In 2018 at the White House, the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama painted by two “Afro-descendant” artists – Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sheral – caused a sensation. The presidential couple wanted to support the emergence of a young generation of black painters and contribute to the pride of a whole section of the American population, too invisible in art.
Documentary filmmaker Marion Schmidt draws on this highly symbolic gesture to then give voice to several of these artists, now highly prized by the art market. However, the observation is implacable.
Even today, “black people are not represented on the walls of our museums,” observes Gus Casely-Hayford, the first black director of a major British museum. In the history of Western art, “the black body was first treated as an object,” adds Franco-Somali gallery owner Marianne Ibrahim. If black figures were painted, they remained anonymous and confined to the background.
“Making Black Women Universal”
Through her surrealist portraits, subverting images of fashion or architecture, Shannon T. Lewis aspires to “make black women universal” and “create new models”. Coming from a violent neighborhood in Baltimore, Jerrell Gibbs (whose work hangs in the Capitol) takes care in his paintings to “surround black men with beauty”, to show them in the sweetness of an intimate life, to thwart clichés. Same approach for the Nigerian Peter Uka, in Cologne, who paints the dancing youth of his country in bright colors. While the Anglo-Kenyan Michael Armitage tells on traditional lubugo canvases, stitched with scars, the history of his native land, both wounded and shimmering.
It’s a shame that the documentary eludes all the previous generations – the Harlem Renaissance movement, for example – who worked, in the shadows in the 20th century, to this revolution of representations. For several years, museums and foundations have also been trying to catch up and give all these artists, finally, their rightful place.
