First Comprehensive Retrospective of Robert Colescott to Open May 29 at Sarasota Art Museum

May 19, 2021 – Sarasota

The first comprehensive retrospective of Robert Colescott, one of our country’s most compelling artists and accomplished painters, will open at Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College on May 29. Bringing together 54 works spanning over 50 years of Colescott’s prolific career, Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, explores the work of an artist who — through vibrant paintings laced with biting satire — confronted issues of race, gender, identity, and the uncomfortable realities of U.S. life in the latter half of the 20th century. 

Curated by Lowery Stokes Sims and organized by Raphaela Platow, Art and Race Matters originated at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and will remain on view at SAM through October 31, 2021. Lowery is the recipient of the inaugural Sarasota Art Museum Cura Award, recognizing significant achievements in the field of art curation.

Over a nearly six-decade painting career, Robert Colescott (b. 1925, Oakland, CA; d. 2009, Tucson, AZ) was a proud instigator who fearlessly tackled subjects of social and racial inequality, class structure, and the human condition through his uniquely rhythmic and often manic style of figuration. Colescott’s distinctive works, while not easily placed within any one specific school of painting, share elements of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, “Bad” painting, Renaissance painting, Neo-Expressionism, and Surrealism. 

As testament to his massive contributions and stature, Colescott was chosen to represent the United States at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Art and Race Matters is the first complete survey of Colescott’s work since his mid-career retrospective in 1987, which was hosted by the CAC.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication—the most comprehensive to date—published by Rizzoli Electa, which features stylistic analyses of his work; summaries of critical responses; interviews, reminiscences, and perspectives from family members, associates, and students; along with a selection of writings by the artist himself.

Equally adept at figuration and abstraction, his figurative compositions at first glance seem to tilt and spiral off of their axis and are ultimately held together with a masterful sense of balance. Colescott’s intense interest in critiquing painting’s failure to accurately represent the Black experience is manifested in a lifetime of work that offers a revisionist art historical narrative and has subsequently influenced an entire generation of artists.  

“Given the crisis of race relations, image management, and political manipulation in the current American—indeed the global—landscape,” noted Sims, “Colescott’s perspectives on race, life, social mores, historical heritage, and cultural hybridity allow us a means—if we are up to the task—to forthrightly confront what the state of world culture will be in the next decade.”

Known for satirical figurative paintings that expose the ugly ironies of racism in America, Robert Colescott (1925-2009) worked at the vanguard of the resurgence of figuration in art starting in the 1970s, which marked the emergence of post-modernist thought. He infused his works with narrative, humor, and cultural criticism long before it became common for artists to do so. Through his subversive appropriation of existing imagery from pop culture, mass media, and the art historical canon, Colescott reclaimed racist stereotypes and lampooned prevalent mythologies about Blackness. This visually outspoken work therefore addresses issues of race and gender hierarchies, oppressive power structures, and societal taboos—with a biting satirical touch—exposing the absurdity of ideas that often go unchallenged.

Art and Race Matters invites a renewed examination of the artist, whose work is still as challenging, provocative, and relevant now as it was when he burst onto the art scene over five decades ago. Presenting works from across Colescott’s career, the exhibition traces the progression of his stylistic development and the impact of place on his practice, revealing the diversity and range of his oeuvre: from his adaptations of Bay Area Figuration in the 1950s and 60s, to his signature graphic style of the 1970s, and the dense, painterly figuration of his later work. Art and Race Matters also explores prevalent themes in Colescott’s work, including the complexities of identity, societal standards of beauty, the reality of the “American Dream,” and the role of the artist as arbiter and witness in contemporary life.

“Colescott’s exploration of race, identity, and politics is as pointed and pertinent now as ever and will help catalyze public discussion of pressing issues we are facing as a society,” said Platow. “In presenting the full-sweep of Colescott’s career, our goal is to also assert his seminal contributions to both post-War American art and to contemporary artists today working in the U.S. and internationally.” 

Major support of the exhibition has been provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Richard Rosenthal; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for the research phase of the exhibition and the exhibition itself; and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation for its support of the catalogue. The exhibition was also awarded a Sotheby’s Prize in 2018 in recognition of curatorial excellence and its exploration of an overlooked and under-represented area of art history.