David Hammons: Body Prints
For the very first time, a museum space has been dedicated to the early, brilliant works of David Hammons. As a Black artist working on these pieces, shown in his exhibiton Body Works, 1968–1979, he celebrates the sacredness of work made by the Black body, while facing and critiquing his experience as a Black man in America.
What I love so much about Hammons’ work, and what makes it different than everything I’ve ever seen, is the metaphysicality of it — one example of which is below.
In quite literally deciding to record the body on paper (whether with ink, grease, or any material that can spread and remain mostly permanent), Hammons creates a recording and referent of himself, or the person he has decided to preserve on his print, while also creating a space of sacred appreciation for a work that has been touched by the Black body.
In this piece in particular, he includes the flag — a recurring symbol in his work, as a not so subtle nod to the racial justices of America — and lays the body on top of it as we are presented with the repeating “Feed Folks”.
Even working at the peak (as if the peak has ended?) of racism in America, he chooses to put his subject in the foreground, and the flag in the background. The implications of being a Black person in America are far from ignored in this piece, but they don’t alter his subject’s exploration of “Feed Folks” (likely a nod to food inequality). Rather, the flag forms as a shadow and a reminder that even what isn’t obvious or visible to an ignorant eye does not mean ir does not exist.
What particularly intrigues, and even more so, enrages, me is that we as a general art collective don’t experience or discuss Hammons’ name and work in the same we do with Pollock or Warhol or De Kooning or any other over-celebrated white artist. While the themes surrounding AbEx certainly are not the same of Hammons’ Body Prints, there is still something to the idea and sacrity of using one’s body — whether as a literal print, or in physical movement, to create work. And where a Pollock goes for millions upon millions, a Hammons can be purchased from artnet, despite the fact that his work is certainly more socially, educationally, and just generally valuable.
In large part, I’m just fucking tired of hearing the name Pollock, as if he didn’t steal his concept from Lee Krasner. (A tangent, I know. but one that feels worthy and necessary, no? I digress — for now.)
One of my favorite pieces from his show (I got so close I set off the alarm, naturally) is Black Boy’s Window, 1968, shown below.
Created using silkscreen on glass and placed on an original woodframe with a blind, Hammons is bringing the experience of a Black boy living in America into a physical, three-dimensonal object. Salvaged from his own demolished home, we as the viewers are forced to consider the exclusionary systems that exist for Black Americans — especially younger Black children in America.
For me, one of the most powerful parts of the piece is the curtain. While in theory the curtain could be brought down, it remains open— as a symbol of who is able to close it, and who is on the other side, watching it be closed.
Much like the image above, his The Door (Admissions Office) depicts hands that look as if they are trying to push in — but cannot, and will not be admitted. Without much more context than that, the works still packs a massive punch: at some point, there was a body that could not enter, yet as viewers, we are able to see the hand prints from both sides, no matter how much we would like to ignore them.
The one, and biggest, critique I have of the show is how it was installed.
In the little I know of Hammons and his work, it is deeply personal and centered on the existence of the body. I would imagine a space that best showcases his work would be one that encourages not only conversation, but some kind of interaction, or understanding of the work that goes beyond images hanging in a really large, almost empty-feeling gallery. (yet perhaps this is the downfall of New York galleries and their designs at large.)
In specific relation to our class readings and discussions, two readings (my favorites of the semester, actually) come immediately to mind: Frantz Fanon’s The Fact of Blackness, and James Baldwin’s The Creative Process.
As I have written in my midterm, what makes an artist like Hammons fit in with Baldwin’s principle point throughout the piece is that he is completely unafraid to make this work challenge not only traditional art standards (such as the AbEx of Pollock as previously mentioned), but also that at the quite literal physical use of his and others’ bodies, he reminds us of what it means not only to be Black in a segregated America, and to be a Black artist in a segregated art world. He embodies exactly what Baldwin calls for in his compelling words:
“The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge”
as well as:
“A higher level of consciousness among the people is the only hope we have, now or in the future, of minimizing human damage”.
In The Fact of Blackness, Fanon inctroduces the idea of ontology — which essentially explains how things are related (or in Hammons’ case, not related.) From a simple definition, ontology is: a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds that have existence. Ontology explains how the Black man is not understod as the Black man, but as a Black man in reference to the white man. Or, in this case, as a Black artist.
Not only does Hammons address how ontology impacts his existence and work, but he then uses it to challenge the idea itself. In using his body, and other Black bodies, to create fine art pieces, he elevates the position of Blackness in his work to become sacred.
