On Wednesday afternoon, Profs. Faith Smith (AAAS) and Susan Lichtman (FA) spoke in the Rose Art Museum's Mildred S. Lee Gallery about the Rose's newly acquired installation piece, "Self Portrait #23," by artist Al Loving. The professors spoke for a little more than half an hour each about the installation, an extremely colorful work made out of strips of cloth that were sewn together to create a geometrical wall hanging that measured about 10 feet tall. The room was packed with students, faculty and Rose administration including Director Chris Bedford.

The two professors spoke about "Self Portrait #23" in the context of their own academic fields, giving the audience the opportunity to view the piece through two different lenses. Lichtman spoke first about the piece's aesthetics through a more technical lens of Fine Arts. Smith then spoke about the historical resonance and significance of the piece: about black and African identity and art through her lens of African and Afro-American studies.

In her talk, Lichtman described the piece with a slew of adjectives including "overwhelming," "monumental" and "authoritarian," all descriptors which, she suggested, were indicative of masculinity. However, Lichtman also mentioned that femininity was interwoven in the piece through its quality of being sewn and the softness of the cloth.

Lichtman described the work as more of a painting than a textile piece even though the piece was made up entirely of dyed cloth. She noted how the dye was nuanced-rich and complicated-with variations of color, mimicking the appearance of a painting. Lichtman explained, "It doesn't really feel like a decorative quilt. It feels like a painting."

Providing a creative consideration of the piece, Lichtman took the room through the process by which she imagined Loving physically putting together the work, a process that Smith also meditated on during her part of the talk. Lichtman said that she tried to picture the artist at his sewing machine putting this together, the floor draped with fold after fold of bright, vibrant cloth.The physical process of the sewing, she suggested, must have been a feat within itself. 

Smith spoke next, giving the audience a glimpse through a more historical and sociological lens. She began her talk with a query alluding to the installation's title, pondering "what it might mean to represent the self in 1973," and then spoke about the place of "Self Portrait #23" and its artist within the movement of abstract art. 

The question of black identity as it is presented through art was a thread running throughout Smith's talk. Smith discussed the idea that there was a "true black self" that all black people share when the "whiteness" is stripped away. She suggested that African and African-American art takes on the problem of portraying this true black self, but that Loving's piece had an extra task to deal with-showing the true black self using abstraction rather than representational techniques.

Smith also talked about the history of black art in museums and how black advocacy groups have historically put museums under pressure to acquire black art in order to diversify their collections. She mentioned that Loving was the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum in 1971. In separate group exhibition, the Whitney displayed an exhibit of contemporary black artists. However the artists, unhappy about the curating of the exhibit, withdrew their art. The museums were not able to adequately represent the black art in the context of the museum. However these artists present a contrast to Al Loving who kept his pieces in the Whitney. As Smith says, "Museum culture may also have required programmatic, legible and therefore restrictive forms of blackness." 

After the professors spoke, the room was opened up to questions. The discussions that came out of the questions were incredibly enlightening and intellectual. For example, Prof. John Plotz (ENG) noticed that a portion of the work that had not been addressed during the talks looked like a pair of overalls, an aspect, which he suggested, added to the human quality of the self-portrait.

The lectures were a great way to introduce and publicize the new Loving acquisition and the interdisciplinary nature of the talk made it that much more enriching. I hope to see more of these academic discussions within the context of the Rose as we head into next semester.
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