip.
In an ensemble 2006 showing entitled Scarecrow, Johnson exhibited a life-sized photographic nude self-portrait
Self-portrait
A self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting...
that was supposed to be menacing and abrasive, but that was perceived as interesting and amusing. His Summer 2007 "Stay Black and Die" work in the The Color Line exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery left one art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
from The New York Times wondering whether he was viewing a warning or exhortation. However, at the same time he participated in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art's For Love of the Game: Race and Sport in America exhibition that seemed to clearly address manners in which questions about race have been asked and answered on American sports fields of play.
In Dark Matters, a 2007 exhibition at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, Johnson is said to mimic Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
's Olympia
Olympia (painting)
Olympia is an oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet. Painted in 1863, it measures 130.5 by 190 centimetres . The nation of France acquired the painting in 1890 with a public subscription organized by Claude Monet...
in a work called White Girls and Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam is internationally recognized as one of America's foremost Color Field Painter and Lyrical Abstractionist artists....
and Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...
in his skyspace backdrops that are perceived as sweeping perfection.
As a post-black artist, his mixed media work, such as his Spring 2008 The Dead Lecturer exhibition, plays on race while diminishing its significance by playing with contradictions, coded references and allusions (E.g., The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Emmett), right). The exhibit was described as "a fictional secret society
Secret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
of African-American intellectuals, a cross between Mensa
Mensa International
Mensa is the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test...
and the Mason
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
s" that that was a challenge to either condemn or endorse.
Despite Artners' generally negative reviews of Johnson in earlier years, Johnson was near the top of Artner's list of exhibitions that he wanted to see in late 2008. Artner promptly reviewed Johnson's simultaneous September 2008 showings in Chicago. He claimed that The New Escapist Promised Land Garden and Recreation Center did not come across as either a land garden or recreation center due to the in part because of Johnson's overwhelming presence and in part because of the long, narrow, cramped venue. He saw too much of the artist in his own work such as Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography, among other disciplines.-Early life:...
-like paintings and Johnson's photographic impersonation of tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
champion Jimmy Connors
Jimmy Connors
James Scott "Jimmy" Connors is an American former world no. 1 tennis player....
. He perceives the nostalgia as somewhat autobiographical and possibly fictionalized. He perceived part of the work as graffiti and felt the work was unchallenging. Artner described Cosmic Slops, which featured 11 paintings of black soap and wax, plus one simulacrum
Simulacrum
Simulacrum , from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god...
of a Constructivist
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
canvas made of an animal pelt
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
with glittery ribbons, as descendants of century of history of monochromatic abstractions that discards by titling his work as representations of the heavens. Artner feels these sculptural waxes are inferior to encaustic painting
Encaustic painting
Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used...
s in terms of artistic quality despite their three-dimensionality. In 2008 he continued to view Johnson less seriously as an artist but felt his work had attitude. However, some experts spoke highly of Johnson's work in the same newspaper during its run. Reviewers in Time Out Chicago spoke of how he transformed a "space associated with white privilege into a sanctuary for black traditions," although they note the exhibition seems uncoordinated.
Johnson's work stood out from the 200-piece 30 Americans at the Rubell Family Collection to be singularly mentioned in The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
. His work was described as a fusion of "portraits, sculptures and photography bathed in the color black...[that] represent a fictional secret society of African-American intellectuals". Johnson described his work as a demonstration of the complexity of the black experience.
In 2009, Johnson began collaboration on apparel designs with the Chicago-based company Flux Collection.
In April 2012, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
, presents Johnson's first major museum solo exhibition. MCA Pamela Alper Associate Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm curated the exhibition in close association with the artist. The exhibition, a survey of the past 10 years of the artist's work, will focus on major works from the past five years. Additionally, new work and a new MCA commission are debuted.
Johnson is currently represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; and moniquemeloche gallery in Chicago.; and Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin.
External links
- Rashid Johnson at Artfacts.net
- Rashid Johnson at Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin