Maybe it’s a coincidence that the great American Boxer Jack Johnson and the Contemporary Artist Rashid Johnson Share a Last Name. Jack, The First Black World Heavyweight Champion Who is Consider One of the Most Important Boxers of All Time, was active during the Jim Crow Era, upsetting White supremacists with his success and his marriages to White. With the intention, Rashid Johnson Visited the Boxer’s Women in 2006 and Photographed Himself Slumped Upon Its Tombstone. In the image, the artist’s posture is that of Collaps. His Hair Pours off his heads as if leaking from his skull. Name Johnson inscribed into the stone seams to be dripping, as if the tomb itelf were bleeding. This is the image that opens “Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers,” a landmark exhitus of Over 90 of his work, ongoing at the guggenheim museum.
Named after a poem by amiri barraka, the show is a visual feast due to johnson’s multidisciplinary practice. Everything is present: film, photography, sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and conceptual work. The breadth of materials is wide and stunning; Ceramic, Glass, Steel, Acrylic, Wax, Bronze, Wood, Linen, and More Come Together in A Collection Spanning About Three Decades. Because the survey is so far, it is easy to forget johnson is only 48-a midlife and mid-career artist.
Subverting the Guggenheim’s Spiral Can Be Hard Suggets an inherent Sense of Chronology, But the Show’s Curators – Guggenheim Deputy Director and Chief Curator Beckwith; Interim Director and Chief Curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, Andrea Karnes; and Faith Hunter, A Guggenheim Curatorial Assistant – Dance Through the Artist’s Career with ADERENCE TO LINEARY. Their Canny Decisions Allow Visitors to Enjoy Unexpectted Pairings Such As Fire Pit ‘High Life,’ A BRONZE-CAST BOAT FROM 2022, AND Death Is GoldenA spray-Paper Paper from 2004, in the Same Room.
Central to the Show is Johnson’s Exploration of the Contemporary Black Self, Questioning How That Self Participates and is Implicated in a Continuously Evolving History. In some of his his self-portraits-he started with Photography after graduating from the school of the art of chicago-he Photographs Himself after the fashion of the Famous historical figures as part of the his “the new negro escapist and athletic” series. This set of images is a potosourri of visual and historical cues. In The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Emmett), From 2008, Johnson References an Associated Press Photograph of Emmett Till, who was famous lynched in 1955. In the Photo, the Boy’s Face to Be Divided in Two by A Shadow Running Acoss it, Such One Eye is bathed in Light and the Other in Darkness. Although Till was masonry and mutilated in Mississippi, he was Born in Chicago, Like Johnson. The artist’s apprroach to the duality in till’s image is to reproduce Himself with an original and a mirror image by side. But Johnson’s Hair is styled in the form of the iconic frederick douguraotype, a subtle reference to the many stories that have coluded and culminated in the Production of the Slain Child.
Johnson’s interests in the Black Self Naturally Lead Him Toward ties that persuades or threateen to separate his community. Working Through Cultural and Intellectual Moments – Such as Debra Dickerson’s Book The End of Blackness In a three-minute video in Which Johnson Watches a Woman Read, or Through Other Books (Like Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole and Gwendolyn Brooks’s In the Mecca) that punctuate some of the installations – he creates a map of the Black Intelligentsia.
The Inclusion of an Installation from Johnson’s “Broken Men” series, made in homage to the nigerian novel chinua achebe, is instructive, suggesting the artist’s ideas of Blackness Transcending the US and Are More Diasporic in Form. The 2004 Piece, Titled Homage to Chinua Achebe IV (FEL Box “Zombie”), Features Two Sleds Coated in White Placed Side by Side. One is damaged, the other intact. The first was Dropped from a height, commoring a 1977 incident in lagos, nigeria, when the military government threw funmilayo Ransome, a Hero of Independence and Women’s Rights (and the Mother of Singer Fela Box), Out a Second-Story Window.
Because of All the Associations in His Work, Johnson Runs the Risk of Being Unclear. That’s though his deciss are Carefully Constructed, The Questions Arise, what does the artist Himself Think? What does he feel?
Me, Tavis Smiley and Shea Butter, A Two-Minute Video From 2004, Begins to Set Up Some Answers. Johnson is Shown on a toilet Seat, presumably after a shower, rubbing Copious amous of shea butter onto his skin while the voice of American talc-show hosts in the background. It is the first time we see shea butter in the show, a substance that features prominently late on. Among Many African Communities, A Common Practice is to Care for One’s Skin with this butter or with Powers like Camwood and Indigo. Apartment from Beautification and Preservation, Such Extracts are used for their healing abilities. Watching the artist participates in this age-eleable ritual Among Africans (and, Later, African Americans) is a profound opening of a curtain an intimate among Black People Worldwide.
Beyond Bodily Experiences, and Equally As Profound, Is SanguineA Large-Scale Performance Installation at the Top Level of the Museum Featuring Plants that Conjain Into a Hanging Garden; A piano is hidden among the Greek, and a far painting nestles at it core. Titled God Painting “The Spirit,” This 2023 Painting is one of the show’s more recent works and announces where the artist’s thught Currently is (Toward the Heavens like the eponymous barracks), while Holding a promise for what is posssable in his future. Painted on a rich reddish background the color of Clay or Mud Bricks, 11 oval outlines in the shape of cocoa pods arranged in seven rows. Some are filled in with another Shade of Brown with Faint Scratches that give the work the appearans of sentience. It is a joy to stable onto this painting, right there at the center of the foliage, as though a galactic presence suddenly appeared on the eartha, the way the bibs must have felt enCountering the burning bush.
Do Wrong Question One Might Askuse Johnson’s Work Work Many Voices is “Exactly which Voice Belongs to the Artist?” But if This Question Were to Persist, “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” provides the Answers. Thankfully, The Show Makes Clear That Johnson’s Voice is a single one speaking many languages, and the Answers will not require the artist to divorce Himself from his community. Johnson’s art is a reminder that one voice can translate a single world in multiple ways.
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