"Afro-Atlantic Histories" at LACMA

Édouard Antoine Renard, A Slave Rebellion on a Slave Ship, 1833

Slavery is almost invisible in Western art. That changed only in postmodern times as contemporary Black artists took up the theme and scholars renewed interest in the relatively rare historic depictions of slavery and emancipation. The post-1960s contemporary and pre-1888 historical define the chronology of "Afro-Atlantic Histories," an international traveling exhibition now at LACMA for an unusually long run, through Sep. 10, 2023. It's a show with zeitgeist resonance, star-power objects, and surprises at every turn.

Abdias Nascimento, Exu Dambalah, 1973

Start with Brazil, as the exhibition itself did. The Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake organized the show in 2018. The former is São Paulo's main art museum; the latter is named for famous-in-Brazil artist Tomie Ohtake and functions as a modern-contemporary kunsthalle. Though the exhibition has gone through nips and tucks on its U.S. tour, the LACMA version incorporates numerous works by Brazilian artists rarely seen here. 

Abdias Nascimento was not only a painter but a poet, playwright, scholar, activist, and politician. Exu Dambalah is a lyrical synthesis of African orishas and Latin-American constructivism. 

Emanoel Araújo, O Navio (The Ship), 2007. Painted wood and carbon steel. Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

In O Navio (The Ship), Brazilian artist Emanoel Araújo conjoins slave ship diagrams with African wood sculpture, scarification patterns, and globalized modernism. Araújo, who died last September, founded São Paulo's Museu Afro Brasil.

Frans Post, Landscape with Anteater, about 1660. Museu de Art de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

An associate of Hals, Dutch painter Frans Post spent seven years in Brazil (1637-1644). Upon returning to Holland, he built a career on re-imagined Brazilian landscapes. He was one of the few European painters to regularly depict slavery, though Post's captives function as staffage for a New World Arcadia. 

Eugène Delacroix, Portrait of a Woman in a Blue Turban, 1827. Dallas Museum of Art

Frederic Bazille, Young Woman with Peonies, 1870. National Gallery of Art

Bazille and other struggling Impressionists lived in a Parisian district favored by Black emigres from the French colonies.

Nathaniel Jocelyn, Portrait of Cinqué, 1839. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis

In 1839 the Africans of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad ("Friendship") rebelled, led by Joseph Cinqué of Sierra Leone. The Africans were not seafarers and did not know how to navigate the ship that had abducted them. Intending to return to West Africa, they went ashore near Long Island and were tried for murder in Connecticut. The U.S. Supreme Court acquitted them. The case galvanized abolitionist sentiment as well as inspiring works of art, literature (Melville's "Benito Cereno"), and film. Nathaniel Jocelyn, a Connecticut abolitionist and painter, portrayed Cinqué through the lens of the Enlightenment—a "noble savage" but also, apparently, an American hero. 

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936. National Gallery of Art

Melvin Edwards, Palmares, 1988. Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

Dalton Paula, Zeferina and João de Deus Nascimento, 2018. Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand 

The names but not the likenesses of two leaders of Brazilian slave rebellions—Zeferina and João de Deus Nascimento—are recorded. Dalton Paula commemorates them in these imaginary portraits. 

Horace Pippin, School Studies, 1944. National Gallery of Art

A large slice of the exhibition consists of modern and contemporary portrayals of the African diaspora. There is considerable overlap with LACMA's "Black American Portraits" from only last year. Nevertheless, first-rate works by Jacob Lawrence, Beauford Delaney, Horace Pippin, Romare Beardon, Charles White, Clementine Hunter, and Barkley Hendricks justify the semi-redundancy. 

Hayward Oubre, untitled, 1950.  The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Alma Thomas, March on Washington, 1964. Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

Otherwise DC's great abstractionist, Alma Thomas did this painting of Martin Luther King's 1963 march on Washington.

Osmond Watson, Johnny Cool, 1967. National Gallery of Jamaica

David C. Driskell, Current Forms: Yoruba Circle, 1969. National Gallery of Art

Barrington Watson, Conversation, 1981. National Gallery of Jamaica

Clementine Hunter, Black Jesus, about 1985. Smithsonian National Museum of  African American History and Culture

Kerry James Marshall, Voyager, 1992. National Gallery of Art