StraightenUpFlyRight_TalkingArtEmmaAmos

8/14/2019 StraightenUpFlyRight_TalkingArtEmmaAmos

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S r r ai gh r e n U p a n d F l y R i gh r ;T a l k in g A r r w i rh E m m a A m o s

k l l J:oIu : h 's the afternoon of Ma)' 12. 1993. Th is is bell hooks in conver-saricn with Emma Amos . Emma, from where you art' righ t now, hasbei ng an artist been a source of fulfillment for you?E",,,,a 1\mOl: I 01 0 ' [ imag ine being anything but an arti st . Yes, I th i nkde finite ly a source of fulfillmenr. W hen I was a little gi rl, th ai was th eonly t hing I ever wanted (0 be .

bh: G irlfriend . bur how did you know there even was such a th ing as anart ist. as a lin le gi rl ?f A: I t hink I knew. Ali i d id was draw. and I gOt responses to it whenpeople said. "You're an arr isr," }"OU know. littl e g irl artis r."bh: Tha t 's wonderful.EA: When Jwas in elemen tary school, I won poste r comes rs and thingslike that , And when I was about nine )'ears old. my mot her t ried ( 0 ge tHale Wood ruff to work wit h me a lit tle . Hale was teaching at Arl anr aUniversity, mak ing rhese ,gorgeous mu rals. And he must have laughed ,and said, ..A litrle g irl! Art' you kidding?"bb: ' ' ' 'ell , I can cell youmust be talking about a seg regated b lack envi ron-ment , because peop le said you were a li rrle ,g irl a rris r, not that youwere a lirrle black g irl art ist . Which rem inds us that when we are in theonrexr of seg rega ted black communitie s, ge nder d ifferences are high.lighted in a way thai race is nor highl igh ted. Soycc knew Ihal theft' wassomething d iffere nt abo ut your desire (0 be an :lrt ist because you wert' alittle g irl?


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17 1 AI TON WV WINO

EA: Yes. I don 't think I knew I wa s ablack art ist t ill many years later.bh: Think ing of you be side Etizab erh Catle tt in her late sevent ies, Ith ink, bere's th is coot inuum of powerful black women art ist s. Can youtalk a b it abo ut the evolution of coming to seC' yourself as somehow ablack artist? Using what the philosopher Cornel West calls a "race rranscending vision." that Iinle g irl who wasdreaming ofbeing an arrisr wasn'( thinking , ''I' 118row up and be a black woman art ist" but ''I '1I 8 tOWupand be an art ist . M \'(fhar 's the po int at wh ich move inrc seei eg ourselves as both r:locially defined and defined more explicitly bygende r?EA: I became mere awareof being identified by race when I attended college in Ohio. I learned char I was definitely d ifferent , because thi s was amostl y white college.bh: You went to Antioch.EA : Yes ,after a completely seg rega ted g rowing-up rime. in Adanta,with a seg rega ted high school. And th e col leges-Atl anta University,Spelman. Morehouse-had wonderful peop le. I mean, I didn 't knowthat th ere was anything "wrong" with b lack intell ectuals, because I wascompletely surrounded by them.bh: Absclurely. In retrospect. I see that when I was paint ing my little p icrures in art class at my all-black high school, it seemed perfectly naturalthat art shou ld be a ter rain of explorat ion essentia l to our inrell ecrualdevelopment , and it 's on ly when you move in d ifferent circles that youbegi n ro quest.ion tha t.EA : ~ I even mort aftC' r Ant ioch. Then in London. as an art student . Ihad tha t wonderfu l feC' ling of refu se . The Engl ish d idn't d islike mebecause I was black. They di sliked me because I wasn't English.They alsodisl iked Hungarians, and they d idn't like Freoch people, or any foreignen. Ir was a g reat revelati on.bh: I remember one of the earliest conversations I had with you. I wastalk ing about ro} own pilgri mage to Europe, and how it was such a d isap-


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ST a " IGl lT El" l - I' " : - 0 FLY Il IG llT T" LKI l"G " aT " ' IT II U I )lI" ,, )lIO 1'\po in rmen t [0 me that I didn 't find th at special freedom rhere th at blackexpa t riates had ta lked about , You said char the Europe you t raveled towas that kind ofmoment, where you felt a g reater sense of freedom andpossibility. Talk about that some, because we hardl y hear anything aboutblack veomen expatr iates .EA: Th ere were and are a lot of th em. A lot ofwomen artists did go srudy,In Par is usually, It was a wonderful t ime for me, because I was in Londonwith some other black inrellecruals. David Levering Lewis was there, andPres ton King , a young man- he's one of tbeKings- who left Alabamato go to Europe and never rerumed because, as a black man, he refused tobe drafted , I unders tand he's a professor in Lancaster, and a well-knownlecturer. Anyway, I was in London when these people were rhere , in cddi non to pick ing up wonderful artist friends, Some of these people are stillmy friends. It was like a continua tion of Ant ioch , reall y-that fee ltngthat I belonged to a broade r g roup, Young peop le going to school nowsegregate themse lves, Black students ea t with each Other and pressu reeach Other to live in the same houses, doing all the things I wouldn't haveimag ined doing ,bh: That 's because we grew up during the pain of segregat ion and werecurious abo ut wha t we could learn by moving in to different circles, wefelt we were be ing denied knowledg e - experience, Idon't see that longing to experience al l kinds of difference in order to g row in many youngpeople now,EA: I th ink you're righ t. Did you feel especially that any inst irurion wasgoing to be tbeplace?bh: I t hought tha t everything was gomg to be an adventure. Com ing upin the segregated South , my notion of an arris r, of the bohemia n world ,came from novels and books, and it wasn 't realistic, Emma, what was itlike to have th at experience of journeying to Europe and th en corningback here? How a ld were you?EA: The first rime I went (Q London, I think I was nineteen, I seayed therefor a year and a half, went back to g rad uate from Ant ioch, and rhen


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l . . . .TON M Y l U N D

returned ro London to work and graduare from rhe Cent ral School of Art ,I rhink J was th rough with that who le thing when I was abo ut rwenty-two . And Jwent back to Atlanta and took part in what now seems like thega lvanizing of ene rgy and people rha r would lead ro t he civil rig htsmovement . I spent thi s wonde rful )'ear rneeeing a whole bunch ofbright.exci ted young black folks. eager to make thei r mark in the world-peo-ple like myself.bh: Unlike many young black women. you d id grow up in a mi lieu whereblack int ellectuality was celeb rated and embraced , Can )'ou recall whatrlns was like?f i t : I didn 't know how spec ial it was ro g row up in char milieu unt il Iwen t ro college. went away to England , spe nt t ime in ew York, and dis-covered th at most peopl e assume d that blacks from the South are fromsome SO rt of planta tion area, They don't have a true picture of the metro-po litan areas in the South . or ar least they didn 't then . The assumptionthat you are un lea rned . and that nobody in your family ever went any-where or knew anyrhing , was very pai nful. One of t he reasons I d id thepiece A RmJi"gal &1m S"llth's " a . , was to publidy th ank m)' father forbeing e catalysefor the people [hat are in t h a t piece,bb: Describe those f igures.EA: The narrative of the p iece is ima g ina ry. It 's abo ut race and class.wh ich is d ifficult for an ybody to d iscuss in th is COUnt ry because rbere'snot supposed to be any class sysrem. and of cou rse th ere is. I used myfat her as rhe centerpiece. My mother and father are first cousins, and myfather had be en apprent iced to his uncle . my mot her 's ferbe r. who had abeau t ifu l d rugstore which seocd on a comer o ~ w t ' t ' Aubu rn Avenueacross from "Big Bethel" A.M.E. church. Daddy had gone to college inOh io, and he 's the one who to ld me to go to An tioch , because it was solib eral . it had black st udents, even then! That was th e onl y p lace I everwant ed to go.

Anyway, even though my fath er had this very respeceed unc le. his sideof the family was poor. so he worked hisway throug h college as a Pullmanpo rrer. He loved spo rts and all rhe thi ngs young black men (wi th fresh


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ST lt AIC.ll T E I'o t .. A :\ O f ly U GIIT TALt::II'o G "aT W ITI I UUU ANOS 1 " \

EtN,,14 A tNOJ. Lucas' Dream. 1994. Silk toIlpgraph. tal" photograh. 74J/1" x54 11z." Cq6/rtt11 oftINarnst.Images of slavery in their head s) admi red in the 1920s and 1930s.Joe.'LoUISW ;lS his hero rhen,and he read a lor.In rhrs p icture rhere are references ro W. E. B. Dc bcrs. who came ro

our house when I was growing up, and ro Langston Hughesand CoomeeCullen. Both my moth er lind farber bought us those writers' books, andwe g rew up read ing them and others. Zorn Neale Hursron would cometh rough Atlanta on her tri ps [0 garber informacion for her anchropological ....-oek (she was studying at Columbia with Franz Boas). and she wouldcome to my ruther'S d rugstore. He wou ld get a whol e bunch of guystogether, and after the d rugsto re closed they would si t around dr inking


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1" 6 ' ' IT ON N Y ).lINDbourbon with Zora. And she would tell sto ries, and they would te ll sro-rie s (and she would wrire those seorles down). She came severa l t imes,and Daddy said she was wonderful. He said she cou ld tell the raciest Sto-ries you ever heard. So I W1lnted her to Stand outside the reading , watch-ing and listening,although In reali ty neither she nor would have beenInvited by anyone but 01)' fathe r.

Th is Story is real ly abou t class, because [here never would have been areading at Bessie Smith's grave if it weren 't for me imagining my fatherbringing everyone together. \Y/. E. B. DuBoi s wouldn 't have thought tha tBessie was a nt' of the "ralenred renrh," right? She was jUst a blues singer.I th ink Paul Robeson would have come to a read ing at Bess ie Smi t h'sgr.lve. so I show him holding a songbook that belonged to her.

Then there was th e prob lem of where Langsto n H ughes and CouoeeeCu llen stood in this connect ion. I' ve read as many things as I could , andI'm nor tOO clear on anything ot her than that Langston had th is problemwit h Zo rn. They seemed to be afte r the same white woman's money, I d idthis piece as a response to David Lewis's book Whm Hart"" \VaJ in VogI"',where he gave Zora maybe a couple of lines, maybe a page, J asked h imwhy he d idn't g ive her mo re space, when he gave so much space toLangston Hughes. And hesaid it W:lS because she hadher hand OU t to thatwhite woman. And I said, "Langston Hughes had his hmd OU t, tOO!MTbeywere bot h deep in the peekersof this whi te woman, whosename was Char-lotte Mason . An),way, I t hough t if a famous histor ian can use or not US("somethi ng because he has an att itude toward it, then I as an artist can dothat , roo. And that 's execrly when I painted a h istory I'd never reed .bb: Since the vel')' begi nning . rou have been combining dream and real-ity in your work . surrea l elements with concrete information abou t blackhistory, It 's g reat to look in rhe face of that J oe Louis charac ter in yourpainting , beca use it 's very d ifferent from seeing photographs ofJ oe Louis.W hat str ikes me most in your image is the color brown , the shadows inhis face. Th e image has an int ensity that suggests both his passion for hisSIXlrt and also the tu rmoil ofbe ing a black man in sports during his day,f A : He was vu lnerab le in the same way rha r Zo ra and Bessie were vul-nerable to fame. to mis reedings and ro hig h expecearions. People used tocringe when rhey hea rd J oe Louis spea k, because he d id n't use proper


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ST -.A1G Il T EN UP AN n PLY IU G II " , TALK ING A itT W Il'1l M M A I nEngl ish. Bur when he spoke he said wonderful th ings. He alwaysthankedIus mother after a figh t , and when you think about our current jailedprizefighter, di d he even have a mother, and would it ever occur to him tothank anyone?bh: Clearly, Mike Tyson's early state of orphanhood has affected his ability to respond positively to his own self-Image or to represen tat ions ofwomen and the concrete reality of women.

Talk about your movement from the black intelligent sia of the Southto the big city of New York, and what that meant for you,EA: Well , coming to New York with my portfol io of prints and all thepaint ing I'd done, I thought I was a grown-up at twen ty-three. I ranarou nd trying to ge t a job teach ing at the Art Student s' League, andCooper Union, and I'm sure ther were all laugh ing at me, but I didn 't getthe joke. They JUSt said , "Oh well, we're nor hiring righ t now," and I wassort ofcrazy to think that I could actually teach in oneof those places then.hh: Wh at is most impressive about that period of your life is your cet -rainty that you were an artis t. Tell me more about what it felt like rryingto esrabhsh yourself here in New York. One th ing that di stinguishespeople of your upbring ing from the Sout h is that there are also all theseot her artists here , It's a much more compe tit ive world .EA: First of all. the community of art ists is really big and intimidating. Irhink there wert: periods when I didn't know where to find other art ists. IJUS t lucked into meet ing a g roup who were supportive of me when I wasassisranr teaching at the Dalton School for that fi rst year. I was maki ngpeanuts, but I made valued friends, Wh en I decided to leave Dalton, having stud ied text iles in Eng land. J rook a job as a weaver/de sign er withDorothy Liebes, the famous text ile des igner, who respected my work asan artist more than my desig n experience.

I decided I'd better go back to school, and I chose New York Universitybecause it was convenient and I could work a s a designer and go to schoolat the same t ime, It was kind of a mista ke, bec ause it wasn't Yale, youknow, which would have been the validat ion supreme. But I met HaleWoodruffat New York University, though I never had a class with him.


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11$ A RT ON MY M IN I )

bb: Did he remember you?EA: Oh, he certainlydid , And he apologtaed to me (or having been reluc-tant to teach me years before , Hale was really menroring me. I would goby his office and show him'my work. H(' verymuch liked the prints that Ihad done in England, where I was a printmaking major in art school, andhe started tell ing me abou t this g roup called Spiral. He said i f I wouldlend him the prints , he would take them 10 Spiral and show them,hh: What d id he tell you about the group?EA: He didn 't tell me anyth ing, except that Romare Bearden and Nor-man Lewis and some other men were members of thi s g roup, And it wasup to me to find OUt who in the world they were.bh: Were you the only woman in the group)fA : I was the only woman and J was the younges t member. when theydid invite me. I'm not sure they invited other people by looki ng at thei rwork. bur they were very nervous about having a woman in their g roup.and they wanted to make sure I was a real artist and nor a d i lettante orsomething. I think that theyasked me rn join the d ub (which met once aweek (or di scussion) instead of women they knew. because those womenrepresented some SOrt of threat. and Jwas only "a little girl."bh: So tha t 's where sexism ente red in. It wasn't that they wanted to pro-ten their male g roup. You have said that the group "talked about what itmeant ro be black, and whether we must use our jazz and African in fl u-ences, and do the same SOrt o( work ,"EA: I've tried ro remember many times what it was like (Q be a memberof Spiral. Mainly it was me listen ing to Norman . I know J spo ke, bur rcan't imagine what I said. Norman talked about be ing a member of theWillard Gallery. and he talked about the problems of paintin g abstractlyand being can(used with being a black arti st and paint ing black subjectmatter. He had been a figurative painter dur ing th e Works ProgressAdminisrrarion era. Those are some of his most beauti ful works. But hehad also been a member of the group of white art ists rhar met at the


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TtAIGtlT IiN UP A ND fL Y ti G HT TA L KIN G AltT W I T H hU I A A N OS 1'9Cedar Bar, includ ing de Koon ing and Ad Reinhardt , who was his friend ,and J ackson Pollock. and that whole gang . In all the writ ing about thatg roup of abs tract expressicniscs. they had eliminated Norman . and Ithi nk some of his anger was because of rhar.bh: W hen you see th e film cli ps of that g roup. ir's int erest ing how rhecamera practically erases him. He [usecomes across as thi s da rk blob. Hisfeatu res ate nor visib le. and the only th ing that alerts us to his presence ishis kind ofshadowy,dark outli ne.Et\ : Right . So char's one of the th ings we d iscussed . The other was thatRomy wanted to di scuss neg ritude. Negr itude was rhe big thing rightthen , and I hadn't read Seagbor. I d idn 't really know what they were talk -ing about . Some of [hem had taken part in [hat festi val in Dakar. and sorhey were really up on it .

bh: \Vhar was )'our relationship to ot her black women arti stsar thi s time?fA : I di d n't rea lly know them . I knew of Faith Ringgold . becausethey ment ioned having met her at some forum . I knew of VivianBrowne. but she did n't become a friend until several years late r, AndI knew of Bert y Blayeon Taylor because she had the child ren's artcarnival at the Museum of Moder n Art . I knew t hat the re were blackwomen arti srs.Db: 1look at you now and I th ink of you as such a powerhouse in terms ofbringing women an ises tog ether to have int ellectual d iscussions aboutan. Where .....ere )'OU then? Were )'ou caught in that traditional nceion ofrhe lone arti$[?f A: I think so. That 's a problem even now, Young peop le coming our ofschool are coming out of isola ted campus environments or isolated artestablishments . Coming to New York. [hey know [here's a pant heon ofnames. bur they think they're the only one of a gi ven age. I like to reachOU t to [hose people,

bh: Let's ta lk about your encou nter with Romare Bearden.


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,U T ON MY MI N DEA: Rom y was very ar ricula re and very smart and he knew h is history,and he was nor erg umen raeive, as was No rman , Rom y was not flashy. Inpersonality. he was kind otlike the g lue for tha t group. His work he keptpretty much (0 him self x c for one episode I remember. where he hadbeen cun ing OU t these magazine pieces and he brough t them to a meeting and he warned everybod y to work on them together, This was a formofdea ling with neg ritude , and he wanted to know if we could do something toget her and if something unique would come OUt of it . He wanredeverybody to make clippings, and . somehow or other, nobody wanted todo it . I do n't remember No rman 's words. bu t I remember his attitudewas do n't want ro dc what you want to do . If you want ro d e that, go offand do it . And Bearden went ofTand did it by himself,

I d idn't really know that he was famous. I knew that he was an exhibiting artist. It was kind of a shock to me to discover that JUS! because youhad regu lar exhib iti ons , you were a Sta r to t he b lack commu nity, andprobably to rhe small white communiry that bot hered to fi nd out th atthere was a black art ist named Bearden.bh: Bearde n wrote about the negati ve response from early b lack viewersofhis work. especially that work that began to focus on what a lot of peo-ple saw as the low life, or the uoderdass.fA : defini te ly changed what he was do ing, because he had been anabstract expressionist, as had l.1Jh: Why absr race expressionism ?When I began to develop my own ideaofmyself as a young arrist , abstract express ionism, and th e wor k of deKooning particularly. was work I t ru ly identified with. Is there some reason that we as Afr ican-Americans have been d rawn to absrracr exp ressionism, mo re than to ocher movements?

EA: It 's my th eory that arti sts are extre mely influenced by whatever isgo ing on ar the t ime they're coming into their powerful vision, whateverit is. And so even th oug h I had been a figure pai nt er as a teenager and Ihad caught myself wate rcolor as a child, as soon as I gor to London andsaw my first abstract expressionism-and ir was th e Amer ican abst racrexpress ionis ts tha t I saw th ere-I beca me one. I juS! claimed that I'd


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ST.AIGHT " U P AND f LY R IGHT TALKI NG ART W IT Il I N NA ANOS I t Ialways been one. Bearden , who was very important in the WPA per iod ,painting many of the types of figures he would retu rn to later, probab lybecame an abs tract expressionist with the first wave.bh: It wasn 't t he cent ral movement when I was trying to deve lop as ayoung art ist . It was th e freedom it sugges ted, th at we could do all theseth ings, t he very kinds of things we see in your work now. You co uldhave some realist ic image at th e same t ime th at you cou ld do somethingthat wou ld rorally und ermi ne it. I saw it as a place of possi bil ity inpa inting . W hat abs tract expressio nism had that you r art has SO muchof, Emma. is a q uality of motion , a sense that there was truly an engagement with pa int.EA : Wel l, those are the things I wanted to deal with . Romy dealt with ittn a d ifferent way. And Norman was noc somuch the paint- fl ying abs tracte ~ s i n i as he was the qu iet, solid ly grounded , Ad Reinhard t SOrt.Ph: Would you say that about Charles Alscon as well ?EA : I did n't know Spink y's work. And Spinky was rarely at t he meeti ngsafte r I joined . W hen he came , he did n'r speak "t ry much . It 's only nowthat I've seen his work that I've come to app reciate it , but he was a Star toBearden and to Norman Lewis, because he'd become well-known beforethey had .bh: When d id you begin to th ink criti cally abo ut you rself as a womanart ist and as a black woman art ist ?EA : I don't think I really began to think cr itically abo ut myself unt il t helate 19805. Teaching drawing and paimi ng at Rutgers. I realized that Ihad to know more. I had to be able to sta nd back and cri tically assess myown work if I was going ( '0 reach al l th ese people who painted and d rewvery d ifferentl y. Minimalist art was beginning to wane, and I was meetmg figura tive artists again. Leon Golub , another Rutgers professor and afigure painrer, was having this g rea t explosion of in terest. I had to learnhow to pur what I do in some kind of pers pective.

Earlier, I think the civil righ ts movement made me more crit ical abo ut


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1/12 AR T O N M Y ,\ I l N D

what I was doing. I could nor in good conscience paint jusr lovely coloredpictu res wirh br ushy strokes withour having some of th e pain and angstof the things that I wanted ro say about women , black women in parti cular, in the I960s . I d id that , bur without anybody telling me what to do,or anybody looking at the work, or any of th e men responding co it in anyway. The work was never shown.bh: I know you respect Elizabeth Catlett deeply. W here was your consciousness? Did you know about her work?

fA : I knew abou t her onl y through what the men said , and all the mensaid about her was that she'd been married to CharlesWhite. She was justan appendage as far as they were concerned.bh: So here was this incredible sculptor and they could not acknowledgethat .

fA : Right. The} were not in the tea ching mode, They couldn't te l! mewhere to look.bh: It has always bee n your cont ent ion that when a black woman artistwalks int o the studio. it is a politi cal act .When did you begin cosay that ?How did the feminist movement impact on you ?

fA: r think I began to know that nobody cared about what I was doin g inthe 1960s. I learned that by listening to rhe t rials and rribulacions of theguys, and also because Iwas not mak ing little concent ric circles as I madea sp lash in New York - Iwas JUSt sinking ro the bottom of the pond , withnor one littl e bit of not ice that I was there.

I had my first child in the late sixties, and then I had another one , andthere was JUS t a lit tle window of time in 1970 when a very well -k nowndealer was brought to my studio. She said she liked th e figure paintings ofthe late sixt ie s, but she could only show my work in 1970 if I painted hera whole new show. And rher was impossib le, Here I was, pregnant withmy second ch ild, Now, young women have assistants, have bab ies. andcont inue to work , The y want it all. At that t ime, I did n't think that waspossible, I had no female role models.


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\ U A li T ON M Y M INP

have g rown inrellecrually and arri stically into someone whose work isinformed by feminist th inking and pract ice. Could you talk a Hrrle bi rabout that ?EA : Well, I thi nk I taugh t myself. My television series was called "Showof Hands," and I was cohostess with a white woman who was a wonderfulwr iter and a quiltmaker. It had been my idea , but WGBH in Boston wasvery nervous that a black woman would have a show all by herself. I wason th is sta r tr ip for abo ut a year and a hal f, running back lind forth toBosto n to tap e the ser ies , and th e series was buil t on th e theo ry th at anart ist could learn any kind of craft if he or she put their mind to it . So wedid shows on woodworking, on Sta ined g lass, on weaving, qui lt making,clay, jewelry-it was g reat. What I thi nk that show taught me was to besecure, that I could learn how to do some thing, t hat I could tak e itth roug h to an end, It raughr me how to spea k in g roups without beingnervous, and I loved it. But when it was over, it was really over, and I hadbeen a medi a star in Boston and a noth ing in New York . I had to figureOUt a way of bring ing th at craft element that I had been developing in rothe art work. I got a stud io in SoHo and started to relearn being an artist ,bh: I rhink your work has a very posrmodern q ualiry. You work so muchwith notions offragmeneenon. I think of t he images of fdlling . O ne of thethings you said early on about those images th at fits with what culturalcri ticism is saying is that you were producing those images in those his-tor ical moment s when ehe world was beg inning ro sh ifr. There was th isdecenrenng of Western civilization that we now talk so much about , andin th at decenrenng process there has also been alienation. Lots of blackpeople, lo tsof women of all races and erhniciries are asking , "' '


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ST RAIG II TE N U P ANI) " lY RI CHT T ALKi n " ART W IT'l l E M ,\I A A;\IOS IH )painring. J am try ing ro use both the expressiveness of the paint flowandthe movement of whatever it is I'm using, so that everything is in flux.Sometimes I even tear figures apart and have arms and legs going in dif-ferent d irect ions. The meta phor of fall ing helped me d iscover th at Iwanted to invent pe ople in the air, beca use thar was a way of havingabsolute movement. They are not standing on the g round, in doorways,or lookin g OUt of windows. There's not hing that is sta t ionary. This is athing about fl ux.bh: The fulling images g ive you th is sense of disruption. and yet the workreallydoesn 't make a value judgment abou t it . It does n't say it 's bad forlife to be di srupted. Instead , it interrogates the meani ng of stability. Inmany of the pieces. certain things remain intact even as others are d rift-ing. fallin g , Thi s raises qu est ions abou t constancy in the middle ofchange , W hat things remain solid for us in flux? Th is is truly expressiveposrmodernism- i t saysthat we're not in that period when everything isStableand d ear, and there are possibilities ofloss but there are also possi-bilit ies of being found . I also thin k about falling in relat ion to ehe norionof surrender. O ther people who've written about you r work have had atendency to read the falling images solely as abo ut descent into somenegati ve possibil ity.EA: Well , you're the first person who's noticed that th is is not a horribleth ing that 's happening to peop le. I want people 10 look at the faces. Ispend a lo to f t ime try ing to gl:'t theexpressions right . I want these peop lenor to look scared. And there have been only one or rwo canvases wherethere has been'any fleeting sugges tion of pain in the face of the personwho's falling. I want to have connection between the eyes; I want the pee-ple ro stare out somet imes, Sometimes I want the full ing figu res to inter-act with each other, to be looking inro each ot her's eyes or to be lookingaway from each ot her. I want to bring a tension to the relat ionship.bh: I think that sensation of falling in our lives is such a frightening sen-sat ion tha t pe rhaps part of why crit ics have a hard rime int erroga ti ngthose significat ions in the work isour own inab ility ro deal with teeteringon the brink . I'm surprised tha t no one has ta lked about that vety ener-get ic sense of possibility tha t comes in the falling: work, tha t makes you


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11J 6 ART ON MY MIN O

feel th e sense of movemenr . I was thinki ng of th is as a sort of self-conscious artistic energy. a kind of Str:ltt:,gy that always deconsrrucrs or challenges the not ion of concre te ness, th e spec ificity of gender, race, whathave you. There's a way in which these pa inti ngs force us to think abomthe paint. No mat ter who is behind this work, the black woman arti st orany ot her stat ic representati on , ult imately it 's real ly about the paint andabou t what's go ing on in those images.fA : People don 't noti ce th e choices an arti st makes. I have to makechoices every time I make a f igure. I have to decide whar color that figureis going to be. I specifically like co use black figures and willte fig ures,and few people recognue my figures as white when they are white.bh: Look at that g roup of art ists in Spiral and think about which one ofthem has become the major figu re, Romare Bearden. We don 't see th osewhite figures in Bearden's work, It 's inte resting that he was imeresred inneg ritude, because what many pe ople most celebrate in Bearden arethose pieces that could be seen th rough a lens of negrirude. How wouldpeople respond had Bearden's work been packed with rep reseneaeions ofwhiteness?fA : It 's very inrerest ing , because you had eo be rold that he was black,Someone once asked me, "Why is it that black painters always pain t theirfig uresdarker than they themselves are?" I thought abour that and it wasabsol ute ly true when I looked at my own work. I'd done setf-pon ratrswhere I pictured myself as being much darker than I am, I've used that asa springboard, ro try [0 include what we really see, wh ich isone of the reasons I use SO many d ifferent colors of skin tone in my paintings. I wanr toshow the range of the people I see on the subway,bh: It 's precisely rhar choice that may lead your work not ro ge t the kindof aeeennon ir deserves, because you r work isn't announcing an expl icitengagement with any thing rhar can be linked co pr imi tiv ism . ro anexor iciza rion of black represent anon. Pan of whar your work compelsackn owledgment of is the d iversity nor only of sk in colo rs and ourengagement cross-race, bur also our own posieionali ey,W hi le I love theRemere Bearden work that focuses on rep resentat ions of the underclass


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STRAIG HT1 N U P AND rrv R IG llT TA l.KI NG AliT WI TH E MMA AMOS I or the working class, che fact is that black people inhabit many locations.W hat about us being able to make aes rhenc choices highll ,ghting oth erworlds, that history you came our of, for example? Those images aren 'tabout pr imitivism . They aren 't abo ut a particular way offraming blackexperience. They are a challenge to our very nor ian of black experience,and part of black visual experience is our engagement with whiteness.fA : We know all abo ut it . There is no part of whiteness that we do n'tknow.bh: Much more than many black art ists , you choose ro use those images.think that is a challenge fo r a lot of the looking aud ience.EA: I hop e my work offers some clues to our problems and art iculates adi fferenr perspective. I try (0 sta nd our side myself and exercise cont rolover what I set',bh: I know that you 've read the th eories of posecolonial iry and thatyou've made those poli t ical in terrogations, Your work poses a kind ofpostcolonial challenge because it's saying that , in order for black folks tovisually assert the range of ou r sub ject ivity, we mu seassert our right aswell to paint those white figu res that are so much a part of our realit y,You're using a lot of rhe new work ro comment on the white pa interas colonizing sub ject. People like Ernst Lud wig Kirchner and KarlSchmid r-Rorl uff use these African and Oceanic sculptures as inspiration.Wh ite painters like Mod ig liani worked with black images, but somehowtha t became an expression of a certain kind of power, of being a subject.As a full subject, you have the sense that ebere is no area of representat ionrhars closed to you. And part ially what you've wanted coassert , Emma, isthat you,as a black woman arti sr , are a fu ll subject and there is no areatha t's closed to you. You don 't get posit ive feedback for tha t in the lookins world . The gaze that looks at your work is, as you just said , unable tosee these white images.EA : T hey're not able to see them . I don 't know whethe r anybody elseunde rstands what I'm dealing with in this newest work, It 's about JUS twhat you said - the way whi te painters have the freedom to use dark fig -


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111(1 AR T O N .\1 , ' MI N I )

ures and to use the dark othe r. And . somehow or other . when I do theoppos ite it's not g iven the same leeway. \'V'e're nor in the same game!bh: I was struck and moved and saddened by a comment William Majorsmade abou t Spiral. He said that one of the p roblems wit h Spi ral is thatyou couldn't cri ricize ench other's work, and what I hear you saying is th atthere are ways th at people haven't yer talked crit ically about your work.This is one of the major di lemmas all art ists in marginal g rou ps, andspeci fically African-American an ises. face. My concern wit h regard ro theBasquia r show at the Wh itn ey was that so many critics overwhelming lyfocused on auecbiog raphy. as opposed to talking about the work . Speaksome about how you think critica l work in urt also illumi nates the possibility of what one can imagine, paint, what have you. Is th ere a posit iverelationship between th e development of one's art and there being a bodyof cri tical work that add resses that art in irs complexity and fulln ess?fA: The average critic will write , "Isn't it inte rest ing that there's a blackarti st doing. , ," whatever it is . Since th e first year t hat I came to NewYork, onl y Arlene Raven , Lucy Lippard , and a few others have wri ttenabout my work in the same way that they writ e about white art ists. Thereare very few chances for blacks, other nonwhite art ists, and women to ge ttheir work critiqued. Th is is for many reasons- among them , that thereis so litt le good criticism wr itt en , that wr iting about "the ot her" is a lowpriority. and rhar the wh ite criric feels safe focusing on the blackness andot herness of the art ist instead of learning to look at the art.bh: When we look at work like you r \ f/d t t r series. we can' t JUSt see itth rough the lens of race or blackness, because those figures are suggesting so many ot her things. They're suggestive ofone's relationshi p, agai n,to space. to what spaces we occupy. There's rhe whol e sense of reb irt h.And I want ed to tal k about the way your work tries to frame memory, Inth e introduc tion to TheEvidmct o/ Thincs Not Sem, J ames Baldwin hasthis incred ible passage about memory, where he says:

. what the memory repudiates COntro ls rhe human being , \\;Ihatonedot's nO I remernber diceare swho one lovesor fails to love. Whatonedoes nor remember dictates, actually, whether one plays poker,pool, or chess. What one does nO I remembe r conrains the key to


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ST RA I ClH T EN ue AN t) f l y RI G l /T ' TAL K ING ART W IT H 11.\ l MA A MOS 18 9one's tantrums or one's poise. \'


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190 A kTQN.'ofY MIN D

Emma Amol, Malcolm X, Morley, Mat isse & Me, / 993, Acrylidli"etlcam'fJJwith African Fabrics and brJrdm, C()IfrtelJ of tbtartut.rographs wirh paint ing is mak ing me use a sense tha t I dc n'r evcn qui rt"know how ro artic ulare. It's man ipu lat ing memory that 's real , because it'spainted. it's photographed . I don 't know how ro say it bener. yet. lr's tricky.bh: I thi nk char's an eloq uent way of purr ing it. There's always rhis willon your part to explore different med ia and d rfferenr ways of esprcssing,and I rhink th at 's really exciting . You're not ,assome peop le who have not:

-


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ST I AlG l lT EN UP ANO !'LY I I G II T TAL K IN G ART W ITH EMMA AMO S 191looked at the range of you r work migh t presume , stuck in the work youwere doing years ago. The re has bee n constant change and development .

You 've been doi ng new work wi rh Malcolm X images and wit hnod ous of the Ku Kl ux Klan . T har links you r work to, say, the kind ofwork t hat someone like Ca rr ie Mae Weems is do ing in photograph)', orAnd res Serrano. But you're nor JUSt working wit h a speci f ic pborographicimage , you're mixing - you're working wirh paint , you're working withpas te -up, you' re work ing with d iffe rent things , Tal k about wh at youwanr to convey with chose m ixings.f A: T he Malcolm X image I've used tarely has been printed on Africanfab ric I found on 125th St reet , and I bo rder all my p ieces wir h Africanfabric or fabric I've woven ,bh: Even this bordering is about your using art to const ruct that hisrc rical diaspcr ic cont inuum. You don 't come out wit h that kind o f ove rtImage t hat says we art' connected t o Africa; you use that fab ric t hat saysthere is th is li nk. And I t hink that 's one of t he powe rful movements inrOU t own bei ng , as someone who sta rt s w it h weaving , l r really invitesyou ro an African past and carries you into th is present where you can findMalcolm X on a piece of Afncan fabric.fA : Tht'y loved him in Africa. They saw him as a beacon. But I sta rredusing the X as a symbol of how hardly anybod y g ives a damn what I say. Idon 't want that ro cu r off ot her meanings of the X when I use it in mypaintings ro erase, to cross OUt, to show that I am silenced . The X symbolrzes many rboughrs.M: Tha t'S the kind of incerrogarion that was at the core of the Black Muslim usc of che X: "Let'S nor only erase the slave master's name, lee's reappropriate in rhar act ou r own capaci ty ro name." T hat 's part of whar I seeyou doi ng in your pain ring , and it 's inreres ting t hat you wor k in suchabstract images and at the same ti me have been doing th is whole series of"ery ncnabsrracr portraits ofwomen that you hope to leave as a legacy foryour daughte r, To some ex tent, that tOO becomes a crit ical interventi on,because. hke )'OU , she has nor been , and will not be , that young gi rl in hertwenties t hinking she was the only one, Because she' ll be surrounded by


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I SIl A IT ON MY N INDnot only d ie representation ofcommunity but the concrete power both inthe images ofchose women and in the act of your honoring those images.I think that act is about establishing a differem relationship both to )"ou rself as a woman artis t and to the entire community of women artists, andthe srreogrh of thi s work demands that other people do thi s also.f A: Tbey can'e X cbe work out. TINGifris not possible to negate. That 'swhat I'm calling thi s g roup of pa inti ngs of my women art ist friends.Those women are tOO powerful to ignore. These friends sat for me as mysupport , as my mother's friends had suppo rted her. I gi ve t hem to mydaugh ter Ind ia as her support, and I hopeanybody who sees them willrealize that there's something powerful and strong about women art ists,about womenhocd .bh: Earlier in your career, when you talked about the falling images. youtalked about "things out ofCOnt rol." You said, "Children try to save fum-ifie s. Fami lies reach out for each other and books. an , memor ies, andances tors rush past ," And you say, "React ing tOO late, reg ren ing losrthings, praying for futu re while fulling paSt home." We see a kind ofshiftin your own work . Falli ng is no longer that cent ral metaphor. becausethere is a kind ofgroundi ng that you areofTering . It says, indeed. that thisis the ground we Stand on. Th is is you moving into history. becoming, ateach Stage ofyour life, artist, subject, more and more a woman of power,decolonized in char no group of people determines and contains your willrc pa ine, to represent . That 's why th ere 's su ch a sense of h istory beingmade visible in your work .

In closing. Emma. what would you like to see happen in relation to anaudience response to your work?Do ) '00 feel your work is seen enough? Iremember, when I first came to see you, my astonishment that so much ofthis incredible, marvelous work of yours was not on other people's walls.And I know that's been chang ing .Whar could change rbar even more?1\ : That sounds like it might have to do with rhe marketplace, whichhas never rcally been interested in me. SoI have no idea .Db: That 's exact ly what I'm asking. If black women artists-and all mar-g inal artis rs, to some extent , who have not been chosen as the latest


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ST Il A IC l lT EN UP AN D f l Y RIG II T TALK IN G ART W ITII U, t MA A IoI OS III;one - a re always dealing wit h a market place that does not respond tothem in the same way. then one does have to reconceprualize oneselfas anart ist. Clearly, ) 'OU have not peinred and do nor pa int for monetaryreward. for a ce-m in kind offameand g lory. Youdocument so well bot h inart and int erviews that there is this whole apparatus of dcmmarion. ofracism, sexism, all of those things, that ensures a certain kind of silencingor negat ing of work that doe s nor centralize whatever white people wanr(0 see black art ists doing at a g iven moment. Bur you have to have somekind of oppositional framework. I would think that many young blackwomen might think , "Well , how could I ded icat e myself to bei ng apainter?" I talked at the Cooper Union recently, and when you go on thatfloor where people are being painters, you don't see people of color.Thereis th is sense char rhe area where we have least to gain is in the area ofpainting . Socould ) '00 talk abour rhar oppositional framework of affirmat ion that enables you to keep paint ing ?EA: I think that ('vt:had to learn that success is not going to come ro methe W2y it carne rc the blue-chip artists , and that only a small numbe r ofarrises are really successful in the marketplace, anyway. And it 's not goingto be me. or, if so, it's going to be a late splurge on the order of what happened to Alice Neal, Elizabe th Catl ett , or Fairh Ringgold . Faith d idn'tge t really well-known unr il she had bee n out the re for at least thirryyears. Hustl ing that job , that paint ing - working hard and doi ng itwirhour a lac of responses. I'm doing exactly what I always wanted rc do,and that 's what keeps me go ing . As an eight-yea r-old . char's wha t Iwanted. Now I've got what I wanted!

StraightenUpFlyRight_TalkingArtEmmaAmos

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