Shantay Robinson
At Art Basel 2019, a ripe banana was duct taped to a wall and it was considered art. The news of its sale was reported in many news outlets as audiences questioned why anyone would pay that much money for a banana. How could this be art? The concept is a reference to vaudevillians slipping on banana peels. The artwork titled, Comedian was created by an Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan, and it is considered conceptual art. Three buyers bought the certificate of art. Since the owners now have the certificate, they can legally display a banana duct taped to a wall and call it Comedian an artwork by Maurizio Cattelan.
Not all conceptual art is as extremely conceptual as Comedian. Some of it can also be aesthetically conceived as beautiful art in terms of traditional elements of art like form, color, line, shape, etc. aside from the conceptual narrative underlying it. But conceptual art is more interested in the underlying narrative of an artwork. Conceptual art can come in many forms as two-dimensional artworks, three-dimensional sculptures, installations, performance, or a combination of any and all. The primary thought is that it is idea-driven, challenging traditional notions about art to have audiences engage deeply with the concept behind the artwork.
Theaster Gates (b. 1973): In Case of Riot II, 2011
Theaster Gates is social practice installation artist. Trained as a ceramicist, Gates creates pottery inspired by traditional Japanese techniques he learned when studying in Tokoname, Japan. Though Gates is a potter, he also creates conceptual art consisting of photographs, installation, sculpture, assemblage, music, and performance that relates to an underlying theme of preservation. He’s a collector of many other things, including the house music DJ Frankie Knuckles’ record collection, Ebony/Jet publishing archives, and buildings in the south side of Chicago. In particular, though, Gate’s conceptual art comes in the form of preserving and repurposing items like fire hoses and gymnasium floors. In his artwork In Case of Riot II, which is a coiled fire hose encased in shadow box, Gates’s underlying idea is referencing how a life-saving item like firehoses were used to violently disperse peaceful protestors during the Civil Rights Movement.
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976): Branded Head, 2003
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976) Hank Willis Thomas employs a number of media, including sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media, and installation to conceive conceptual art related to investigations in mass media, identity, and popular culture. Thomas is known for using recognizable icons in his work to make statements on racial stereotypes. He’s branded the Nike swoosh on Black bodies to comment on the consumerism of athletes as products, labeling their identities for sale. This commentary lends itself to the discourse about the Black body being sold and worked as enslaved people. By taking recognizable objects and reworking them, he provokes discourse on the ways the Black body is commercialized much in the same way it has been historically.
Sanford Biggers (b. 1970): Khemestry, 2017
Sanford Biggers (b. 1970): Sanford Biggers’s art exist in a myriad of conversations, including that of African American history, Buddhism, Hip-Hop music, spirituality, and Afrofuturism. He emerged in art conversations through an artwork, Mandala of the B-Bodhisattva II, included in the “Freestyle” exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001, which is essentially a dance floor made for b-boying comprised of a mandala used in meditation. More recently, his work with quilts, the Codex series, displays an interest in African American history and traditions, as he manipulates pre-1900 antique quilts. The idea behind it is to recognize the plurality in language by having viewers think about the original creator’s intent and the new layers of meaning by his artistic intervention. By manipulating the quilts, Biggers forces us to think of how history impacts the contemporary moment and vice versa.
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960):Untitled (Stranger in the Village/Hands #1), 2000
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960): Since the late 1980s, Glenn Ligon has been creating text-based paintings stenciled by hand that utilize writings and speech from notable Black personalities, including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Pryor. Appropriating the words of James Baldwin and specifically the text from the essay, “Stranger in the Village,” Ligon explores the meaning behind the words as they relate to being seen as a Black man and the racism that is associated with being seen that way. Ligon’s work explores America’s history, literature and society with subject matter ranging from the aftermath of slavery to the Memphis Sanitation March to the Million Man March. His appropriation of the sign “I Am a Man” which was used by the Memphis sanitation workers renders a different but complementary meaning when created by Ligon and when it’s placed in the context of an art space like a gallery or a museum.
Lorna Simpson (b. 1960): Guarded Conditions, 1989
Lorna Simpson (b. 1960): Though typically considered a photographer, Lorna Simpson’s early art is particularly conceptual as she adds texts to the images she photographs to share her ideas on topics revolving around Black womanhood. In 1989, Simpson emerged as a sort of activist for Black women’s rights with artworks, including Guarded Position, Necklines, and Easy for Who to Say. One striking work, Guarded Conditions features a woman in a plain white shift dress with her back turned to the camera, beneath her are the words sex attacks and skin attacks. The intersectionality of oppressions rendered in this work coincides with coinage of the term intersectionality in 1989 by law professor Kimberle Crenshaw.