05 - About Elizabeth Catlett
Author: Melanie Anne Herzog
Herzog, M., 2000. Elizabeth Catlett: An American Artist in Mexico. University of Washington Press.
1 additions to document , most recent about 5 years ago
| When | Why |
|---|---|
| Oct-21-21 | El Pensador |
Elizabeth Catlett at the TGP: Representing
African American History and Experience
58 Black Maternity, 1959. Lithograph, 14%" x 97/8". Collection of Elizabeth Catlett. Photograph by Melanie Herzog
57 Negra, late 1940s or 1950s. Lithograph, 173/4" x 1 17/8". Taller de Gråfica Popular archives, no. 34.1 1, Academia de Artes, Mexico City. Photograph by Melanie Herzog
During her years at the Taller, Catlett also continued to produce images of African Americans and the challenges they faced in the United States.
These included historically specific linocuts such as Civil Rights Congress (1950, fig.
55), commemorating William Patterson, organizer for the Communist Party and national executive secretary of the Civil Rights Congress.
(In 1950 the Civil Rights Congress had generated a petition charging the United States with genocide against African Americans and presented it to the United Nations.)
Catlett's documentary and symbolic representation of William Patterson, based on photographs, would be immediately recognizable to African Americans in the United States, as would the identity of the figure threatening the child, wearing the unmistakable robe of a Klansman and holding a noose, At the same time, this latter image is a calavera, or skeleton figure, an image immediately legible to a Mexican audience familiar with this symbol used in Mexican popular prints since the time of Posada.
The print would thus have meaning for both audiences and speaks symbolically and stylistically across cultural boundaries.
Catlett's portrayal of the child, who is clearly of African descent, recalls her earlier, rougher linocuts, as in her Negro Woman series, and the lighting of the child's face strikingly resembles her earlier treatment of African American physiognomy based on West African masks.
For Colored Only, also known as Pensador (Thinker) (fig. 56), is the first lithograph Catlett made at the TGP, Always fascinated by the technical possibilities of her materials, in this print she began to incorporate techniques she encountered for the first time at the Taller, such as scratching into the crayon drawing on the stone to achieve fine textures and highlights.57
Of course, Catlett also continued to explore the theme of the African American woman that she had established as predominant in her early work. She now embraced a stylistic continuum that included the stark, angular, expressionist realism of her early prints and the more rounded, solidly modeled style characteristic of the Taller. Black women are the subjects of a number of prints, mostly lithographs, she made during her years at the TGP. These are women who act—they are mothers, workers, ordinary women, heroines from history. The multiple faces of black women in Negra (Black Woman) (fig. 57), another lithograph from this period, are generalized, somewhat masklike, and expressive of an anxious discomfort that is reinforced by the crowded composition.
The stylistic broadening, and the crossover between her treatments of black and Mexican subjects, during her years at the Taller are disclosed in prints such as the 1959 lithograph Black Maternity (fig. 58). Although the faces in her Mother and Child of 1944 (fig. 13) are reminiscent of African masks in their stylization, and a polyrhythmic angularity predominates throughout the composition, Black Maternity is markedly consistent with Catlett's rendering of Mexican subjects during this period. The faces are softly rounded, naturalistic in their gentle fullness. In Black Maternity she exploited her medium to the fullest extent possible with the facilities available to her at the graphic arts workshop, using the lithographic crayon to achieve a range of tones and textures, and scratching into the background to light the mother and child from behind with a halo-like effect.
Because she lived and worked in Mexico, Catlett knew that her images of African Americans, which she sent to the United States with friends, would inevitably and ideally be seen by both black and Mexican audiences. For black audiences, her intent was to create art with which they could identify, images in which they could see themselves and their experiences reflected and given attention. She offered these images to her Mexican audience as a challenge to the racist stereotypes and misinformation about African Americans presented in the U.S.-dominated media. Accordingly, she employed in her images of black mothers and children the rounded, sculptural naturalism and the subtle gradations of tone seen in her lithographs of Mexican women and children—for her Mexican audience, a way in to the images; for her African American audience, a recognizable, naturalistic portrayal. Did she consciously think about her art as a manifestation of her transnational position as an African American woman in Mexico? Yes, she says (though not in these words), for she came to think of herself as Mexican and African American. It was important to her that her art speak clearly to her intended audiences. But she did not choose to speak in one visual language to one audience, and in another to the other audience. These were no more separable than were the ethnicities of her children. Rather, her crossovers in style and subject at_ test to the fusion of identifications and the complex sense of identities that informed her work.
The most compelling and provocative example of this fusion as it played out in her art is the Taller print series that Catlett organized in 1953—54 celebrating African American heroes and heroines. The way she conceived the series, and the image she made for it, attest to her ongoing commitment to speak to an African American audience as a black woman artist, and to do so from her location in Mexico. She had created her Negro Woman series as a solo enterprise, even though she had produced it at the workshop with other people around, but this series was envisioned as a collective project. This was a profoundly courageous cross-cultural undertaking for Catlett; in order to make this project work,.she had to educate the Taller artists about…
Added October 21, 2021 at 6:34am
by Dr Pereda
Title: El Pensador
icons on the left to see existing comments.
Commenting period (October 21, 2021 06:28 – October 25, 2021 00:00) is closed
0 General Document comments
0 Sentence and Paragraph comments
0 Image and Video comments
See African masks in the British Museum"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1910-0513-1":https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Af1910-0513-1
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
She wanted to create art where black groups could identify themselves
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment Hide Thread Detail
New Conversation
Racist? Man seems upset.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment Hide Thread Detail
During this period there was still segregation in the US
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
Perhaps there is an art history element to her work too.
New Conversation
Hide Full Comment
General Document Comments 0
