“The intent of the paintings is to expose my vision of black men as a sister, daughter, friend and lover. That perspective is one full of empathy and love. I see their humanity and, in turn, I want the audience to engage with them as fathers, sons, brothers, cousins – as individuals with their own unique stories to share.”
Jordan Casteel’s paintings seek to minimize the distance between selves. As exemplified in Barbershop, the proximity and tenderness of the artist’s gaze is self-evident, but despite the intimacy of the space there is no voyeurism here. The active participation of the subject is readily apparent; their level gaze invites the viewer’s engagement on their terms, with no sense of confrontation, only dignity and self-assuredness. These are paintings with the lightness of a candid photograph and gravitas of an Old Master portrait, monumental works that seek to counteract the presentation of black bodies in the media and in film. There is no crisis here, no violence, no exploitation, no negativity. Rather, these are scenes of domestic normality of a sort almost entirely absent from mainstream portrayals of blackness, and especially of black masculinity.
Right: Hurvin Anderson, jersey, 2008. tate, london. art (c) hurvin anderson
Barbershop epitomizes these concerns. Included in Casteel’s second exhibition at Sargent’s Daughters in 2015 and hailing from her “Brothers” series, works produced just prior to the beginning of her tenure as an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the present work is a masterful example of Casteel’s idiosyncratic style. Describings the purpose of the series, Casteel notes: “The intent of the paintings is to expose my vision of black men as a sister, daughter, friend and lover. That perspective is one full of empathy and love. I see their humanity and, in turn, I want the audience to engage with them as fathers, sons, brothers, cousins – as individuals with their own unique stories to share.” (Jordan Casteel in conversation with Allie Biswas in: “Jordan Casteel: ‘My perspective is one full of empathy and love’”, Studio International, 15 October 2015, online) To do this, the artist sought to portray her subjects, who themselves are overwhelmingly intimately connected to the artist, within familiar interior spaces, on the basis that “home tends to be where we are our most vulnerable and intimate selves.” (Ibid.) In Barbershop, the subjects of the work are of course not at home, but rather are sitting in the eponymous space, itself a nexus of many black American communities. Casteel’s investigation of the social role of this space echoes the work of Hurvin Anderson from the late 2000s, and Kerry James Marshall’s nearly two decades earlier, who both used the symbol of the black barbershop as a means by which to explore notions of black identity in the UK and US respectively.
Casteel’s process also speaks to the intimacy of these settings. Rather than working from life, the artist will bring a camera into her subject’s space and photograph them, somet.mes s hundreds of t.mes s. This cornucopia of visual information becomes the stimulus for her paintings, which constitute an amalgam of images, constructed both with an eye to the composition of the final painting, and a focus on an emotionally true representation of her subject. A key challenge to this emotional acuity was Casteel’s decision with this series to move from representing solitary figures to painting groups, as the Retentions of the character of the individual is complicated by their relation to others. However, in this as in many of the artist’s works, the complexity has been skillfully navigated. The wide eyes of the child and tender downward gaze of the mother are complemented by the laconic calm of the father, glancing casually towards the viewer as he looks up from his magazine. This figure is the focal point of the painting, and the painting insists on his individuality. Casteel selects her palette based on the emotions she is trying to conjure, and the blues and deep yellows of this painting, as well as her precise application of pigment, lends the work a remarkable luminosity, conjuring impressions of visibility and claritys . Indeed, Casteel regularly points to Alice Neel as an influence, and there are definite echoes of the great Twentieth Century portraitist’s palette and style in this work.
Critical interest in Casteel’s work is at an all-t.mes high following her major retrospective exhibition at the New Museum in New York this year, and her widely acclaimed cover for Vogue in August. Her paintings locate her within a generation of twenty-first century painters of color such as Amy Sherald, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye who have together reinvigorated the figurative painting tradition. Building on the work of artists such as Betye Saar, Barkley Hendricks, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold and Kerry James Marshall, these artists create works that, among many other things, assert the individuality of the subject. Vibrant, monumental and psychologically astute, Barbershop is a pivotal work within Casteel’s oeuvre, and typifies the concerns that make her one of the most exciting young artists working today.
