David Driskell: Mystery of the Masks by DC Moore Gallery

DAVID DRISKELL Mystery of the Masks

E S S A Y B Y J U L I E L. M C G E E

D C M O O R E G A L L E R Y

DAVID DRISKELL Mystery of the Masks

E S S A Y B Y J U L I E L. M C G E E

D C M O O R E G A L L E R Y

Mask Man, 1965 . Tempera and pencil on paper, 6 3⁄4 x 5 1⁄2 inches 2

The Ancient Watch, 1975. Acrylic and collage on canvas, 61 x 48 inches 3

An Inward Poet’s Vision “All artists are dreamers. They envision the beauty of a perfect order and in their strange and often selfish ways, they attempt to make visible that which was never intended to be in the natural process.” 1 –DAV I D D R I S K E L L

PALM SUNDAY DAVID DRISKELL was as extraordinary interlocutor and storyteller— and yet

he could be mysterious about his creativity. Romare Bearden suggested Driskell’s work was informed by “an inward poet’s vision,” and noted his unique ability to impart “that bit of mystery to the material aspects of his medium and his objects.”2 The works assembled for this exhibition provide opportunities to consider Driskell’s poetic vision and aesthetic ingenuity in collage, printmaking and drawing. Invited by the Studio Museum in Harlem to participate in The Bearden Project, Driskell turned to allegory, Christian scripture, and a respected subject for artists: Palm Sunday. The collage he made in honor of Bearden (1911–1988), Palm Sunday (2011; p. 5), is quintessential Driskell.3 He

deployed his finely-tuned aesthetic and personal iconography to pay homage to a fellow artist, North Carolinian, friend, and mentor. This was no small task: Driskell engaged collage to represent significant aspects of Bearden’s life and artistry, factually and metaphorically. Red brick structures in the background point to Bearden’s city life, Harlem in particular, and the small, country church in the upper right signifies his birthplace in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Driskell cleverly placed his visualization of the event in conversation with previous representations of the subject, including Bearden’s Palm Sunday Procession (1967–68). Palm Sunday, 2011 . Collage and acrylic on fiberboard, 24 x 20 inches 4

Benin Woman, 1972 . Color woodcut, 15 1⁄4 x 11 3⁄8 inches 6

Bakota Girl, 1972 . Woodcut, 18 5⁄8 x 12 1⁄4 inches 7

Sometimes called Passion Sunday, the Christian celebration falls at the beginning of Holy Week, the Sunday before Easter, and commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Gospel accounts note the humble transport used by Jesus, a donkey, and a joyous welcome by the multitude, who wave branches and spread cloaks on the ground. A scholar of art history, Driskell was well-acquainted with the celebration and its many visual interpretations; the earliest known depiction dates to the fourth century. In this collage painting the focus is not on Christ, but the multitude, and Driskell used cut and torn reproductions of his own work to illustrate the receiving disciples. This signature technique, inventing new compositions with fragments of previous work, began in the 1960s. Driskell used pieces of his relief prints as decorative elements in his paintings, which accentuated his calligraphic line. He also used commercially printed sources, magazines in particular, especially (but not exclusively) during his years at Fisk University. This technique is evident in I Want Two Wings (1973; p. 9), a collage painting titled after the African American spiritual “Two Wings”, a song of Black migration. Driskell placed the collage strategically within a painterly composition and in a manner that emphasized its formal properties without eliminating the legible graphic content of the original—the face and the hand. The pictorial and perceptual logic of Driskell’s collages do not hinge on photographic imagery, but rather on his creative assembly. He worked intuitively, combining a variety of materials to achieve the desired appearance, often omitting photographic collage elements altogether. Driskell experimented and perfected the blending of prepared collage materials of all kinds, torn, cut, pre-painted and recycled paper, fabric, tin foil and more. This reuse, endlessly creative, recalls Driskell’s penchant for generating his own materials, from natural pigments and inks to parchment. Driskell’s collage repertoire for Palm Sunday includes printed reproductions of his previous artwork. This likely came naturally, as these materials were readily available and already endowed with his aesthetic inclinations toward color and line. Photographs of his Maine studio reveal studio walls graced with neatly arranged postcards and posters— print material publicizing his many exhibitions. This studio decor provided mnemonic devices and creative material for the artist. Driskell took liberties with these visual assets (not quite ready-mades), obscuring their original source with innovative tearing and cutting and more color and calligraphic line. At times, he painted over and obscured collage, as in The Ancient Watch (1975; p. 3). I Want Two Wings, 1973 . Collage, gouache, and pencil on paper mounted to board, 9 3⁄8 x 7 3⁄8 inches 8

Figure in Moonlight, 2000. Collage and acrylic on paper, 8 x 6 inches 10

Odalisque, 1987. Collage, gouache and metallic pigment on paper, 5 1⁄2 x 4 inches 11

In Her Face Was Like the Moon (1995; p. 13), Driskell’s brushwork and collage are so visually synchronous that only close-looking reveals the deftness of hand. His purposeful reuse of previous work, originals and reproductions thereof, makes it difficult to truly map what came from where without a knowledgeable conservator whose tools might help “peel the onion.” Driskell used this material as an artist would a particular paint, or color, or brush, indeed as painting supplies. For his collage, did Driskell use the original, a reproduction of the original, or a reproduction of a different (third) work that had incorporated the previous work, or perhaps all three? For example, Mystery of the Masks (2005; p. 23) appears to include Spirits Watching (1986) and photographic reproductions of African masks. The “original” Spirits Watching was a black-and-white lithograph* printed by the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. Driskell hand-colored a few, subsequently reproduced in various publications, including the cover of Evolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell.4 Other collage elements in Mystery of the Masks, such as the snake that slithers across the forest, may be similarly sourced, or not. Fragments of Spirits Watching also appear in Palm Sunday, including a section with the artist’s physiognomy (lower left). Hence, Driskell’s presence in Palm Sunday— a work that pays homage to lineages, art historical, and ancestral— is more than doubled. What might be interpreted as unexpected hubris or fear of being invisible in this august family, is perhaps far more spiritual: the figures are the faithful. Driskell associated the faces in Palm Sunday with a multitude: African ancestors, individuals currently living, and people of future.5 By stylistically splitting the faces of these figures, another signature technique, Driskell creates imagery that reverberates, literally and metaphorically. The brilliant color and the pulsating, shallow plane occupied by the figures aligns his Palm Sunday with Italo-Byzantine artists— Sienese Duccio di Buoninsegna for example, but in thoroughly contemporary manner. Driskell, a modernist, admired Byzantine art. I am reminded of his reference to the illustrator of medieval manuscripts as a “classical scholar who kept abreast of contemporary happenings.”6 So too, Driskell. In Palm Sunday, Driskell merged artistic, secular, and symbolic references to celebrate Bearden’s many gifts as a collage artist. “Palm Sunday is a reinterpretation of how I would have related to him as a collage artist, as a painter, as a print artist,” Driskell noted, and one who “pulled all the pieces of society together, particularly on a Sunday morning when people are Her Face Was Like the Moon, 1995 . Collage and acrylic on paper, 40 x 26 1⁄4 inches 12

* Reproduced on the inside back cover flap.

going to church.”7 Art critic Holland Cotter claimed Driskell’s Palm Sunday “seamlessly closes the gap between collage and painting, as Bearden intended to do.” 8 And yet, as a collage painter drawn to modernist pictorial form and art historical sources— like Bearden— Driskell’s painterly engagement with the surface and with collage was distinctly his own.

T MASK THE DRISKELL HAD A LIFE-LONG ENGAGEMENT with African masks as inheri-

tance and visual form. Introduced to African art at Howard University as a student, he went on to study, curate, and collect African art. Driskell believed European artists, such as Picasso, had not exhausted the possible approaches of African formalism, claiming, “in many ways I am a child of Africa. If anyone has the right to be eclectic when viewing these magnificent works, it is I.”9 Driskell drew liberally and deliberately from European and African art sources, and placed African masks in conversation with subjects long connected to Western art traditions, as seen in Odalisque (1987; p. 11).10 In this mysterious collage, Driskell positions a Black figure

with a golden nimbus behind a reclining white female nude, a riff perhaps on Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) or an homage to the artistry of Bob Thompson (1937–1966). But what are we to make of the slithering serpent and mask-like face that appear here too? “I am influenced by everything which takes place in my life and my mind’s eye when I make art....I have to do it my own way and that means mixing it all together.”11 In his decade at Fisk University (1966–76) Driskell took his first trips to the African continent and coordinated an educational catalogue and gallery installation of Fisk’s African art collection. Dedicated to James A. Porter (1905–1970), a scholar of African and African American art, and Driskell’s

mentor at Howard University, the exhibition included objects loaned from Driskell’s personal collection.12 The ubiquity of African informed figures and subjects in Driskell’s art from this era, effectively diarizes aspects of the artist’s visual realm. Driskell’s African art sources were diverse and rarely appear in direct quotation. Rather, the source informs and empowers his figures, as in Bakota Girl (1972; p. 7). The artist elegantly blends the distinctive form of Kota reliquary figures with recognizable Christian imagery.13 In other works such as Ancestral Head of a Girl (1971; p. 16), African forms are evoked through Driskell’s contoured shapes and line. Self Portrait, 2003 –04. Acrylic on paper, 29 3⁄4 x 22 1⁄4 inches 14

Ancestral Head of a Girl, 1971 . Egg tempera on paperboard, 9 x 7 inches 16

Adam and Eve in the Garden ( Study ) , 2005 . Mixed media and cray-pas on paper, 26 x 19 inches 17

Although the faces of many Driskell figures, including some self-portraits, are informed by African mask forms, Driskell drew distinctions. This is most evident in his titles, such as Faces in the Forest (2004; p. 27) and Mystery of the Masks. Faces may represent African ancestors, but not every face is a mask. The mask is an ancestral form that is empowered by successive generations. “Power is transmitted to a mask from ancestors,” Driskell wrote in 1970, and “this helps preserve the spiritual quality which enables the right function of the mask to be fulfilled.”14 Interpreted holistically, across his oeuvre, Driskell gives us compositions in which the human and the divine coexist. African masks, ancestors, and nature in its earthly and celestial forms, take residence in Driskell’s creative realm.

T FOREST THE DRISKELL ATTENDED the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in

Maine in 1953. It was professionally formative and an introduction to a state he would later call home. In 1961, the Driskell family purchased property in Falmouth, Maine, which provided a summer home and studio for the artist. Over the years, Driskell developed a bountiful garden that included ornamental flowers, memorial trees, flowering shrubs, vegetables and fruits. The gardens provided sustenance of many kinds— edible, spiritual, and visual — and abutted his stand-alone studio. The studio was the perfect place to dream and to “make visible that which was never intended to be in the natural process.”15 Hence, Driskell conveyed nature— the gardens and nearby woodlands, through stylized form. The greenery in Palm Sunday bears little resemblance to palms, and the dancing fronds that appear in A View from the Forest (2005; p. 21) and Night Garden (Forest Dream) (2012; p. 25) only imply a forest of ferns. The decorative impulse evoked in these cut-outs are robust complements to the curvilinear embellishments laid down by brush. A side-by-side consideration of the sumptuous drawing in the 2005 Adam and Eve in the Garden (Study) (p. 17) with the collage technique in A View from the Forest foregrounds his decorative methods and ingenuity. Driskell attributed his eye for such ornament to the classical acanthus leaf décor used throughout the ancient world, connecting his artistic inheritance to traditions beyond borders and simple chronologies.

The Seer, 2005. Collage and gouache on paper, 30 x 22 1⁄2 inches 18

The Branch, 2002 . Collage and oil on paper, 8 x 5 1⁄2 inches 20

A View From the Forest, 2005 . Collage, encaustic, and mixed media on paper, 24 x 18 inches 21

Mystery of the Masks, 2005 . Collage and acrylic on paper, 29 1⁄2 x 21 5⁄8 inches 22

Blue Pine Tree, 2007. Acrylic on paper, 30 x 21 1⁄4 inches 24

Night Garden ( Forest Dream ), 2012 . Collage and acrylic on paper, 22 x 17 inches 25

EGO AS A GENRE , self-portraiture interested Driskell from his earliest days as

a student at Howard University. Many self-portraits are intimate studies of his mood, changing physiognomy and hairstyles, others intertwine his face with an African mask. The introspective, youthful ego that appears in Self-Portrait (2003–04; p. 15) was painted by the artist when he was seventy-two. Perhaps self-portraiture provided another means for connecting with ancestors: he surely envisaged them in his countenance. Driskell unreservedly attached many of his aesthetic inclinations to his upbringing in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina, acknowledging his parents and “the multitude” who guided him. But Driskell saw himself in other artists too, they were his professional family. In Palm Sunday, Driskell claimed the “little country church” was to represent Bearden’s humble beginnings in North Carolina, but it could also represent Hunts Chapel, the Georgia parsonage where Driskell’s father worked and where Driskell was baptized.16 Yet verification of this biographical association isn’t necessary: when Driskell collaged portions of Spirits Watching into his painting Palm Sunday, he placed himself in a powerful lineage of artists and ancestors. J U L I E L. M C G E E

N OT E S 1. David C. Driskell, Arna A. Bontemps, and Illinois State University. Center for the Visual Arts. Gallery, David C. Driskell : A One Man Exhibition, Jan. 30 –Feb. 25, 1979 (Normal, Ill.: Center for the Visual Arts Gallery, 1979), unpaginated. 2. Romare Bearden, “Forward,” in David C. Driskell: A One Man Exhibition, unpaginated. 3.To mark the centennial of Romare Bearden’s birth, The Studio Museum invited artists to produce a new work for an exhibition on view at SMH, Nov. 10, 2011– Mar. 11, 2012. Lauren Haynes, Romare Bearden, and Studio Museum in Harlem, The Bearden Project. Edited by Jessica Lott and Samir S Patel. New York, NY: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2012. 4. Adrienne L. Childs, David C. Driskell, and David C. Driskell Center, Evolution : Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007.

5. Driskell in The Bearden Project, p. 263. 6. David C. Driskell, “Forward” to exhibition

catalogue, Miniatures from Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, unpaginated. The Art Gallery, Savery Library, Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama, 1958. 7. Driskell in The Bearden Project, p. 263. 8. Holland Cotter, “A Griot For a Global

Village,” The New York Times, Dec. 9, 2011, Section C, p. 29. 9. Driskell quoted in David C. Driskell: A One Man Exhibition, unpaginated. 10. Possibly same as the gouache and collage Odalesque (1987) created at Talladega College and exhibited there in conjunction with the 27th Annual Arts Festival. 11. Driskell quoted in David C. Driskell: A One Man Exhibition, unpaginated.

12. In addition to Driskell, works were loaned by Fisk art professors Earl Hooks and Gregory Ridley. 13. A Kota reliquary figure in the Fisk collection was reproduced on the cover of catalogue (see note 14). 14. Driskell’s catalogue entry for the Ngere mask in African Art: The Fisk University Collection (The Art Gallery, Fisk University: Nashville, TN, 1970), unpaginated. 15. Driskell quoted in David C. Driskell: A One Man Exhibition, unpaginated. 16. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Driskell moved with his family to Ellenboro, North Carolina at the age of five. Driskell’s paternal ancestors, William Driskell and G.W. (George Washington) Driskell were ministers.

Faces in the Forest, 2004 . Collage and acrylic on paper, 14 x 11 inches 26

The Pet, 2014 . Collage and mixed media on canvas, 14 1⁄4 x 11 inches 28

DAVID DRISKELL

DAVID C. DRISKELL (1931–2020) was a legendary

Driskell joined the Department of Art at the University of Maryland where

African American artist and art historian. As an

he remained until his retirement in 1998. The University of Maryland

artist, scholar, and curator, he made substantial

opened The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and

contributions to these fields that have changed

Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora in 2001 to celebrate

the way we think about American art. His paint-

his legacy as an artist and art historian.

ings and collages unite a strong modernist In 1993, Driskell was honored with an award from the American Academy

impulse with his personal vision and memory.

of Arts and Letters. In December 2000, Driskell received the National The works highlighted in this publication were

Humanities Medal. In 2005, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta established

heavily influenced by early trips taken to the

the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor and celebrate

African continent taken between 1969 and 1972.

contributions to the field of African American art by a scholar or artist.

He returned with a deep appreciation and respect for African artistic traditions and iconography

Driskell’s works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions

which he brought into his artwork. The African

in galleries and museums throughout the United States, most recently as

mask in particular became a central, fundamental

the subject of the career survey David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History

motif. As explained by art critic John Yau, “Driskell

(2020–22) at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, which traveled to the

never tried to fit in or accommodate his work to

Portland Museum of Art, ME, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.,

prevailing, white, avant-garde styles... Rather, he

and the Cincinnati Art Museum, OH. Other solo exhibitions include David

absorbed aspects of various styles and, in the

Driskell: Renewal and Reform (2017) at the Center for Maine Contemporary

cauldron of his art practice, welded them to his

Art, Rockland, ME, and Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell (2011) at

personal and cultural history.” Driskell trans-

the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

formed iconic African art forms into honorific

Group exhibitions include, Black American Portraits (2021–22) at the Los

personal visions — flattened, decorated, and

Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Afro-Atlantic Stories (2018), which

resurfaced in his signature style, color, and callig-

originated at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, Brazil and traveled (2021–24) to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

raphy - and melded these forms with Modernist aesthetics and the tradition of Western art.

Self-Portrait in Brown Hat, 1987. Gouache on paper, 11 x 7 ⁄2 inches

D.C., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, and the Dallas Museum of

Art, TX; Tell Me Your Story (2020) at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, the Driskell received his BA in Fine Art from Howard University (1955) and

Netherlands; and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2018–19)

MFA from Catholic University (1962), both in Washington, D.C. He attended

at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY.

the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine, in 1953, with which he retained a lifelong relationship, serving as visiting faculty,

His works can be found in collections throughout the country, including

lecturer, and board member.

the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Bowdoin College Museum, Brunswick, ME; Colby College Museum, Waterville, ME;

Driskell’s pioneering scholarship underpins the current field of African

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; High Museum of

American art history. Among his most influential curatorial contributions are

Art, Atlanta, GA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C National Museum

the exhibition and catalogue for the groundbreaking Two Centuries of Black

of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C; Pennsylvania

American Art, which opened in 1976 at the Los Angeles County Museum

Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Portland Museum of Art, ME;

of Art (LACMA) and traveled to museums across the country. In 1977, after

The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,

having taught at Talladega College, Howard University, and Fisk University,

Richmond, VA, among others.

D C M O O R E G A L L E R Y 535 West 22 Street New York New York 10011

dcmooregallery.com 212.247. 2111

Published on the occasion of the exhibition: DAVID DRISKELL: MYSTERY OF THE MASKS DC Moore Gallery, February 17– March 26, 2022

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

JAN E WI LS O N Still Life Paintings:1977– 1979

JULIE L. M C GEE is a an art historian and curator. Her previous

scholarship on Driskell includes the monograph David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar (2006). She co-curated the 2011 exhibition Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell with Adrienne L. Childs. In collaboration with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, she curated David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History (2021). McGee is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Art History and Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware. I S B N : 978-0-9993167-6-4

DC Moore Gallery, February 10 – October 19, 2021

Catalogue Managers: Edward DeLuca and Sabeena Khosla Design: Joseph Guglietti Printing: Brilliant l Photography: © Steven Bates

cover : Mystery of the Masks, 2005 . (detail)

Collage and acrylic on paper, 29 1⁄2 x 215⁄8 inches front flap : David Driskell in his studio, Hyattsville, MD, 1983. Image courtesy of the David C. Driskell Papers at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gift of Prof. and Mrs. David C. Driskell.

opposite : Spirits Watching, 1986 . Offset lithograph, 211⁄2 x 30 inches.

cover: The Delight of Solitude , 2020 ( detail )

James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Acrylic on canvas. 29 3⁄ 4 x 27 1⁄ 2 inches

Gift of the JELMA Foundation.

D C M O O R E G A L L E R Y 535 West 22 Street New York New York 10011

dcmooregallery.com 212.247. 2111

Published on the occasion of the exhibition: DAVID DRISKELL: MYSTERY OF THE MASKS DC Moore Gallery, February 17– March 26, 2022

An Inward Poet’s Vision © Julie L. McGee, 2022 JULIE L. M C GEE is a an art historian and curator. Her previous scholarship on Driskell includes the monograph David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar (2006). She co-curated the 2011 exhibition Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell with Adrienne L. Childs. In collaboration with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, she curated David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History (2021). McGee is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Art History and Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware.

I S B N : 978-0-9993167-6-4

Catalogue Managers: Edward DeLuca and Sabeena Khosla Design: Joseph Guglietti Printing: Brilliant l Photography: © Steven Bates

cover : Mystery of the Masks, 2005 . (detail)

opposite : Spirits Watching, 1986 . Offset lithograph, 211⁄2 x 30 inches. James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland Gift of the JELMA Foundation.