Robert Colescott

Robert H. Colescott (August 26, 1925 – June 4, 2009) was an American

Born in Oakland, California, in 1925. His mother was a pianist and his father was an accomplished classical and jazz violinist. Colescott developed a deep love of music early on and played instruments as a child & took up drumming at an early age and seriously considered pursuing a career as a musician before settling instead on art. The sculptor Sargent Claude Johnson was a family friend who was a role model to Colescott growing up, and was also a connection to the Harlem Renaissance and artwork dealing with African-American experience. In 1940, Colescott watched as the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painted a mural at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island near San Francisco. Colescott went on to absorb the Western art historical canon and to explore the art of Africa and New Guinea. He would always be acutely aware what was going on in the contemporary art world. Nonetheless, these early experiences remained touchstones.^[4]

As a budding artist, Colescott was drafted into the

It was in Portland that Colescott's professional career as an artist was firmly established, thanks in large part to patron of the arts and philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer, owner and director of the Fountain Gallery, which she opened to promote contemporary artists from the region. Colescott's work was included in the gallery's inaugural exhibition in 1961, and he was given his first solo show there in 1963. In a tragic incident in 1977, a fire destroyed the gallery, and many of Colescott's works burned along with the works of many other artists represented by the gallery.^[5] The gallery, which reopened after the fire in a new location, continued to represent Colescott's work until it closed its doors in 1986.

Sojourns in Egypt (1964–67)

Colescott's sojourns in Egypt, and his encounter with Egyptian art and culture and the continent of Africa, were life-changing experiences. The impact on the trajectory of the rest of his artistic career, in terms of both its formal qualities and subject matter, was first manifest in the series of paintings "The Valley of the Queens", inspired by a visit to Thebes. "Three thousand years or non-European art, a strong narrative tradition, formal qualities such as the fluidity of the graphic line, monumentality of scale, vivid color and sense of pattern--all these elements had profound, immediate, and lasting impact on his work."^[4]

Putting Black people into art history

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Colescott began creating works based on iconic paintings from art history.

First retrospective

In 1987, the San Jose Museum of Art organized the first major retrospective of Colescott's work. Museum director John Olbrantz curated the exhibition. After its presentation in San Jose, the exhibition traveled under the auspices of the Art Museum Association of America to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum (Oregon), Akron Art Museum, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, the New Museum in New York City, and the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog entitled Robert Colescott: A Retrospective, 1975-1986, with an essay by Lowery Stokes Sims, a longtime champion of Colescott's work, and a republication of the essay "Robert Colescott: Pride and Prejudice" by Mitchell D. Kahan.

Venice Biennale

In 1997 Colescott was catapulted into the international limelight when he was selected to represent the

The exhibition catalog includes essays by Roberts and Lowery Stokes Sims, a poem by Quincy Troupe, and a photo essay by artist Carrie Mae Weems, to honor Colescott's influence on a younger generation artists in general and African-American artists in particular. According to his obituary by Roberta Smith: "While Mr. Colescott’s work was overtly political and multicultural, it was often at odds with the academic earnestness of such approaches. In his disregard for simplistic dualities regarding race and sex, he helped set the stage for transgressive work by painters like Ellen Gallagher, Kerry James Marshall, Sue Williams and Carroll Dunham and multimedia artists like Kara Walker, William Pope.L, and Kalup Linzy."^[10]

Teaching career

Like many artists of his generation, Colescott maintained parallel careers as a committed and influential educator and painter. He moved to the

Colescott died June 4, 2009, in Tucson, Arizona.^[10]

Legacy

On June 30, 2022, the New Museum in New York opened "Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott," the first Manhattan retrospective of the artist's career in more than three decades.^[12]

Personal life

Colescott had an older brother, Warrington Colescott Jr., of Hollandale, Wisconsin. He was also the father to five sons: Alex, Nick, Dennett, Daniel and Cooper. During his time he was also married five separate times.

See also

• Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

References