Month: August 2020

More Bisa Butler: Portraits

I Am Not Your Negro
detail from To God and Truth
To God and Truth
Basquiat
detail from prior image
another detail
Broom Jumpers

As mentioned in the previous 2 posts, the Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibit at the Katonah Museum of Art through October 4th is absolutely must see. These pictures don’t fully do justice to the incredible power and visual impact of the works in person. They leap off the wall and shake you. Click any image to see them all enlarged. I remembered some of the titles and hope I didn’t get any of them wrong. There is an explanatory placard next to each quilt providing useful information about the history of the image and the materials and processes used. Just look at the bright contrasty colors with which the faces are constructed!

Click any image to see them all bigger.

Bisa Butler

A couple of weeks ago we went to see the Bisa Butler exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art which is open to limited numbers with tickets reserved in advance. It will move to Chicago in October. If you can get tickets RUN, don’t walk to see this. The work is incredible and I’ll be posting some of my snapshots over the next few posts.

There’s material on the museum web site and videos that will provide more insight into her working methods and materials. While the work is very quilty, it also has a painted quality, remarkable use of color and contrast. The pieces are drawn from photographs of the black experience and are just unbelievably powerful both aesthetically and as social commentary.

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to take a focused picture of the first piece which opens the exhibition but it will give you some idea of how she uses archival photographs (in this case from 1940s Chicago) to create her art. Click any image to see them all full sized.

Katonah Museum of Art, New York