Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Norton Museum of Art's RAW: In Retrospect exhibition.

Over the last few days I have been exploring Norton Museum of Art's Recognition of Women in Art: In Retrospect exhibition and the included works of Jenny Saville and Marío Berrío included therein. Today I turn to the works of Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

Njideka, according to one source, "burst onto the art scene in 2010 with her large-scale mixed media works that mix figurative painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and collage. Her layered compositions of interiors combine her LA surroundings with images from her birth country Nigeria and recall the complexity of contemporary experience."

The Crosby works on show at the In Retrospect exhibition were Rebranding My Love (2011), The Beautyfull Ones, Series #1b (2014), and Super Blue Omo (2016).

Rebranding My Love was the earliest of the three paintings on display and shows a male lying diagonally across a bed with a black female perched partially on his back. The outline of the male's body is painted in white while the upper portion of the arm and back is decorated with a variety of images. The visible parts of the female's body are, likewise ,decorated with images. The bed is covered with a paneled coverlet, each panel inlaid with an image. The coverlet has a dominant yellow coloring furthest away from the viewer and striking blues and browns closer in. There are prominent parts in the female's hair. The background is a jarring orange with varying gradations of intensity as you move from right to left.

The artist's husband is white and I see her saying here that she can provide a foundation of her culture for him to lay on, and she can wrap him in her cultural norms and practices, but there will always be a part of him that will remain "untouched." 

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Re-branding My Love, 2011

The Beautyfull Ones portray Nigerian youths, some of whom are Crosby's own family members. Series #1b is a portrait of her sister at about 10 years of age, "filtered through Diego Velázquez's portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos."  I have included a copy of the Prince's portrait for comparison purposes.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, 
The Beautyfull Ones, Series #1b, 2014

Diego Velazquez, Prince Baltasar Carlos

When compared, the opulence of the Prince's regalia is replaced by a patchwork of photographs. The Crosby work includes an "intricate layering of xerox transfer, paint, pastel and colored pencil, creating a matrix of interlocking planes" (christies.com).

The artist talks about "flipping the script" of the Prince's painting. The color scheme in the Prince's portrait is dark with lighter grey tones along the arms. The color scheme in her sister's portrait is reversed. The darkness comes with the arms while the attire is grey-white.

Artchive describes Super Blue Omo as a genre painting associated with the Postcolonial art movement. "The composition is rich with layers, not only in its physical appearance but also in its cultural and historical implications, inviting a deep and reflective engagement from its audience."

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Super Blue Omo, 2016

The title of the painting supposedly hearkens back to a detergent that was widely advertised and sold in the artist's homeland during her childhood. The image on the TV is in some way related.

A light blue color permeates the artwork and is contrasted by the deep blue square on the back wall. As is Crosby's practice, the painting is suffused with images from a variety of sources emplaced on almost every available surface.

The TV is angled to allow viewing from the sofa but the subject is herself angled away from the TV and staring into the distance. The tea/coffee setting is for two but there is only one person present. The angle of the table to the sofa is suggestive of someone pushing that table back in order to leave the scene and the subject could be looking at whatever that person is doing.

A very well-aligned piece.