Racism is an Art of Another Colour, Pope.L, 1.01.01
[Circa 1998-2000].
Segment of desiccated sugar cane (19 x 2.5 cm.), with text in Magic Marker by the artist. Signed and dated. The sugar cane segment is dried, but sound and not brittle; magic marker text is clear and legible. A food object by the visual and performance artist William Pope.L (1955-2023), the self-described "friendliest black artist in America". This work was likely produced as part of the artist's eRacism series of performances, which stretched from 1991-2000. Direct, but sometimes confounding statements on race, such as this one, can be found throughout much of the artist's work that involves text. "Pope.L was a visual artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice used binaries, contraries and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create art works in various formats, for example, writing, painting, performance, installation, video and sculpture. Building upon his long history of enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances and interventions in public spaces, Pope.L applied some of the same social, formal and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race and community. The goals for his work were several: joy, money and uncertainty— not necessarily in that order." (Mitchell-Innes & Nash). Pope.L passed away December 23rd, 2024. Provenance: Roger Conover, former Executive Editor of MIT Press, publisher of William Pope.L, Friendliest Black Artist in America. A professor of theater and rhetoric at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, William Pope is an African-American artist whose installations and performances challenge stereotypes about black male identity. He is known for his "Crawl" projects, in which he crawls through city streets including ones in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Budapest, Hungary. Many of these projects were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, but funding from that entity terminated in 1996 when Pope walked the streets of Harlem wearing a 14-foot-long cardboard phallic projection.
He stirred controversy in late 2001-2002 with his traveling show "William Pope.L:eRacism," organized by the Maine College of Art in Portland. It is the first large-scale exhibition of work by this artist to gain attention since the 1996 walk, but application for NEA funds was denied. However, the Andy Warhol foundation did support the project with 50,000 dollars. Of the NEA denial, the artist says: "Whether they intended it or not, it's a good thing to raise these issues, and I hope it gets people looking at the image of cultures we have as a nation."
Source: ARTnews, February 2002, "NEA Back in the Spotlight," by Barbara Pollack
Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Me., a survey of work by the maverick American artist William Pope.L has opened, despite a thumbs-down on funds from the uptight National Endowment for the Arts. (2002)
Price: $4,000.00