Remembering Radcliffe Bailey Through The Black History In His Art

Written by Shantay Robinson 

On Wednesday, Nov. 15, it was introduced that visible artist, Radcliffe Bailey died of mind most cancers 10 days earlier than his fifty fifth birthday. Bailey’s prolific work developed distinctive narratives of the African American expertise by way of a particular visible language. He depicted household intimately, in addition to collectively with particulars referencing his personal familial legacy and the diaspora. His artwork finally portrays the resiliency and connectivity of a folks.

The narratives he crafted with a language of visuals are nuanced and unique. And within the wake of his passing, wanting intently at Radcliffe Bailey’s artwork confirms the significance of his work for many who knew him and introduces his artwork’s saliency for many who didn’t.

“If you wish to know the historical past of individuals, you possibly can examine them by their artwork,” Bailey mentioned in a video for the Excessive Museum of Artwork.

This assertion is related as a result of his artwork will get private. Pictures of his relations from the tintypes that have been handed all the way down to him; vocabulary of motifs that embody prepare tracks, in reference to his household’s journey from the south to the north through the Underground Railroad and his father’s work as a railroad engineer; and references to water referring to him and his father’s outing fishing and to Black folks’s collective compelled migration west enable viewers to know him by way of his artwork.

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In 2011, the Excessive Museum held a mid-career retrospective of Bailey’s work Radcliffe Bailey: Reminiscence as Medication, curated by Carol Thompson and Michael Rooks. The exhibition included a few of his most unforgettable works, together with “Windward Coast” (2009-11), an set up of a black head drowning in a sea of piano keys from 400 pianos unfold throughout the exhibition house flooring. The art work represents those that have been thrown overboard through the center passage, a narrative thathas been eradicated from historical past books. The sinking head appears to be calling out amid the ocean of piano keys’ overwhelming place.

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In “Notes from Elmina,” a collection the place Bailey paints immediately on classical composition sheet music, he contemplates the musical soundtrack of the transatlantic slave commerce. He makes use of the sheet music and depictions of African sculpture and panorama to juxtapose the music as an icon of western tradition with Africa’s pure and cultural improvement. Elmina is the identify of a slave fort off the coast of Ghana. By together with parts from each cultures, he’s developed a story that’s deeply inclusive andtells a novel story. Bailey acknowledges that music is a connector of individuals all through the world. Creating artwork about Elmina not solely strikes a chord with its allusion to slavery, however it foregrounds it to the zeitgeist on the time.

EW, SN (2011), one other of Bailey’s very identifiable works is a darkish portray with layers, each actually and figuratively. He added seven layers of paint to the canvas and attributes this painterly approach to his coaching as a sculptor, but additionally to his thought course of. There are clues on this portray that inform the story of his household’s migration and the migration of Black folks inside america. Not solely are the ladders for upward mobility however additionally they are consultant of railroad tracks depicting his household’s escape from slavery through the underground railroad.

His collages and assemblages work in comparable methods as he collects media to inform tales, permitting viewers to make connections between typically disparate objects. The layering of pictures and varieties onto flat surfaces in his collages is a follow developed as a scholar of sculpture as are his assemblages of objects. An allusion to water can also be current in his works suggesting traversing the ocean from Africa to the west by way of the transatlantic slave commerce. However his most memorable motif is likely to be that of household – his personal and the bigger inhabitants of diasporic Africans. In his follow of together with household into his work, he makes his viewer look past what’s written about in historical past books and into their hearts.

Involved with historical past and thriller, he was intrigued by Jacob Lawrence’s artwork as a baby for his means to expertise a special time by way of the Migration Sequence. The work sparked curiosity in him. He was capable of meet Jacob Lawrence on the Excessive Museum at a guide signing as a teen, the place his mom informed Lawrence, “My son’s going to be an artist.” Like Lawrence did for him, Bailey needs to spark curiosity in folks by way of his work.

“I need to make somebody search,” he tells the Excessive.

And his art work does that by letting the viewer make the connections in his work and sculptures.

Radcliffe Bailey was born in New Jersey in 1968, however his household moved to Atlanta within the Seventies. And he lived and labored there since. He attended Atlanta School of Artwork and majored in sculpture. He explored themes of ancestry, race, and reminiscence utilizing culturally wealthy supplies and layered imagery in his work as a painter, sculptor, and combined media artist. He developed frequent grammars within the vocabulary of his visible narratives.

Bailey is survived by his spouse Leslie Parks Bailey, the daughter of famed photographer Gordon Parks; his daughter Olivia, son Coles, in addition to his dad and mom Brenda and Radcliffe Sr. 

Bailey’s artwork is at present on view in a number of exhibitions, together with Filling within the Items in Black at Saatchi in London till November 26 and in Brussels till December 17; 45th at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans till December 16; The Large Image at Evening Gallery in Los Angeles till Dec. 22; Sightlines: On Peace, Energy, and Status. Steel Arts in Africa at Bard Graduate Middle in New York Metropolis till Dec. 31; Multiplicity: Blackness in Up to date American Collage at Frist Artwork Museum in Nashville till Dec. 31.

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