Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Samforgoso. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, thank you for being here today on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am pleased to have on writer and art critic
Speaker 1: Antoine Sergeant. He has written for The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, Vice w Magazine, The Nation Interview magazine,
Speaker 1: The Fader. The list goes on. Where there are words
Speaker 1: about art, there's Antoine Sergeant. Last year, he released a
Speaker 1: book called The New Black Fan Card, Photography Between Art
Speaker 1: and Fashion. It was a piece about the ways in
Speaker 1: which representation plays on our psyche and shapes our realities.
Speaker 1: Now he has a new book that he's recently edited
Speaker 1: called Young, Gifted and Black, a New Generation of Artists.
Speaker 1: It's about black collectors, artists, and curators doing the work
Speaker 1: to ensure that black art is made, seen, valued, and preserved.
Speaker 1: It also, as you probably gathered from the title, is
Speaker 1: introducing this young, emerging wave of creators. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: I wanted to have Antoine on in this moment is
Speaker 1: because I don't know about you. I really miss going
Speaker 1: to museums. I have found it really hard to channel
Speaker 1: any amount of energy into art during this election season.
Speaker 1: So for the next forty five minutes, Antoine and I
Speaker 1: are going to fix that. First, He's going to set
Speaker 1: the stage for what's been happening in the art world
Speaker 1: during the pandemic and what we can expect the future
Speaker 1: of museums to look like. We also dive into the
Speaker 1: existing power structures that make it really difficult for young
Speaker 1: men and women of color to break into the system,
Speaker 1: to get work at a place like Vogue, to get
Speaker 1: written about in the New York Times. As a writer, critic,
Speaker 1: and historian of the art world, Antoine has this unique
Speaker 1: ability to describe the details of the big picture. He
Speaker 1: offers a window into how these institutions operate and how
Speaker 1: these artists create. Then, finally, before we leave, in the
Speaker 1: final fifteen minutes of this podcast, we've assembled a kind
Speaker 1: of virtual exhibit for you. Together, Antoine guides us through
Speaker 1: six pieces from his book Young, Gifted and Black. While
Speaker 1: you're listening, you can look at those pieces on our
Speaker 1: website at www dot Talk easypod dot com, slash Antoine.
Speaker 1: That's talk easypod dot com slash Antwine. And now here
Speaker 1: is Antoine Sergeant. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: I want to start with a world that I know
Speaker 1: you're deeply familiar with, which is the art world. Many
Speaker 1: museums are closed. The pandemic has hit the art community
Speaker 1: especially hard. What are the state of affairs in museums
Speaker 1: and across the country. I'm seeing sort of the art world,
Speaker 1: as much as it likes to pretend to be separate,
Speaker 1: you know, from the world, it really is sort of
Speaker 1: a reflection. And in the ways that the pandemic has
Speaker 1: disproportionately affected certain people and have enrentioned others. You see
Speaker 1: that playing out in the air world. You see some
Speaker 1: galleries opening new spaces in the middle of a pandemic
Speaker 1: and going on about business as usual and adapting and
Speaker 1: going online and selling paintings for five and ten million dollars,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's business usual. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you see smaller galleries closing, right, I think
Speaker 1: you're also seeing that with museums. There's estimated that you know, many, many,
Speaker 1: many small or sort of cultural institutions will close. You know,
Speaker 1: by witness is all said and done, right, it's a
Speaker 1: real reflection. It's a real reflection of the experience that
Speaker 1: we're all grappling with. People keep saying, well, after the
Speaker 1: pandemic it's on to be better, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that if what we have seen right now is
Speaker 1: indie indication of what's to come, it's that it's just
Speaker 1: going to become more stratified and more unequal. And you know,
Speaker 1: you have to really sort of judge what's going to
Speaker 1: come next by what's happening during and so what do
Speaker 1: we see happening during you know, this pandemic is you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways in acceleration of sort of unequal processes
Speaker 1: that we've seen before the pandemic. Right, So if you
Speaker 1: think about who's gotten laid off, right, So a lot
Speaker 1: of educators, right, a lot of frontline staff, right, which
Speaker 1: is a reflection of the hierarchies in these institutions, just
Speaker 1: like how you see billionaires getting richer making money off
Speaker 1: the pandemic, while others can't afford to feed their families, right.
Speaker 1: And so I think that it's a real reflection. And
Speaker 1: I think if we want something different in the after,
Speaker 1: we have to be doing that work. You know, now
Speaker 1: during the during there are no saviors, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: save ourselves and have to What would that museum, our
Speaker 1: world space look like if the bottom rather the middle
Speaker 1: dropped out. I mean, I think you'll see some mid
Speaker 1: tier galleries closing, right, one of which is Gavin Brown Enterprise, right,
Speaker 1: which is a storied, you know, New York art gallery.
Speaker 1: And Gavin, for you know, decades, was someone who understood
Speaker 1: how to sort of predict where we were going in art,
Speaker 1: you know, and sort of the artists that he represented
Speaker 1: and the concerns that those artists have. Right. I think
Speaker 1: a more recent example of him doing this is with
Speaker 1: Arthur Jaffa. He commenced Arthur AJ to not put love
Speaker 1: as the message messages of death on YouTube and to
Speaker 1: instead show it in his gallery, right, which was a
Speaker 1: star turn for AJ. And so he was really good
Speaker 1: about packaging brilliance, right and sort of making sure that
Speaker 1: the culture was able to experience those works with the
Speaker 1: sort of breath and death and you know, seriousness that
Speaker 1: they demand. Right. I think if AJ would have put
Speaker 1: that video on YouTube, it would have been a very
Speaker 1: different experience, right, and I think their impact would have
Speaker 1: been lesser because you're competing with other videos, right. And
Speaker 1: so to put that into gallery space, right, to put
Speaker 1: that into space where you have to have sort of
Speaker 1: a deep contemplation, especially in the way they presented. It
Speaker 1: was just a video in a dark room, huge screen.
Speaker 1: You had a really sort of unbelievable experience with the artwork.
Speaker 1: And so you have you know, galleries like that going away,
Speaker 1: and with that, then you have less of a potential
Speaker 1: for that galleris to make those sort of interventions right
Speaker 1: in his program and you know, in other spaces and
Speaker 1: clearly not introduce artists that are extremely influential in its
Speaker 1: practice right. And so I think you're going to see
Speaker 1: some of that, right, You're going to see less risk
Speaker 1: in these sort of traditional art world right. But I
Speaker 1: think that you know what, one of the things that
Speaker 1: we don't always talk about is that the art world
Speaker 1: right is predicated on the possibilities that one has in
Speaker 1: terms of real estate. What does that mean? New York
Speaker 1: is this town about space right? And you can also
Speaker 1: argue other places as well, or you know, or town's
Speaker 1: about space right. Artists work under you know, any given conditions.
Speaker 1: New York was just becoming too damn expensive. And so
Speaker 1: you had a lot of artists leaving because they couldn't
Speaker 1: get studio space or it couldn't afford to do space right.
Speaker 1: You had a lot of would be gallerists not opening
Speaker 1: spaces because they couldn't afford spaces. Right. What that does then,
Speaker 1: now that you know the market is said to be
Speaker 1: sort of declining or you know, correcting itself, or however
Speaker 1: you look at that, I think it opens up a
Speaker 1: lot of potential for cheap space, right, and I think
Speaker 1: you will have people using that space in ways that
Speaker 1: are experimental and hopefully for the good. You know. I
Speaker 1: think about even you know, in Chelsea, right when the
Speaker 1: Galley Saw moved to Chelsea and they had all the space,
Speaker 1: and you know, paintings got bigger, right, and experimentations got
Speaker 1: bigger and things like that. And so I think that
Speaker 1: we cannot divorce what is possible from the conditions in
Speaker 1: which artists are working. And part of that is the
Speaker 1: spatial relationships that these artists have right to the cities
Speaker 1: that they live in. Potentially, what we can have is
Speaker 1: a city where the rich are said to be flean
Speaker 1: or whatever, and those of us who are staying because
Speaker 1: it's the only place for us to be really in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, can start to use the city
Speaker 1: in ways that that is not just sort of a
Speaker 1: playground for the rich and the wealthy and the well
Speaker 1: connected and really sort of make works that are divorced
Speaker 1: from the market and the museum and really sort of
Speaker 1: start to sort of imagine a new sort of art
Speaker 1: for our time. So I hope that is my hope.
Speaker 1: But we'll see you mentioned how you want to imagine
Speaker 1: a new kind of space, a place where are it
Speaker 1: may look a little bit different in the future and
Speaker 1: more people are included, right, because I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that we always have to contend with is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the art world is built around cannons, right,
Speaker 1: and cannons are these things where you have people inside
Speaker 1: and you have people outside of them, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of people outside of those
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of young artists, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, older artists, there's a lot
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of people that live outside
Speaker 1: of those boxes. And so hopefully what we could do
Speaker 1: is continue to expand our definitions and by expanding, be
Speaker 1: considered of other voices that have been excluded, have been overlooked,
Speaker 1: have been down at erased. You know, from the narratives
Speaker 1: of American and Western art. This desire seems to be
Speaker 1: the driving force of your new book, Young, Gifted and Black.
Speaker 1: And before we get into that piece, I want to
Speaker 1: set up for context. Your last book was called The
Speaker 1: New Black Vanguard. You said that book was about the
Speaker 1: ways in which representation plays on our psyche and shapes
Speaker 1: our realities. Our thinking is shaped by the images that
Speaker 1: we know, you wrote, and what we see, and most
Speaker 1: of those images are created by white men. How would
Speaker 1: you describe the premise of this new book, The New
Speaker 1: Black Vanguard? Photograph Between Art and Fashion really is an
Speaker 1: exploration of fifteen young photographers working throughout the African diaspora,
Speaker 1: from London to Joe Burgh to New York. And those
Speaker 1: young artists had a lot to say, right, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure there was a space for them
Speaker 1: to say it at the beginning of their career. It's
Speaker 1: because often, particularly in photo, black artists have had these
Speaker 1: long careers where no one cared and then there's this
Speaker 1: like active quote unquote discovery often by white dealers or
Speaker 1: white museum orators that has always just sort of roll
Speaker 1: up me the wrong way, you know, like because again
Speaker 1: the narrative is again outside of the community, right in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and a narrative has to sort
Speaker 1: of inform or a firm you know, the canonical history
Speaker 1: of Western art, right, which is shaped and created by
Speaker 1: whiteness and a relationship to whiteness, right. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I was just important to make sure that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was focusing on new voices who frankly had broke
Speaker 1: from those traditions, right, and who had largely thought about
Speaker 1: the Internet and social media and their communities as of
Speaker 1: space where they're going to create from. Right. And so
Speaker 1: in this new book, there's a similar thing happening, and
Speaker 1: it really sort of takes the last ten years and
Speaker 1: it explores not only they're photographers, right, but there's painters,
Speaker 1: conceptual artists, installation artist who are working today, right, people
Speaker 1: like Kevin Beasley, Eric Mack, Jordan Castile, Jennifer Packer, Tamashi Jackson.
Speaker 1: The list kind of goes on and on and there
Speaker 1: that group of artists had all been collected by Bernard Lumpkin,
Speaker 1: who's a black collector in New York and who is
Speaker 1: a patron on the board of the Whitney Museum and
Speaker 1: Studio Museum in Harlem and MoMA and the Scalhegan School
Speaker 1: of Painting, which is a very influential school in Maine,
Speaker 1: and so when I was asked to edit that project,
Speaker 1: I was trying to make sure that we were still
Speaker 1: having a conversation about the future. What was so great
Speaker 1: about that book and being able to do that book
Speaker 1: was that ten years ago, when I was twenty one,
Speaker 1: I moved to New York and didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was going to do. I was teaching, and I fell
Speaker 1: in with this group of artists and group of thinkers,
Speaker 1: and they became my community, right, And so ten years
Speaker 1: later to be a reflect on not just the artist,
Speaker 1: but also Thelma Goulden, a curator, is also included in
Speaker 1: a book, and there are other curators and curritorial voices.
Speaker 1: Jess Bell Brown wrote an amazing essay, and there are
Speaker 1: other sort of contributions. So it's a reflection of community,
Speaker 1: the reflection of the world in which I believed in
Speaker 1: the art in which I knew was possible. That is
Speaker 1: now getting a lot of attention in the art world.
Speaker 1: But ten years ago, twenty years ago was not right.
Speaker 1: And so like the new Black Vanguard, Young Giffen in
Speaker 1: Black not only thinks about this current generation right my peers,
Speaker 1: it also thinks about the generations that came before, and
Speaker 1: so it really is a conversation of lineage and how
Speaker 1: artists and thinkers and patrons ensure that the work that
Speaker 1: is being created is seen, is critically engaged, and is
Speaker 1: in spaces like museums, right, And so those two books,
Speaker 1: and I would say my larger sort of writing and
Speaker 1: curatorial practice is really sort of predicated on the idea
Speaker 1: that like, I'm young, and I want to have a
Speaker 1: rule engagement with the artists of my time, you know,
Speaker 1: like pass writers and past creators. And I think working
Speaker 1: in a way that I do allows me for me
Speaker 1: to have those conversations these artists, all of them, they're young, right,
Speaker 1: and there their practices will change. And I remember being
Speaker 1: in some of those their studios when some of the
Speaker 1: works were being created years ago, you know, speaking about
Speaker 1: young gifted in black and speaking to the artists then
Speaker 1: and speaking to garters now. The thinking has changed, right,
Speaker 1: and it's gotten deeper, and it's gotten more complex, and
Speaker 1: it's gotten you know, in some ways funnier, in some ways.
Speaker 1: You know, there's all of these sort of things that
Speaker 1: happen I think in the lifespan of an artwork and
Speaker 1: an artist that the public doesn't always get to sort
Speaker 1: of know or see given the way that we position art, right,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to sort of figure out a way
Speaker 1: to make sure that we saw the art, but we
Speaker 1: also saw a thinking behind the art. Right, you saw
Speaker 1: my sort of critical thinking, but you also you get
Speaker 1: the artists voices as well, and I think that helps
Speaker 1: to sort of demystify art, right. I think it helps
Speaker 1: to sort of speak to all communities, right, and not
Speaker 1: just sort of the ones that are in the know
Speaker 1: or the ones that you know, grew up with families
Speaker 1: who collected, or the ones who think of artists some
Speaker 1: sort of trophy and they can buy and things, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's a rich activity, but really
Speaker 1: sort of all communities is about you know, certain people
Speaker 1: or certain communities or certain things that does not exclude
Speaker 1: poor people, does not exclude people who don't have a
Speaker 1: history of going to museum. And so I always try
Speaker 1: to make super inclusive projects just because like I want
Speaker 1: to speak to real people. I have no real desire
Speaker 1: to speak to art people, you know, Like that's just
Speaker 1: not why I'm in this sort of I really do
Speaker 1: think that, you know, there's a real power to art,
Speaker 1: and I want to make sure that we all have
Speaker 1: access to it. Right in the intervening decade from when
Speaker 1: you moved to New York to making this book, you
Speaker 1: are at once chronicling the evolution of these artists, but
Speaker 1: it also has to be some sort of evolving capsule
Speaker 1: of how you feel about the work itself and what
Speaker 1: your purpose in this space is. How have you been
Speaker 1: thinking about that? I mean, I can't stress how radically
Speaker 1: different physition I'm in physition these artists are in physician
Speaker 1: new art world is. In ten years ago, I could
Speaker 1: not get some of these artists written about. They were
Speaker 1: just not interested. So just on a writing level, the
Speaker 1: type of stories that we're seeing now in sort of
Speaker 1: a wider press is just completely different. Make the joke
Speaker 1: that people confused in New York Times today for Ebony
Speaker 1: and Jet and ten years ago it wasn't that way.
Speaker 1: They only covered the major black artist. And if that
Speaker 1: why did that change? One thing is that we saw
Speaker 1: a real decades long effort by people like Thoma Goolden,
Speaker 1: Helen's Mosworth, Bernard Lumpkin. You know, artists, thinkers, curators, patrons
Speaker 1: start at this work a long time ago, and I
Speaker 1: think you see the sort of feud of their labor
Speaker 1: in that. But then I also think that unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: specter of black men, women and children being murdered by
Speaker 1: the state and justice not being served. And I think
Speaker 1: that started a conversation or accelerated a conversation around the
Speaker 1: racio dynamics and disparities in this country and how whiteness
Speaker 1: is pervasive in institutions and it most shows its supremacy
Speaker 1: in sort of the ways in which institutional power is
Speaker 1: wilded in this country. And so I think that started
Speaker 1: a lot of our institutions, art institutions, educational institutions, film
Speaker 1: institutions to look at themselves and to examine how have
Speaker 1: they been a part of the problem. I don't think
Speaker 1: that work has gone far enough. For example, what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that still the majority of people
Speaker 1: who are tasked with telling the story of art are white,
Speaker 1: and they're white. In a city like New York, which
Speaker 1: is an extremely diverse city. Until very recently, galleries only
Speaker 1: represented by and large white male artists. And you'll have
Speaker 1: a woman here, you'll have a black artist there, and
Speaker 1: then in museum collections deal primarily white mill you know,
Speaker 1: And I think that the work hasn't gone far enough,
Speaker 1: and I think that we are at a moment where
Speaker 1: it could go either way, and I think that it's
Speaker 1: important that we continue to think through how to sustain
Speaker 1: a very fragile progress, you know, in terms of cultural space.
Speaker 1: Could you see what happened four years ago with the
Speaker 1: politics with Trump, and we thought we had this watershed moment,
Speaker 1: you know, with the election of Barack Obama and the
Speaker 1: re election of Barack Obama, and in some ways it was,
Speaker 1: But then it's so easy for a country to slip back.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's the lesson for me and
Speaker 1: all of us in watching the country, is that it's
Speaker 1: so easy for cultural institutions to to slip back. I
Speaker 1: really do think that all of them. When George Floyd was,
Speaker 1: you know, tragically murdered, issued these statements, you know, black
Speaker 1: lives matter, Black lives matter, Black lives matter, and you know,
Speaker 1: my sort of reaction was like, well, where do they matter?
Speaker 1: Didn't matter on your board? Did it matter on your
Speaker 1: chritorial staff? Did a mariter in directorships? Did they matter? Like? Where?
Speaker 1: Show us where? And I think the time for sort
Speaker 1: of empty statements, it's just it's a time for action.
Speaker 1: It really is you know, they like to we like
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about community, and we don't like
Speaker 1: to sort of think through the fact that, to paraphrase
Speaker 1: you know, your last guest, Coronel West, that community is
Speaker 1: just not a virtue. It has to be an action.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of act. And he was speaking
Speaker 1: about hope. But you know, I think the same thing
Speaker 1: sort of applies to these notions of community. You know,
Speaker 1: we love to say talk about audience. We love to
Speaker 1: talk about community in the art world, and we talk
Speaker 1: about that as some sort of virtue, but we don't
Speaker 1: talk about like the real work that it requires. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we will put some action, some real action behind that.
Speaker 1: And that means that, you know, some people need to
Speaker 1: lose their fucking jobs. You know, like this is not
Speaker 1: a zero sum game, right, Some things need to change.
Speaker 1: Institutions need to change. People need institutions that are flexible,
Speaker 1: that adapt to the moment, that are reeling to take risks.
Speaker 1: Some people could also just gracefully retire that too, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem likely. You know. That's power. And when
Speaker 1: you get to write the story of this artist over
Speaker 1: that artist, you are a part of the historical record.
Speaker 1: By definition, the art shows don't stay up forever. Right,
Speaker 1: in galleries they run for about six weeks, you know,
Speaker 1: in museums maybe three months, you know, four months or so,
Speaker 1: and then after that all you have is art images
Speaker 1: and the written word that gives the writer an unbelievable
Speaker 1: amount of power. And then also, it's not about just
Speaker 1: bringing in one person, right, it's not about like, oh,
Speaker 1: we have you know, as black person or as woman
Speaker 1: or this whatever person of color, and then now we're
Speaker 1: going to buy virtue of the fact that there's no
Speaker 1: other people there that are from different communities. That person
Speaker 1: becomes our token. So what kind of like awful position
Speaker 1: that puts one in? Black people cannot save these institutions,
Speaker 1: and I don't care where they are in those institutions.
Speaker 1: It really is about a restructuring. There's a recurring pattern
Speaker 1: around the single story narrative. And I want to go
Speaker 1: back to something we were talking about in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, Obama turns into President Obama a decade later,
Speaker 1: Tyler Mitchell shoots the historic Vogue cover in August of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen four Beyonce. Obviously the two are not equally important,
Speaker 1: but what's similar about these two situations? Is the rhetoric
Speaker 1: around them happening absolutely, which in Obama's case was the
Speaker 1: distancing from racism, the erasure of racism, the sort of
Speaker 1: newfound acceptance of color blindness, which is a complete mythology.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty eighteen, just a decade later, where Vogue,
Speaker 1: this historic institution, maybe the most important institution in the
Speaker 1: fashion world, hires their first black photographer to shoot the cover.
Speaker 1: The rhetoric around that happening was of course a celebration
Speaker 1: of Tyler and his work, but also, look, this is
Speaker 1: the change we've been talking about. We have turned the corner,
Speaker 1: and in both cases there's been huge backslides. And after
Speaker 1: Tyler received this cover, you had this quote in an
Speaker 1: interview in twenty eighteen, you said, no one makes those
Speaker 1: decisions out of the kindness of their heart. That to
Speaker 1: me speaks to the very serious issues these institutions and
Speaker 1: the language around change faces. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right right. The we're a country down to
Speaker 1: Black History Month that are obsessed with this notion or
Speaker 1: this narrative of the black first, and that framing of
Speaker 1: our experience is and has been destructive to progress because
Speaker 1: after the first there's this idea that now everything's fixed
Speaker 1: right now, we are no longer racist, Now Vogue is
Speaker 1: no longer uphelding you know, white beauty standards, and we're
Speaker 1: all sort of in this together. And then you go, okay,
Speaker 1: now we're two years out. How many other black photographs
Speaker 1: have shot the cover of Vogue? One? And that was
Speaker 1: Lizzo last month by Hype Williams. I think there's this
Speaker 1: thing that happens where we use those examples to make
Speaker 1: ourselves feel good and to allow us to not really
Speaker 1: bear the full weight of the responsibility of what it
Speaker 1: means to lead these institutions. It's almost like a marketing
Speaker 1: sort of thing, you know of, Oh, Vogue now after
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty six years, is now this besion
Speaker 1: of progress. And they're turning the page and then you go, well,
Speaker 1: where are the editors? Where where are the other photographers?
Speaker 1: I did a whole book New Black Vanguard. They're hundreds
Speaker 1: of them. Where are their opportunities of growth? The thing
Speaker 1: with creativity and the thing with sort of what it
Speaker 1: means to be an artist and how do you make
Speaker 1: an artist and how artists sort of deepen themselves. It's
Speaker 1: in part about opportunity to grow. It's about having again
Speaker 1: the space to meet the demand to experiment and then
Speaker 1: thus have the resources to sort of do that experimentation,
Speaker 1: create the images you want, create the sculpture, create whatever.
Speaker 1: A lot of us have not even been given the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see if we could even meet the moment
Speaker 1: that has become increasingly a part of the process for me.
Speaker 1: How do I, in the space that I occupy, create
Speaker 1: more space? And so in a new Black vanguard, how
Speaker 1: do you add something new to the conversation? How do
Speaker 1: you give someone else an opportunity? Right? How do you
Speaker 1: create more space with the space that you've been given?
Speaker 1: And similarly with you know young Gifted in Black right,
Speaker 1: inviting in writers into the project. That was my decision, right,
Speaker 1: there was an editorial decision as the editor of the
Speaker 1: book that I made. And so not only do you
Speaker 1: have young artist, but you also have young curators. You
Speaker 1: have Thomas Lax, who's a young curator at MoMA, right,
Speaker 1: writing on behalf of another young artist, you know, Jacoby
Speaker 1: sat Away. Right. You have jess Bell Brown, young curator
Speaker 1: at the now at the Bottom Museum of Art, writing
Speaker 1: an essay about the artist that she came up with,
Speaker 1: so you have this sort of expansion of space, expansion
Speaker 1: of opportunity. Those are the examples I saw coming up
Speaker 1: right with Elma and what she's done to the Student
Speaker 1: Museum in Harlem, and the way that the Student Museum
Speaker 1: of Harlem is really not only a training ground for
Speaker 1: artists with their artists residency, but also becomes a training
Speaker 1: ground for curators. Right. Many of the young curator black
Speaker 1: curators around the country have a connection to Student Museum
Speaker 1: in Harlem, and so there are examples out there I
Speaker 1: think that allow us to really sort of try in
Speaker 1: your own way, you know, like change the sort of
Speaker 1: scenario and the situation. Right. And that's why, in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, I'm deeply committed to young Black artists
Speaker 1: because there's still too few routes for them to be successful.
Speaker 1: The Internet has allowed more and more young artists to
Speaker 1: circumvent those aditional structures that we're talking about, especially on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It has democratized photography in a way, yes and no. Yes,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't have a book like New Blackgram and
Speaker 1: gard without Instagram. Without social media. You wouldn't even have
Speaker 1: the photographers without it. Because many of these photographers are well. Oh, actually,
Speaker 1: because I grew up on Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook, I was like, oh, I want to take
Speaker 1: my own images, and I got really interested in taking
Speaker 1: my own images on my phone. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, this is I want to do more with this.
Speaker 1: And then it grew right, and they grew their career
Speaker 1: in that way. And so in that way there has
Speaker 1: been a sort of democratizing, but white supremacy is primarily
Speaker 1: wielded through institutional power. So then you look at okay, well,
Speaker 1: how do photographers who are working in a commercial setting
Speaker 1: primarily how do they sustain themselves historically gallery representation and
Speaker 1: agency representation. Then you look at the gallery rosters, you
Speaker 1: look at the agency rosters, and very few of these
Speaker 1: artists are on those rosters. And so that means that
Speaker 1: we're in this moment that is really interesting. We're seeing
Speaker 1: their work on the covers of magazines, right, all these
Speaker 1: different magazines, you know, what have you. But they don't
Speaker 1: have the structural support to sustain that sort of output.
Speaker 1: You know, I've often said when people say, why has
Speaker 1: it another black photographer shot the cover of Vogue after
Speaker 1: Tyler right, young photographer? Because you can argue that Pipe
Speaker 1: Williams is not a photographer. He's an artist for sure,
Speaker 1: but that's a different sort of thing, right than someone
Speaker 1: who's like I am a photographer, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just different, not to take anything away from but
Speaker 1: it's a different thing. It's like someone who is an
Speaker 1: artist directing a film and it's like, cool, you directed
Speaker 1: a film, but like, what about these young black directors
Speaker 1: who can't get the same opportunity. And it's your success
Speaker 1: in another arena that gave you the opportunity in this arena, right,
Speaker 1: which is not a reflection of progress inside the arena.
Speaker 1: And I just think that like we need to be
Speaker 1: like really sort of clear about that, right. There's a
Speaker 1: something different when you get a legend like Hype Williams
Speaker 1: to shoot a cover versus going out and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: Nadine Makaiah whoever. I know this is a work you
Speaker 1: do because you've done this work in this arena and
Speaker 1: exhaled at this, you know at this the next step
Speaker 1: for you is to shoot this other cover. That's a
Speaker 1: different sort of thing and that's not happening. And so
Speaker 1: we're in this interesting moment where I hope that what
Speaker 1: we see is structural support for these artists to not
Speaker 1: only create things, but to grow their careers and to
Speaker 1: be here for the long haul, because long devity has
Speaker 1: often been a white privilege, and I want us to
Speaker 1: just be very clear about that, right, because we're in
Speaker 1: this moment of hyper visibility, right, and it's not unlike
Speaker 1: other moments as recently as the nineties. You think about
Speaker 1: sort of a space like fashion, right, you had all
Speaker 1: of these brands, these black fashion brands. Where are they now?
Speaker 1: Heritage is a white privilege, and I want us to
Speaker 1: be really clear about or at least I just want
Speaker 1: to be personally clear about what I'm after, and it's
Speaker 1: like structural change that means I would like to see
Speaker 1: Tyler at twenty three do a cover of Vogue. I'd
Speaker 1: like to see Tyler at seventy five do a cover
Speaker 1: of Vogue, right because he's been there doing that work,
Speaker 1: been around, been able to sort of grow his practice,
Speaker 1: change his practice, make films, do all the things, and
Speaker 1: then come back to it. Because that is this sort
Speaker 1: of lifespan of successful artist that we have seen. The
Speaker 1: privilege of the long haul a really fascinating idea, but
Speaker 1: also the privilege of a mistake, which which would be
Speaker 1: part and parcel of the long haul, which of course
Speaker 1: you would make mistakes. It is counter to this idea
Speaker 1: of black excellence, right, It's it's counter to this idea
Speaker 1: of like this perfection, it's counter to this idea that
Speaker 1: of insecurity. Right because for me, those concepts like black excellence, perfectionism,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, those are born out of real
Speaker 1: sort of anxiety around a positionality, real anxiety about will
Speaker 1: I be able to be here if I'm not quote
Speaker 1: unquote excellent. And we've seen that that has not been
Speaker 1: the standard for the other group. So I'm just sort
Speaker 1: of interested in my own way in the art world,
Speaker 1: with the artists that you know, you have relationships with,
Speaker 1: and with themes that I hear about, how can I
Speaker 1: critically engage them of the long hall. As Cornell West
Speaker 1: is fond of quoting, ever, try it ever, fail no matter,
Speaker 1: try again, fail again, fail better, to quote Beckett, and
Speaker 1: the absence and the inability for people of color to
Speaker 1: try again, fail again, fail better is not only tragic,
Speaker 1: but it's a disservice to all parties. It's a disservice
Speaker 1: to the artist. Maybe more importantly, it's a disservice to us,
Speaker 1: people who go to the museums, who go to the
Speaker 1: movie theaters, who watch the television shows, who read the books,
Speaker 1: who pay for some of that. You know, I always
Speaker 1: say that America is maybe interested in five or six stories,
Speaker 1: and those stories have to be retold over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. And in this moment, we're interested in
Speaker 1: those stories, same stories being told by people who have
Speaker 1: women bodies, by whole who are black bodies. But it's
Speaker 1: the same narratives. And so my point is, how do
Speaker 1: you break out of those narratives? How do you break
Speaker 1: out of these stories that we know do not work?
Speaker 1: How do you break out of the myth? And only
Speaker 1: through that sort of what you talk about, that failure,
Speaker 1: that experimentation, that risk taking, do you get to a
Speaker 1: breakthrough that another story becomes possible. I hope that that
Speaker 1: is where we are going. But before we get to
Speaker 1: where I think you and I want to go, I'm
Speaker 1: curious about the interiors of these institutions. What are the
Speaker 1: obstacles to telling those news stories inside these long standing structures.
Speaker 1: The analogy that I think about is how artworks end
Speaker 1: up in the museum, the curators say one thing, They go,
Speaker 1: this is the reflection of beauty and all of these things,
Speaker 1: and they are in you know, a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: But what else happens is that you have families who
Speaker 1: have donated a wing or who had helped buy this
Speaker 1: other piece of work, and so you have to take
Speaker 1: their collection or whatever. And so that's how a lot
Speaker 1: of works end up on the walls of museums. It's
Speaker 1: people's private collections. And we're not honest about that. We're
Speaker 1: not honest about the whole process. And I think that
Speaker 1: if we were, then I think reform would be possible
Speaker 1: because people be outraged. How do you reform a system
Speaker 1: that you don't quite understand how things work? And I
Speaker 1: think being opaque is a part of how inequality existing
Speaker 1: really survives. Even in our government, we don't have a
Speaker 1: real sort of understanding on the day to day, sort
Speaker 1: of citizen level of how these things work until it's
Speaker 1: a fucking horror show. And then want to reform the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and then we want to start talking about
Speaker 1: what the Attorney General can and cannot do. You don't
Speaker 1: search for health insurance once you're already in the hospital, exactly,
Speaker 1: And because you know, there's no sort of real public
Speaker 1: funding of these things. It is left to the rich.
Speaker 1: And if something's like that is left to the rich,
Speaker 1: then what ends up happening is they start to feel
Speaker 1: the rinks of those jobs at every sort of level,
Speaker 1: because who else if you're a museum director, right and
Speaker 1: you're you have to raise incredible sums of money, there's
Speaker 1: only one place you can go to raise that type
Speaker 1: of money, and so you have to be part of
Speaker 1: those groups. And so it's not shocking that the system
Speaker 1: then becomes a reflection of, you know, wealth inequality, because
Speaker 1: the system is a reflection of wealth inequality at every turn,
Speaker 1: everywhere you look. We started early in our conversation we
Speaker 1: talked about how people don't draw connections between real estate
Speaker 1: and the possibilities of art making in New York City,
Speaker 1: and so much of it is ordered by what space
Speaker 1: do we have available and how can we use that space.
Speaker 1: It's just one more articulation of the idea that the
Speaker 1: art world is really just a reflection of the wider world,
Speaker 1: as is the art in the wall. And it's also
Speaker 1: just one more intergulation that things have to change. Well,
Speaker 1: I want this episode to exist as a kind of
Speaker 1: reflection of you and your work. So, since people can't
Speaker 1: really be in museums right now, or most people can't,
Speaker 1: I thought we'd create this kind of virtual space on
Speaker 1: our website and walk through these six pieces that I
Speaker 1: especially liked. So for those listening, they can go to
Speaker 1: talk easypod dot com slash antwine you will find these
Speaker 1: six pieces as Antoine helps us work through them. I
Speaker 1: love this, I love the the I've not seen the
Speaker 1: pieces before. I just want everyone to know. And so
Speaker 1: this is going to be great. So the first piece
Speaker 1: is by Bethany Collins. It's called Too White to Be Black.
Speaker 1: You know, Bethany's work is really sort of about language,
Speaker 1: and she works sort of language as her primary material.
Speaker 1: It's about sort of the way that you know, language
Speaker 1: is a construction right in the ways in which you know,
Speaker 1: we think about language an experience. Language is often you know,
Speaker 1: an experience of power. And this worked Too White to
Speaker 1: Be Black in twenty fourteen. It's a chalk on chalkboard.
Speaker 1: She is thinking about sort of racial identity, but also
Speaker 1: the erasure that occurs in some of those spaces that
Speaker 1: we talked about, you know, on the podcast, and she's
Speaker 1: taking others texts, and a way to sort of think
Speaker 1: through sort of the ways in which language informs racial identity,
Speaker 1: but also expectation, desire, privilege, and so forth. So the
Speaker 1: second piece is by Chifon Thomas. It's called A Mother
Speaker 1: Who Had No Mother. What's interesting about Chiefon Thomas's work,
Speaker 1: who also grew up in Chicago like that both of us.
Speaker 1: It's a work that is thinking about this idea of
Speaker 1: craft in the history of craft, sort of reclaiming in
Speaker 1: broidery and reclaiming craft as something that belongs in contemporary
Speaker 1: conversations about art. There's a long history of erature and
Speaker 1: there's a long history of looking down on craft and
Speaker 1: in relationship to say paint, and formally, the way in
Speaker 1: which they are using embroidery as sort of a way
Speaker 1: to paint is a real opportunity to sort of investigate
Speaker 1: the hierarchies within capital a art. Chiffon is very very young,
Speaker 1: also in early twenties, currently a graduate student getting an
Speaker 1: MFA at Yale, and I really was really excited to
Speaker 1: include their work in the book and the exhibition that's
Speaker 1: traveling because it's an artist, you know, at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of their career, and I just can't wait to
Speaker 1: see what happens, you know, next, and where Chifon takes
Speaker 1: embroidery and takes the way in which they are thinking
Speaker 1: about mixing embroidery with paint to create you know, figurative images.
Speaker 1: You have two histories right there, right you have the
Speaker 1: history of new to work and then you also have
Speaker 1: the history of painting Western painting sort of lighting in
Speaker 1: their work. Our third piece is by Derek Adams. His
Speaker 1: piece is called the Great Wall. Derek is an artist
Speaker 1: who was really central to this project because derek practice
Speaker 1: is not only artworks, but Derek worked as a curator
Speaker 1: for over a decade curator actually curator at Rush Arts
Speaker 1: and the Chelsea Space and gave a lot of artists,
Speaker 1: many of which are in this book, let Jacobe their
Speaker 1: first show exhibition in Chelsea, and that really is a
Speaker 1: real articulation of this idea of creating space and of
Speaker 1: re thinking what's possible in the positions that you're in.
Speaker 1: So Derek is a key figure in our community because
Speaker 1: of the ways in which he's helped many artists, you know,
Speaker 1: many of which we have gone on to be real
Speaker 1: heavyweights like Andy Wiley, Michaeling Thomas, etc. Etc. His sort
Speaker 1: of ethos is that he is interested in sort of
Speaker 1: deconstruction and interested in showing how works are made. That
Speaker 1: is very sort of important to him. And in this
Speaker 1: image of Mike Tyson with this sort of wall that
Speaker 1: Derek has created over the image, right, Derek is also
Speaker 1: sort of a multidisciplinary artist, and he's often thinking about
Speaker 1: notions of fashion, notions of masculinity, which you have here
Speaker 1: in this work, notions of community enjoy. He's really thinking
Speaker 1: sort of really critically about black spaces of liberation, and
Speaker 1: in what I mean by that, he's thinking about sort
Speaker 1: of how we in the every day create those spaces.
Speaker 1: There's an image of Martin Luther King on vacation, and
Speaker 1: that image for him has become such a point of
Speaker 1: departure for his inquiry, just because often we don't see
Speaker 1: those images right of Luther King, right. We see him
Speaker 1: in protests, we see him at marches, we see him laboring.
Speaker 1: And so part of Derek's practice as alat has been
Speaker 1: to short of think about the black body and repose
Speaker 1: right and rest. And this work is an earlier work
Speaker 1: of his, but it shows I believe all of the
Speaker 1: concerns that he's a deepened over to years. Again, for
Speaker 1: those listening who want to follow along, be sure to
Speaker 1: visit our site at talk easypond dot com slash Sergeant.
Speaker 1: This fourth piece is by Kara Walker and it's called
Speaker 1: untitled two. What's interesting about this piece is that we
Speaker 1: all or most of us know who care. Walker is
Speaker 1: world famous artist who started very young. She had her
Speaker 1: first breakout show, I believe, at the age of twenty
Speaker 1: four at the Drawing Center in New York City. This
Speaker 1: work was made in nineteen ninety six. She would have
Speaker 1: been twenty six, I believe. And so although Kara Walker
Speaker 1: is sort of a mid career artist now, this work
Speaker 1: was made she was younger. And what's sort of interesting
Speaker 1: about this particular work, right, it's one of her silhouette
Speaker 1: works that she's become famous for but has moved away
Speaker 1: from in recent year. She has kind of taken to
Speaker 1: a drawing practice that is pinctully, and it talks about
Speaker 1: the ways in which slavery, the Emptebellum period is still
Speaker 1: with us, right, We're living sort of in an afterlife
Speaker 1: of slavery, and she's made these really sort of disturbing
Speaker 1: frankly images in the one before you what you see
Speaker 1: as a young girl pulling out the intestines of a pig.
Speaker 1: That speaks to sort of violence and speaks to the
Speaker 1: ongoing trauma that we experienced. And it's really sort of
Speaker 1: important that we sort of think about how we often
Speaker 1: encountered a silhouette, right, often as kids. Right, It's used
Speaker 1: in children's books and things like that, And so she's
Speaker 1: repurposed that in a sense, that sort of casualness, that
Speaker 1: sort of formative pictorial experience, to sort of equate that
Speaker 1: with one of the earliest sort of formative institutions of
Speaker 1: this country. She is in the book because of one
Speaker 1: fah when she created this work, but two she really
Speaker 1: has been, I believe, an artist that had opened the
Speaker 1: possibility for those who came after her, the experience of
Speaker 1: being a young artist and being that universally accepted and
Speaker 1: out of college. Right she was at Residy, it was
Speaker 1: her first show, really one of her first shows, and
Speaker 1: then she's you know, wins to McArthur genius Grant, right
Speaker 1: and just it just total sort of global art star
Speaker 1: that didn't happen the black artist you know before care
Speaker 1: are Walker. In a lot of ways, and now we're
Speaker 1: seeing that more and more in anything that She's just
Speaker 1: such an important touchstone for contemporary art in general, but
Speaker 1: particularly for the shifts that we've seen within black artistic production.
Speaker 1: This fifth piece is by Sadie Barnett. It's called untitled
Speaker 1: People's World. This work is sort of interesting because it's
Speaker 1: actually her father's FBI file. Her father was a black
Speaker 1: panther in Oakland, and during Cornell pro the FBI spied
Speaker 1: on American citizens and her father was one of the
Speaker 1: black panthers that that they spied on and developed a
Speaker 1: file for. And Sadie and her father discovered the file,
Speaker 1: and then Sadie, who is someone who often works with ephemera,
Speaker 1: and decided to sort of mark the file as images,
Speaker 1: right and sort of use this purple spray paint to
Speaker 1: sort of leave and make a new mark on these works, right.
Speaker 1: And so the work is sort of is a part
Speaker 1: of a larger practice that explores sort of the personal
Speaker 1: as political, right, her father, and it's thinking through sort
Speaker 1: of sculpture and drawing in collage as a way to
Speaker 1: sort of think through her personal history. I think it
Speaker 1: through her family history. She also often uses found photographs
Speaker 1: such as you know. Another one is called untitled Baby
Speaker 1: Girl from twenty seventeen, and she sort of uses rhinestones
Speaker 1: and other sort of gestures, you know, glitter to sort
Speaker 1: of re orient those images with new gestures that connects
Speaker 1: her life to sort of the ephemera of her the
Speaker 1: lives of her standent family through sort through this process,
Speaker 1: there's this idea of documentation and what do you do
Speaker 1: with the sort of documents of your lives, right, and
Speaker 1: how can you impress yourself onto a family history? And
Speaker 1: I think that's all seen in the work. And I
Speaker 1: think that not only is she thinking about sort of
Speaker 1: historical burdens right as it relates to her own history,
Speaker 1: but she's also sort of making gestures with glitter, with
Speaker 1: spray paint, with color, with rhinestones that really sort of
Speaker 1: speaks to joy, impossibility and hope. Our sixth and final
Speaker 1: piece also happens to be the cover of your book, Young,
Speaker 1: Gifted and Black. It's by Tungi Jones and it's called
Speaker 1: Blue Dancer. This work, this painting, Blue Dancer, combines the
Speaker 1: visual lexicon of European, West African and American art into
Speaker 1: sort of these lush ethiteral paintings, and so you see
Speaker 1: this sort of sensual brush work in this particular work
Speaker 1: in other works as well. They evoke in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. You know, painters like Christopheely and Bob Thompson,
Speaker 1: you know, who are too rations for Tune's work. But
Speaker 1: then there's also sort of the ways in which he's
Speaker 1: thinking about sort of realism and abstraction, right, and so
Speaker 1: you have a figure that alludes to sort of a
Speaker 1: female figure, but then you also have the body made
Speaker 1: in these sort of abstract forms, but also is making
Speaker 1: this abstract gesture. And so he's thinking through not just figuration,
Speaker 1: but the history of abstraction and the ways in which
Speaker 1: you know, color in shape also is synonymous with desire,
Speaker 1: Antoine Sergeant. People cannot go to museums for the most part,
Speaker 1: but it's as close as many people are going to get.
Speaker 1: So I thank you so much for doing that, thank
Speaker 1: you for this book, and I thank you for coming on,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I love that we got to
Speaker 1: talk and I want to continue the conversation anytime. Stay safe,
Speaker 1: and that's our show. Special thanks today to Hannah Gottlieb Graham,
Speaker 1: Eric Lures, and Antoine Sergeant. If you'd like to check
Speaker 1: out Antoine's latest book, Young Gifted m Black. You can
Speaker 1: visit our website at www dot Talk easypod dot com,
Speaker 1: slash antwine, that's talk easypod dot com slash antwine. If
Speaker 1: you're new to the show and would like to check
Speaker 1: out more conversations, be sure to listen to our episodes
Speaker 1: with Cornell West Representative il Han Omar, Claudia Rankin, Miranda July,
Speaker 1: Gloria steinem fran Lebowitz, Ted Danson, Janelle Money, Brittany Howard,
Speaker 1: Carol Burnett, Titus Burgess, Norman Lear, Malcolm Gladwell, Jeremy O Harris,
Speaker 1: and men any many more. You can find those on
Speaker 1: our website or wherever you do you're listening Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher.
Speaker 1: You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
Speaker 1: at talk easy pod, and if you'd like to join
Speaker 1: our mailing list, drop me a line at talk easypod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. This show is made possible by
Speaker 1: an incredible team each and every week, including our executive producer,
Speaker 1: Janick Sibravo, our associate producer, Nicki Spina, illustrations by Christian Schenoy.
Speaker 1: Our lead editor is Andre Lynn, our assistant editors are
Speaker 1: David Harding, Rinas Young, Kevin Corer, and Joshua Siegel. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Dylan Peck Marketing pie patrise Lee. Our
Speaker 1: interns are Julian Erector, Grace Perkins, and Ian Simmons. Graphics
Speaker 1: by Derek Gabrazach and Ethan Seneca, and the show is
Speaker 1: produced by Caroline Rieback. I'm san Fragoso. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back on Sunday with philosopher,
Speaker 1: historian and author Rutger Bregmann. Until then, stay safe and
Speaker 1: so on.