November 20, 2005

Raymond Saunders: True Black Genius

By Duane Deterville


A recent retrospective of the work of Jean Michel Basquiat at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art brought to mind why some Black Genius is more palatable to the art establishment than others. There is a romanticism attached to the figures of Charlie Parker, Bob Thompson, Jimi Hendrix and of course Basquiat. It’s a love affair that the Eurocentric status quo art establishment has with Black Genius that can easily be reconstructed in stereotypic descriptions like nihilistic, intuitive, and primitive. These brothas ain’t no threat if their lifestyles signal loudly that they won’t be around much longer to challenge the status quo.

Geniuses nonetheless, but during their lifetimes they serve as entertainment while white folks watch their ever so bright star of the moment supernova. The artist who exhibits a deft academic knowledge of and facility with the European western (white) art tradition and a myriad of other plural art traditions is potentially dangerous to the notion that the whole “Black Genius thang” is tied to unschooled youthful emotion. Dying young may get you mythic status in white America but it doesn’t allow one to enter into the most profound regions of creativity reserved for those that live long enough to master both craft and originality. One such artist is Raymond Saunders, now in the master’s phase of his career at age 71.


The painter Raymond Saunders

Saunders’ work is currently on show at The Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco through November 17th 2005 and is some of the finest contemporary painting you are likely to find anywhere. The work is painterly but, for me, the most striking aspects of the pieces are the highly refined and original drawings that are contained in them. Much is made of Basquiat’s use of graffiti influenced marks and writing in his work and rightfully so, his use of those elements was brilliant. However, Saunders’ predated Basquiat by a decade or more with the use of those elements and when you view pieces such as “Loving Figure and Figuration” at the Wirtz Gallery it becomes plain that Basquiat would have had to live a few more decades to achieve the degree of delicacy and refinement contained in his assured lines. The piece is done on a discarded chalk board, a drawing surface that Saunders has used for over a decade now. His work anticipates Gary Simmons’ use of drawings made on a chalkboard and their transient nature.


Saunders' "Loving Figure and Figuration"


The Wirtz Gallery show is indicative of how well Raymond Saunders’ work “travels.” From “Walking in Oaxaca” with its Mexican crosses and Day of the Dead imagery to “China Windows” with its Chinese characters next to black and yellow vases (think Bandung Conference 1955) harmoniously occupying the composition. He draws us back to the present with the large multimedia piece “Painted by a refugee?! – Refugee as noun – One who flees for refuge to another country – Slavery?” a reference to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans and the resulting double Diaspora that Black folks were plunged into as a result. I hear that he has executed a magnificent altar to the victims of the Katrina disaster at the De Young Museum.

After leaving the Stephen Wirtz Gallery walk up 3rd street to Minna right next to the SF Museum of Modern Art and view the mural-sized Saunders piece affixed to the side of the St. Regis Hotel. After that, catch BART to the Rockridge station in Oakland and walk less than a block to 5620 College Ave and witness how Saunders has performed his visual jazz on the interior walls of Becky’s Chinese Restaurant.

The notion of Black Genius is not antithesis to universality. In fact its appeal is both its specificity as part of the ethos of African descendant culture and its ability to reach into and embrace a myriad of other cultures. Jazz is a primary example of that process and Raymond Saunders’ art reflects that process as well. His work easily riffs on storefront churches, Chinese writing and children’s drawings seamlessly. It is necessary that we black folks make a concerted effort to experience him while he is with us. One of the reasons that we struggle with the stereotypic images attached to Black Geniuses after they have joined the ancestors is that we weren’t there when their story was in progress. The audience is the other half of the artistic equation. Once Bird, Jimi and Basquiat are gone we are left with the reclamation project. Just look at the travesties that are the films on the lives of Bird and Basquiat. How many of these artist’s histories need to be rescued from the stereotypic myths constructed around their memory by white artists and historians that are ill equipped to understand the black communities that produced them? This is an invitation to witness Raymond Saunders’ creative star at its Zenith.

Duane Deterville is the founder and executive director of the Sankofa Cultural Center in Oakland.




BlogON: Why don't artists like Raymond Saunders get by more attention by the media? Whatchusay?

Posted at November 20, 2005 12:46 AM

Comments

Thank you very much for getting it. I hope that more attention is paid to Raymond Saunders work as a painter, conceptualist and draughtsman. Right now the black persona is surrounded by terrorism. How many of those guys from AlQueda for example look like guys from our neighborhoods. Oakland, Brooklyn, New York and Miami Florida. I went to my local barber, for the first time in awhile, in Palm Coast, FL. The Russian barber and I struck up a conversation. One of the things that he asked me was whether or not I was from Persia. Folks living in the US don't know the diversity of mixture in their own cultures. They definitely don't know much about black folk except for "Chapelle" and "In living color."

I often muse why Ray is not as well known. Basquiat was cool but he was already an "artworld mascot" trying not to be one. When he(Basquiat)was alive he was biting off of Rays' artwork. Not the other way around.

It is possible to be in creative sync with another artist. Or better still it is possible to use some of the same material, same raw material, and come up with a different opus.Ray got passed over again, maybe not eclipsed by Basquiat, but certainly...I digress.

Posted by: Lawrence J. Philp at January 25, 2006 09:41 PM

I think that most people these days are not interested in critical thinking or looking at paintings. Those who can do and those who can't don't. My concern with Ray Saunders has to do with the way in which he treats the objects of his affection. He obviously plays with the images and slurries of paint that he loves, some being observed from real life, some invented. I think that he grants himself that pleasure in playing with the things that his soul loves. My concern is that people don't think that he is being innovative past the Rauschenburg, Twombly and Jasper Johns AbEx plus influences. I hope that in the future Mr. Saunders continues to give himself the green light in spite of what anyone may seem to say to the detraction of his work. After all the lotus does grow in a chthonian swamp. It is a privelege to make things and to play with the things that the soul loves. I am pretty certain that an imaginative ad executive would find some way to use the more graphic work that Mr. Saunders makes. You need to canvas those folks for a more candid response to your question.

Let's face it the art world chooses who it will extol. Look at the Saunders vs. Basquiat rivalry, East Coast versus West Coast painterly dialogue during the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. Basqiat is, was edgy and over the top. He was also of the eighties and nineties and likened himself to being a son of Andy Warhol or at best one of his proteges.

There is always something below the surface in a Saunders painting. Ray Saunders is a black man, a man like many men who continues to break the "black people ain't shit" mould. If he were to put elephant dung into his paintings he would really be getting over.

In closing I recently read a review of Saunders work which I can't footnote but which dealt with the notion that if his work had it been done thirty-five years ago it would have been more innovative. Ray Saunder's work is innovative and that is why he is not being payed any attention to.

Posted by: Lawrence J. Philp at January 26, 2006 05:50 PM