“Artistic production was the weapon” for 20th century black, female printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. Her impassioned prints and sculptors “present black people in their beauty and dignity for ourselves and others to understand.”
Resources for this episode include the writings of Richard J. Powell, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, David Breslin, MOMA, PASA, Whitney Museum. Special thanks to Catlett’s granddaughter Ife Mora for inspiring this episode. 🙂 You can follow Ife, a somatic trauma healer @ife.mora on IG.
Join me on February 25, from 1-2 p.m. for a talk highlighting female printmakers through the collection at New Britain Museum of American Art. The virtual talk will highlight works and practice of Elizabeth Catlett. For me information and tickets, please email me at beyond_thepaint@yahoo.com
Script:
Welcome to my first show in the New Year, 2022. This episode was inspired by two women, the contemporary printmaker Brandon Graving—I celebrated her work and had a wonderful conversation about her practice in episode 142. For every individual female artist amplified on this show there is always some inclusion of historical perspective about the work. For the female artist Brandon Graving, I gave a short history of printmaking highlighting the impact of women to the medium. I briefly touted the work of 20th century black, female printmaker, she was also a sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. She produced prints and works of sculpture immersing the viewer of the black experience, culture, especially in her representations of black women. Catlett said the purpose of her work was “to present black people in their beauty and dignity for ourselves and others to understand.” As we will explore every expressive line in her linocut prints and wood sculptures does indeed portray black people’s resonant beauty and strength.
The second inspiration for this episode came through the social media platform Instagram. I create several posts with images, quotes from the artist I interview, photos of the artist at work and for the episode celebrating Graving, crafted a post showcasing Elizabeth Catlett. One comment came from Catlett’s granddaughter Ife Mora. She expressed gratitude that I included her grandmother on the podcast and Instagram—This pleased my heart because the purpose of my work, of this show specifically is a space to immerse you, my wonderful listeners, into the works by women artists as an essential prism for understanding the story of art through the female experience. My connection with Ife inspired me to dedicate a full episode to Ms Catlett.
Ife—she lives in California and is a Somatic trauma healer and teacher –thank you so much for connecting with me and for our correspondence via email. I am filled with gratitude and I incorporated some of that conversation in today’s show.
So let’s dive in. Elizabeth Catlett was a 20th century African American artist, born 1915, she died in 2012—she lived in United States, mostly in the South where she was an educator. Her grandparents were ex-slaves who “educated their eight children and to her mother widowed before Elizabeth’s birth, who dedicated her life to the education of her three children. Catlett credits her specific heritage of once enslaved people with giving her the strength to become an artist. She carries this narrative and her view of herself as a black woman, through her artistic hands into the works she created. For me it is what brings so much meaning and engagement to my looking experience and connections with Catlett and her prolific body of works.
Catlett was one of a significant group of American artists and writers of color who, at least since the 1920s had sought an escape from racism and restricted professional and social opportunities by removing themselves to other countries. Catlett moved to Mexico where she worked and became a Mexican citizen. From the text and wonderful resource for this show, “Black Art: A Cultural History,” authored by Richard J. Powell. He asserts: In the 1940s and 50s Catlett was one in a group of socially engaged, African American artists who produced works that first, “challenged a racially biased white status quo and second “reinvigorated the black subject in American art.” What she accomplishes through the medium and practice of printmaking is create pictorial studies of black women’s experiences—I think you will agree they are impassioned yet “lucid, first person affidavit against racism.”
To illustrate this we will focus on three works from her Negro Women series (1946-47). She made this group of prints at a work shop in Mexico City. Catlett employed Lino printing, a form of fine art printmaking, where the printing place is cut into lino—lino as in linoleum floor covering. The lino is then inked; a piece of paper placed over it, and then run through a printing press or pressure applied by hand to transfer the ink to the paper. Because of its smooth surface the lino itself doesn’t add texture to the print. The use of lino to create art is primarily attributed to German Expressionists but Matisse and Picasso also produced lino cuts.
The most riveting of all the works from the series is titled “I have a special fear for my loved ones” Print portrays a “lynching.” My source (NAACP)
A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration.
A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards.
In Catlett’s print, “I have a special fear for my loved ones” a black male figure is sprawled on the ground, with a noose around his neck, the severed rope trails on the ground away from his body, some of the rope is beneath three cropped off pairs of feet. His face is turned slightly upwards, eyes unmoving are open, and he appears to be looking up into the faces of the spectators, perhaps his killers. There are a series of expressive short lines that form in curved pathways along and below the figure—it appears like there is no ground, as if the figure is riding atop a choppy waves of water.
Catlett draws attention to the “frightening truths about white-on-black violence.” The print is an example of Catlett’s dedication to the struggle of racism. “Her art mirrors her observations of and experiences with racial segregation and the impact on black American citizens developed in her a deep will to fight racism and uplift black people. Artistic production was her weapon.” This series depicts both the beauty and dignity of black people and impresses a powerful social function to inform the viewer and promote change.
Another work from the series that drew me in is “My Reward Has Been Bars Between Me and the Rest of the Land,” (1947) We see a portrait, full face of a black woman. Her gaze looks away from us into the foreground at a barbed wire fence—of the fence we see one wooden post and two barbed strings of wire—the sharp barbs look like glints of star light against the woman’s striped shirt. From curator David Breslin from the Whitney Museum: The work celebrates “unknown women” and the invisible labor. Whether it’s in the home, or in the field, or in the factory, the ‘unknown’ black woman frequently wasn’t seen or wasn’t made heroic. For Catlett, the idea was to celebrate the everyday labor of ones who have not been noticed, who go unnoticed throughout their work.
In both the pieces I highlighted from the Negro Women series, Catlett provides us with very intimate experience—her figures are close cropped, starkly chiseled (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts museum) she demands the viewer to “witness the private realities of the lives of ordinary African-American women” like the woman who works in the fields or the woman, the mother who witnesses the lynching of her son.
Negro Woman series while it illustrates the struggles of unknown black women, it illuminates the achievements of women like Harriet Tubman and Phillis Wheatley—here we are “witness to the historically marginalized achievements of African-American heroines.”
Let’s look closely at one African-American heroine: the 1946 linocut print “In Phillis Wheatley, I proved intellectual quality in the midst of slavery” Phillis Wheatley was an 18th century woman from West Africa—she was kidnapped and enslaved in Boston. In 1761 and was purchased by John Wheatley as a personal servant to his wife. The Wheatleys educated Phillis and she soon mastered Latin and Greek, going on to write highly acclaimed poetry. She published her first poem in 1767 and her first volume of verse, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in 1773. Having been freed from slavery, she later married though she struggled financially—several of her poems called for the abolition of slavery—she wrote: “In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression and pants for Deliverance.” “Wheatley was unable to find a publisher for her second volume of poems, she worked as a scrubwoman in dreadful conditions—she died in her 30s from complications of childbirth.
In Catlett’s print, we see the profile of Phillis Wheatley in the foreground. She wears contemporary colonial dress with a white bonnet atop her head, a feather pen is one hand atop a blank piece of paper, her other hand is by her face, her second finger on her cheek, a “gesture that indicates she is thoughtful and self-possessed.” Her gaze is towards the figures in the background, three young women, in long skirts and head wraps, they are bare foot, and each is shackled and chained indicating their enslavement. Catlett’s representations of known figures like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Phillis Wheatley illustrate to again quote curator David Breslin “now famous black women’s labor—women who should be celebrated, seen and be made as a model.” These women, both unknown and known exemplify endurance and moral tenacity in the face of these obstacles.
The series of 15 individual linocuts from the “Negro Women” are direct, laconic, and revealing. Catlett projects “her private feelings, memories, and experiences.” She accomplishes this visually through intensity of line, shape, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and abrupt croppings of figures.”
I am a white woman, my grandparents emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century from Italy—everyone brings their own experiences to their engagement with an object of art. What moves me so deeply in Catlett’s prints is the humanity-each figure is portrayed with grace, dignity, you cannot help but be empathetic and more deeply aware of individual lives of the women Catlett portrays. For me, the abrupt cropping of the figure, dramatic contrasts, the expressiveness of the line, offer me a unique viewpoint of the women, of slavery, the impact of racism—especially for the unknown women—she honors them in their anonymity.
Let’s shift and look at some of her works in sculpture. Let’s begin with a figure she transposes from the linocut print to the medium of wood and bronze—Phillis Wheatley. The piece from 1973, the sculpture is comprised of Wheatley’s face, neck and upper chest. She wears a bonnet and arms are folded, the right index finger presses into her cheek, similar to the portrayal in the linocut print. In the sculpture, the portrait of Wheatley is somewhat idealized. Catlett “perfects features that many women of West African heritage, Wheatley birthplace, share. Catlett shaped the figure’s eyes to look like those found on many West African figures—she employs the medium bronze, a material often used in West African sculpture. The only clues we are provided it is the poet Wheatley is the bonnet and the title of the work. There is nothing to connect this figure with a particular individual. What Catlett suggests is an idealized image of black womanhood. This is emblematic in other sculpture works.
While Catlett’s sculptures also focus on the theme of the black woman, they are more classical and harmonious in form. In the work “Tired,” (1946, terra cotta) we see a woman seated on a stump, she is barefoot and her hands are folded on her lap—she looks away from us with a somber expression. “The seated woman in Tired has been working in the fields. Her mask-like face resembles the faces of black women, but her form suggests the simplified shapes of early Greek classical sculpture, there is an emphasis on mass and simplified volume and Catlett’s ability to create monumentality—the simplified forms surfaces a sense of nobility; and yet what we see in the face and body of the woman is an intense feeling along with a universal reference to her black beauty. Across her face, her expression is painful—it reveals that she is not just physically tired, but mentally tired, maybe even spiritually tired. It lures you the viewer to want to know more about this woman, this unknown woman and her life.
In the sculpture “Mother and Child” a terra cotta work from 1965. Through simplified, rounded forms combined with stylized naturalism we are drawn into the quiet embrace of a mother and child, The young child sits on his mother’s lap, his face pressed into her chest. The mother’s face and arms hold tightly her beloved child—it is a “quiet monument to motherhood as experienced by many women across cultures.” This is what Catlett accomplishes so beautifully in her works—expresses dignified women of great strength, physicality, beauty—the artist identifies with these women and “considered herself one of the fortunate.” –Catlett never loses touch of her heritage. She searched “for means to improve through her art the lives of those “lives are not their own.”
Thank you for listening! Resources for this episode and there were many are listed on my website at beyondthepaint.net. On Friday, February 25, from 1-2 I will be presenting a talk focused on female printmakers highlighting works and practice of Elizabeth Catlett and other women artists from the collection at the New Britain of American Art. There is a link in the podcast show notes to learn more. You can participate both online or on ground at the museum. I would love to have you join me. Thank you!