Fred Wilson : The psychology of black glass in “Speak of Me as I Am”

Fred Wilson is a contemporary American artist of Caribbean-descent whose work has primarily consisted of curatorial installations using the museum archive as source and medium. Raised in the Bronx, New York during the 1960s and 1970s, Wilson and his family integrated into an all white community. When asked about his early practice during an interview with Kathleen Goncharov, Wilson responds, “Growing up as an outsider in the 1960s and 1970s…I was always aware of being an observer of the environment around me rather than a participant.”(1)  Wilson’s childhood set a precedent for how Wilson approaches an exhibition. Rather than voicing a definitive opinion Wilson mines through museum archives and engages the community around the museum of his interest in order to understand his surroundings. In 2005 Wilson shifted from being an outsider to insider as his work became personally interested in the psychological representation of blackness. He pulls from his childhood experience as well as his current surroundings. While in Venice Wilson uses a combination of material and literary source in his 2005 Venice Biennale exhibition Speak of Me as I Am. In this paper I will focus on Wilson’s use of black glass in creating Turbulence II and Chandelier Mori  and how the combination of black glass and the play Othello becomes a psychological lens for communal and personal questioning.

Integrating into an all white community in the 1960s and 1970s meant that you were also experiencing the effects of the civil rights movement which stirred both black and white populations to rally around racial issues. Brown v. Board of Education marked the settlement of a landmark United States Supreme Court case that ruled for the integration of public schools. Having witnessed the effects of integration Wilson talks about life as an outsider in schools where he was the only black child: “This was the 1960s, and it was clear that the white community didn’t want us there. There were no major outwards problems once we moved in, but the bias was very clear. When I went to grade school, I was the only black child; I was rather misunderstood by teachers and I had no friends.”1 Despite being ostracized by classmates and teachers Wilson embraced his outsider perspective which aided him as he went on to work within several notable museums in New York City. This life experience of being an outsider in terms of race and an insider in terms of museums set a context for Wilson’s practice shifting from being observant to being reflective. Who is observing and who is reflective? The ‘who’ in this case is Wilson who is using his personal experience as a departure for posing questions of how race is represented.

Speak of Me as I Am is a series of works inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello thought to be written in 1603. The decision to use Othello can be understood as a continuation of Wilson’s practice of using a site for exploring the representation of race. Before, Wilson’s site was a museum’s permanent collection where he pulled from to create a curatorial installation. For Speak of Me as I Am Wilson decides to use a cultural text as site to pull from in realizing Chandelier Mori and Turbulence II. Othello takes place in Venice where Wilson was to show the exhibition. Othello is both a text that points specifically to Venice as location but also represents an understanding of race for many Americans. It is a story that globalizes through popularity the concept of blackness in a white space. Wilson’s choice of text suggests a connection between race representation during the Renaissance and contemporary culture.

Fig. 1 Longhi, Pietro. The Messenger. 1751, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice, Italy.ARTstor. 10 Dec. 2017, http://www.artstor.org

Before the creation of Wilson’s exhibition, he sought to understand the representation of blackness in Venice by delving into the history of black representation in Venetian artwork. Paul H.D. Kaplan, Professor of Art at Purchase College, contextualizes the show with a historical account of Africans portrayed in a series of artworks in Venice circa 1600-1800. He explains that over a hundred works presenting “black Africans in a range of roles, stretching from holy monarchs to executioners”2 could be found in Venetian churches, public buildings, and museums. This suggests that blackness was relatively common at the time. Wilson’s interest is in the representation of the individualized black African which Kaplan explains is less common but could be found in “three paintings in which black domestic servants serve as the focal point. Pictures by the Longhi (father and son, respectively) represent a dashing black messenger entering a sedate patrician salon, and a charming page in orientalizing dress who has the canvas all to himself.”3 It is not known when the idea of black as a race was officially introduced and it can be argued that it has been a present force since before Shakespeare’s Othello. Regardless it is clear that a black Venetian, although uncommon, was able to have an individual role in Venetian society (fig. 1; fig. 2). In contrast the black person in America was seen as part of a racial problem and was socially stript of a personal identity. Othello represents the black individual as well as the idea of blackness. Othello turns from being an individual in love with a woman to a force to be reckoned with when Iago and Desdemona’s father abstract Othello’s race into a threat.  Both the representation of black citizens in seventeenth-nineteenth century paintings and literature present access points for Wilson to position himself within. As a person who is used to being the only black person in the room Wilson is met with a few historical examples that connect to his personal experience.

Fig. 2 Longhi, Alessandro. The Page. Later 18th century, Private Collection, Turin, Italy. ARTstor. 10 Dec. 2017, http://www.artstor.org

Wilson’s takeaway from this history is a question of what life was like for a black Venetian. Wilson decided to use his own experience of being an outsider to inform him of how life would be for a black Venetian. Wilson explains, “The fact is that there is no voice–no written documents, biographies, or autobiographies of blacks living in Venice during the Renaissance survive. So there’s a gap where no traditional historian can go. But as an artist, I can try to imagine what their lives were like. With my personal background, their experience of being outsiders is one I can comprehend.”4 This is a shift from his reliance on communities, whom he was used to speaking with in order to contextualize decisions and choices in juxtaposing artifacts and historical objects. Wilson’s 1993 exhibition Mining the Museum is a great example of his need for reaching beyond the institution. Wilson says, “I talked with the various community groups, with the museum people, everybody in the museum, everybody from the cleaning staff to the chairman of the board. I tried to understand all the positions, not so much to collaborate with them, but just to get a sense of where I was. So I wasn’t working in a vacuum. I was trying to anticipate, perhaps unconsciously, how people would respond, be they black or white.”5 In Mining the Museum Wilson aimed to reveal the relationship between the African-American community of Baltimore with the archives of the Maryland Historical Society. Wilson strategically juxtaposed objects from the Maryland Historical Society’s permanent collection. Through museum archives and talking with surrounding communities Wilson was able to create juxtapositions that teased out the public’s psychological relationship with artifacts and archives. One of Wilson’s most impactful works in the show was Cabinetmaking, 1820-1960 (fig. 3). In Cabinetmaking Wilson positions a series of antique chairs to face a whipping post, all of which were created around the same time pointing to a historical relationship. The readings of the work were vast. Some read the whipping post as a crucifix while others read the juxtaposition as a confrontation towards display conventions.6  Wilson’s consistent aim in juxtaposing historical objects and artifacts is to reveal a third thought which is to be determined by the audience. This allows the work to only ask questions rather than present a definitive opinion. Wilson states, “If I have two images or objects side by side a third thought is revealed. It is my thought, but it allows the viewer to enter into my thinking a bit, but come up with conclusions for themselves, as well.”7  Wilson adds to this formula, the manipulation of two images or objects creating not only a third thought but a visceral response to his juxtaposition with the use of black glass. The way Wilson works with black glass comes from his personal disposition as an American whose identity has shaped around the representation of blackness. Wilson talks to Richard Klein about his understanding of black as a surface identity when dealing with black glass in his 2006 exhibition Black Like Me : “I’m more interested in this representation from my childhood, a lot of which was experienced unconsciously, because it is the source of a lot of my reference for blackness, without my knowing it. This body of work is kind of an exorcism of these representations that have little to do with who I am, but have had a great deal of impact on my psyche–and I would imagine many people’s psyches, as to who they are.”8

Fig. 3 Wilson, Fred. Cabinetmaking. 1820-1960.Egypt 1992. Selections from the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD.

“Black Like Me…was delayed until 2005 due to both the artist being chosen to represent the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale….” explains Richard Klein, the director of the Aldrich Museum where Wilson’s 2005 exhibition Black Like Me was shown. “This period, however, was a critical time for Wilson, allowing him time to return to the concerns that captured his imagination during his initial residency in 2001 at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State.”9 During Wilson’s residency at Pilchuck Glass School he realized that glass for him was powerful because of its properties “…the fact that it’s always a liquid…It’s meant to be forcefully opulent…so extreme you can’t escape being drawn in.”10 Glass is an interesting medium for Wilson to take up because of its association with the decorative arts. The decorative arts is often stigmatized with possessing beauty but not depth. Wilson engages with black glass specifically because of the physical depth of blackness when he talks of being drawn into the medium. Consider space which appears to be black but is simply void of light. There is depth in that one cannot be sure how deep the black of space goes. Black glass both offers depth in its color and beauty in its reflective quality. The possibilities for going into the depths of color while at the same time being pushed out by its reflective surface gives Wilson a medium whose poetics are made physical. The ideas of blackness are made physical by black glass therefore creating a physical manifestation for the ideas of blackness, but without the literal or figurative body.

For Wilson black glass acts as a surrogate for “the representation of blackness in Western culture.”11 Othello is set in Venice and captures the outsider experience for Wilson’s exhibition. Othello is a moorish lieutenant in Europe who leads a tragic life as his identity is used against him by his unfaithful ensign Iago who attempts at ruining him and succeeds in driving Othello insane.  In Chandelier Mori the chandelier represents grandeur and yet Wilson has the chandelier made after eighteenth-nineteenth century decorative style and rather than being cast in white or clear glass has it made in black glass (fig. 5). In thinking about glass as a representation of blackness the chandelier can be read as an abstract body just out of reach from the viewer. Despite the absence of a figure the chandelier is so immense and with its lifted position suggests a presence. The height of the work suggests that you are witnessing something or someone, perhaps the tragedy of Othello. Although having a high ranking position as lieutenant Othello’s blackness made it easy for Iago to turn Desdemona’s father against him. The positive and negative aspects of Othello’s life is represented by the grandeur and ominous aesthetic of an eighteenth-nineteenth century chandelier made out of black glass.

Fig. 5 Wilson, Fred. Chandelier Mori from Fred Wilson: Speak of Me As I Am. 2003, United States Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennale, The Pace Gallery, Venice, Italy.

Chandelier Mori is much like Wilson’s previous appropriations of historical objects, in this case the chandelier is the historical object. Wilson had the chandelier made out of Murano glass found on the Venetian Island of Murano where glassmakers have created fancy glassware for centuries. Another example of color manipulation can be seen in Wilson’s 1993 Grey Area (fig. 4). Wilson duplicated Nefertiti’s head five times in several shades of gray going from white to black. Black in Chandelier Mori is constant and does not question color in the same way that Grey Area does. Changing the color of Nefertiti points to a history of debate about Nefertiti’s race. Making an otherwise white or clear chandelier to black glass is a shift in the mood the chandelier typically projects. In this case the black glass feels ominous and seductive suggesting ideas of race representation.

Fig. 4 Wilson, Fred. Grey Area from Re-Claiming. 1993. Metro Pictures, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Wilson describes his response to Chandelier Mori and the conflicting emotion he feels the appropriation of a Ca Rezzonico style chandelier made in black glass creates: “The fact that it is not entirely cheerful works well for me. I like the fact that it is beautiful yet not comforting.”12 Klein suggests that Wilson’s use of the glass works “literally hold a mirror up to the viewer, more of a psychological approach than a sociological or anthropological approach.”13 It fills the space so that no matter how you decide to move past the work you feel its presence. The shift in mood is caused by the presence of blackness revealing the physical effect of blackness. This physical phenomenon questions the idea of how black as a race is perceived and felt in personal spaces. Although a body is not present the physical presence of a body is and the darkening of the glass creates a physical effect. By introducing a large body-size chandelier in black glass into a hallway, Wilson limits personal space bringing the viewer closer to the chandelier. This does not support the idea that the race of a person creates the physical effect like Chandelier Mori but rather questions the association of black people with the color and material of blackness.

Fig. 7 Wilson, Fred. Safe House II from Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am. 2003. United States Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennale, The Pace Gallery, Venice, Italy.

Fig. 6 Wilson, Fred. Turbulence II from Fred Wilson: Speak of Me As I Am. 2003. United States Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennale, The Pace Gallery, Venice, Italy.

A room of alternating black and white glass tiles make up Turbulence II suggesting a psychological race relation conversation (fig. 6). The multiple of squares suggests multiple people, multiple points of views, but ultimately a repetition of the same binary colors, black and white. The white tiles are ceramic and the black tiles are glazed. In the middle of the room is another piece Safe House II which has various film clips of Othello and Desdemona (fig. 7).  The plays are on a small television inside a circular structure that looks like a cubby for an individual to find comfort in. Wilson describes the function of Safe House II within Turbulence II: “the tile room, is more of a state of mind than a place. The noise created by the layering of the Othello operas and plays, the writing in the grout, the large ceramic pot with the bed in it, the optic effect of the tile, and all the other aspects of the room, address my uncertainty about world events. The room is both familiar and foreign, institutional yet private.”14 The uncertainty Wilson feels is present in the chessboard pattern of the walls and floor which are all filled with alternating black and white tiles. The space feels like it is waiting for an image to take its place in the same way that static represents void of image. The image never comes but what is present are ideas of black and white, a binary state of mind that is without resolution. The space begins to feel like an institution because of its associations with being a placeholder. A gallery waits to be filled with an artist’s work like a museum is given meaning based on its permanent collection and various exhibitions. The writing in the grout are quotes from Othello suggest specificity lost in generality, the specificity being the individual experience of Othello and the generality being a black and white binary system.

Wilson plays with using glass in Turbulence II and Chandelier Mori to generate a poetic and performative connection with Othello and the general climate of racial representation and dialogue. The poetry is in the reading and understanding of how black glass reflects and consumes. When passing by glass your reflection is passing with you and so the surface of glass is made active. The reflection of the surface causes the glass to appear active in that it appears to never be solid despite facts that it is. For Wilson black glass has “operatic associations”15 suggesting that the medium of glass is experiential like attending an opera where the audience is consumed by sound and visuals of the stage design and performance.

Wilson talks about the restrictive nature of working with a collection: “there is a theme and it becomes finite because of the outside limitations–what’s in the collection.”16 Wilson’s practice had been steadily shifting from the museum context to the commercial gallery. The push and pull of Wilson’s work comes from a shift away from critiquing museums to using museum display techniques as a way to create a poetic reading. A museum limits the artist to their archive whereas the commercial gallery and Wilson’s studio are settings where there is no limit. This puts Wilson in the position to source his own artifacts. This departure from critiquing museums rids Wilson of an institutional site and allows for an exploration of site being cultural text and location. Wilson’s location of Venice led him to choosing Othello as a text-based site to explore the representation of race from the American perspective.

This shift from the museum to commercial gallery played part in having an impact on Wilson’s position as the outsider. Even more so the impact of Wilson’s childhood and profession as museum educator can be felt in the viscous yet solid aesthetic of glass. The reflective of the solid glass and the depth of the active black color express the essence of an insider outsider dichotomy. This split seems related to W.E.B. Du Bois theory of “double consciousness”, that describes an internal conflict of identity that largely affects Americans of African descent. In Wilson’s case the internal conflict is made physical and experiential. The use of black glass in Turbulence II and Chandelier Mori makes this conflict palpable. The use of black glass in place of a black body suggests that the representation of blackness is a psychological phenomenon that relies on physical and spatial contexts. The chandelier hangs high in a hallway creating a relationship between the viewer and the sculpture. The room installation invites the audience to be overwhelmed with audio, color, and repetition of black and white tiles.

Wilson consumes and reflects ideas of race through location, information, and material. Within museums Wilson’s material is the archive and the information he sources is primarily through the museum staff and people from nearby neighborhoods. The location is how Wilson is positioned structurally. For exhibitions Wilson is the artist and this position allows him the same authority as when he worked in museums as staff in terms of education. Wilson’s history of being an established artist and museum educator makes him an insider. Being an outsider creates Wilson’s need to do material research, in the case of  Speak of Me as I Am, historical research. Because Wilson is foreign to Venice he must as an outsider do diligence in researching its history. With the addition of glass, insider and outsider are embedded in its properties. The activity and depth of the material literally points to a convex and concave nature of how the black glass reacts and reflects society. The moving reflection and the fact that one can look into the medium and feel that there is no end within the neverending blackness of the glass material. Although Speak of Me as I Am took place in the United States Pavilion, the space still functioned as an alternative to the museum, a kind of in-between space, not quite a commercial gallery space and not a museum archive. The use of glass in this case was Wilson’s push past his original practice to one where he takes the archive with him and using poetry creates a personal perspective that expands conversations about historical black representation.

Wilson’s work was a critique and thought process of how museum display techniques contextualize the representation of race. He was invited to re-juxtapose museum archives. Wilson revealed that display techniques can convey ideas about race and ethnicity that support a view that certain cultures are inferior or superior. Working with black glass Wilson’s practice turned inward as a practice of how context and medium can express race representation. Wilson continues his interest in display techniques and adds to it the decision to add alterations to artifacts he sources from any collection rather than being limited to one. Altering artifacts using glass and by creating spaces using glass Wilson’s approach turned from a sociological approach to a psychological approach, moving away from the physical archive towards a mental archive relying on his personal experience. For context Wilson still draws information from his surroundings but rather than finding meaning in a museum he finds meaning in literature. In his 2006 exhibition Wilson uses Black Like Me a 1961 novel by John Griffin, a white civil rights activist, to contextualize his exploration of the representation of race through the imagination of white authors and his own childhood experiences. Wilson states that his attraction to the novel was because it was about appearance of blackness: “What I like about the title Black Like Me is that it’s ironic, because Griffin wasn’t a black man, but he was black on the surface. And then there’s the irony of my titling the project Black Like Me–lifting a white man’s title about being black. That’s really important to me, because the work in the exhibition is about representation. If people don’t make the association with the book title, they might think that the representation in this exhibition is about me, but it’s not.”17

Although Wilson still works with appropriating artifacts, they are outside of the museum framework and within the studio framework, allowing Wilson to explore his own psyche. Working outside of the museum framework is necessary for practical reasons. The decorative style of the chandelier used in Chandelier Mori could be found in white or clear glass. Wilson would have had to commission the creation of the chandelier in black glass in order for Chandelier Mori to have an impact. Wilson’s work still refrains from making any definitive points allowing his opinion to be a launching point for viewers to come to their own conclusions. Wilson’s outsider experience as the only black child in the class coupled with his experience as a museum educator forms a context of how his artistic practice has developed. Wilson’s practice of engaging the public shifts to a practice where Wilson engages history through his use of black glass. The use of medium and text as his site of exploration rather than the museum as site moves the conversation to being about the psychology of black representation rather than the sociological approach to questioning how representing blackness functions within the museum archive.

Text Bibliography

Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.

Wilson, Fred, and K. Anthony Appiah. Fred Wilson: A Conversation with K. Anthony Appiah: March 11-April 16, 2006. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2006.

Mdhslibrarydept. “Return of the Whipping Post: Mining the Museum.” Underbelly. October 10, 2013. Accessed November 26, 2017. http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/10/10/return-of-the-whipping-post-mining-the-museum/.

Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.

Endnotes

1. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 20.
2. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 8.
3. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 17.
4. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 23.
5. Wilson, Fred, and K. Anthony Appiah. Fred Wilson: A Conversation with K. Anthony Appiah: March 11-April 16, 2006. (New York: PaceWildenstein, 2006.), 5.
6. Mdhslibrarydept. “Return of the Whipping Post: Mining the Museum.” Underbelly. October 10, 2013. Accessed November 26, 2017. http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/10/10/return-of-the-whipping-post-mining-the-museum/.
7. Wilson, Fred, and K. Anthony Appiah. Fred Wilson: A Conversation with K. Anthony Appiah: March 11-April 16, 2006. (New York: PaceWildenstein, 2006.), 9.
8. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 11-12.
9. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 5.
10. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 17.
11. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 11.
12. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 24.
13. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 18.
14. Wilson, Fred, Kathleen Goncharov, Reiko Tomii, and Kathleen M. Friello. Fred Wilson: Speak of Me as I Am: The United States Pavilion, 50th International Exhibition of Art, the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.), 24.
15. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 17.
16. Wilson, Fred, and K. Anthony Appiah. Fred Wilson: A Conversation with K. Anthony Appiah: March 11-April 16, 2006. (New York: PaceWildenstein, 2006.), 15.
17. Klein, Richard, and Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson, Black like Me: The 2002 Larry Aldrich Award Exhibition, July 10, 2005-January 8, 2006. (Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2006.), 10.