“The art world was just closed to black artists, period. White people would look at you with so much hate, you’d wonder, ‘Are they looking behind me?’” – Howardina Pindell
The opening credits of director Lerone D. Wilson’s 2007 documentary Colored Frames immediately lay out the film’s visually compelling approach. Names and titles of the filmmaking crew scroll against screen-filling backdrops of the paintings whose African American creators are the subject of Frames. As a piano-driven score plays, the camera holds and lets the viewer spend time with each piece of art before switching to the next image, and the effect is hypnotic.
TAFA, artist. Courtesy Colored Frames/Boondoggle Films.
Wilson’s basic framework is conventional. He films artists and art experts speaking to the camera, and supplements their spoken words with cutaways to the art itself. What distinguishes his film from so many art documentaries is that he cuts to the art even as his subjects are speaking, comes back to the speaker, smoothly cuts back to the art – back and forth, back and forth. There’s a seamlessness and thoughtfulness to the editing that pushes the tack beyond perfunctory documentary filmmaking. It gracefully underscores the symbiotic relationship between the art and black life (and dreams), whether the work is abstract and formally challenging, or more conventionally representational. Emotional and critical weight comes from what the speakers reveal of their lives and career trajectories for the camera.
Michael Singletary. artist. Courtesy Colored Frames/ Boondoggle Films
The viewer is given succinct history lessons on the racism of the 20th century American art world as well as the larger social and political canvases whose bigoted attitudes were mirrored in arts institutions. Ed Clark shares an anecdote about how his very fair-skinned father showed up to work at a steel mill and found himself standing in the line for prospective white workers. After going to stand with his fellow black workers instead, he was told by a supervisor, “N*gger, you just lost half your salary. We pay n*ggers half what we pay white men.” Ghanaian artist TAFA and Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu outline how they were racialized once they moved to America, moved from the position of centrality in the countries and cultures of their births, to marginality in the U.S. John Ashford and Marva Huston recall the demoralizing attitudes that greeted their efforts to include black bodies in their work at art school. But the film also captures the exuberance of Clark and Michael Singletary as they discuss how going to Europe (Clark on the G.I. Bill) reconfigured their notions of art and possibility, with Singletary also making many salient points about the effect that jazz, with its embedded political critiques and gestures of resistance, had on visual artists.
Howardena Pindell, artist. Courtesy Colored Frames / Boondoggle Films.
What’s astonishing is how much information is given to the viewer without the film ever drifting into dryness. History, insights on individual arts practices, the interwoven relationships between cultural production and race and business – some of it familiar information, some of it less well known – is all doled out in ways accessible to the layperson without being dumbed down.
Ann Tanksley, artist. Courtesy Colored Frames/Boondoggle Films.
All art courtesy Colored Frames/Boondoggle Films. Top image by Gustave Blache III.
Previously on Art Doc of the Week:
Art Doc of the Week
-
Art Doc of the Week | Los Punks: We Are All We Have
The award-winning doc looks at Los Angeles’ 40-year-old punk scene.
Photo: Angela Boatwright
-
Art Doc of the Week | McQueen and I
The late fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s life was as unconventional as his iconic shows.
Photo: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
-
Art Doc of the Week | Who Is Poly Styrene?
The late British-Somali punk icon was vulnerable in her feminist art.
Image Courtesy the Artist Estate
-
Art Doc of the Week | Eva Hesse
The new documentary on the on the late visual artist is both informative and soulful.
Image Courtesy the Filmmaker
-
Art Doc of the Week | Packed in a Trunk
Edith Lake Wilkinson’s great niece investigates why the painter was institutionalized for seemingly no reason.
Photo: Wolfe Video
-
Art Doc of the Week | The Kate Bush Story
The 2014 BBC documentary on the reclusive pop star lets her high-profile fans swoon all over her.
Photo: Peter Mazel / Sunshine
-
Art Doc of the Week | Nikki Giovanni and Muhammad Ali in Conversation
The ionic poet interviews and is charmed by the sports legend for Soul talk show.
Photo: Getty Images
-
Art Doc of the Week | They Will Have to Kill Us First
Malian musicians use their music to stand up to Islamic fundamentalists.
Photo: BBC Worldwide
-
Art Doc of the Week | Step Up and Be Vocal
The 2001 film looks at the role punk played and plays in shaping some queer and feminist identities.
Photo: PansyDivision.com
-
Art Doc of the Week | Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
The first ever documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe makes the case for his art and legacy while showing his warts and all.
Photo: J. Paul Getty Trust / LACMA / Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
-
Art Doc of the Week | Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under A Groove
Director Yvonne Smith traces funk from its doo-wop origins to its role as a building-block of hip-hop.
Photo: GeorgeClinton.com
-
Art Doc of the Week | Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
An OG political protest singer has much to teach us today.
Photo: Reuters
-
Art Doc of the Week | The Post Impressionists: Munch
Edvard Munch was a poster boy for the idea of the artist as brilliant, immeasurably tortured soul.
-
Art Doc of the Week | Detroit, Vogue
Director Mollie Mills’s short doc on Detroit’s current ball culture is high on visual impact, skimpy on substance.
Photo: Vogue, Detroit
-
Art Doc of the Week | Colored Frames
The paintings highlighted in Lerone D. Wilson’s film are pulled into deep conversation with the complex realities of black life.Photo: Colored Frames
-
Art Doc of the Week | Spirits of Rebellion
Filmmaker Zeinabu Irene Davis’ documentary on filmmakers of the LA Rebellion is timely and illuminating.
Photo: Spirits of Rebellion / Julie Dash
-
Art Doc of the Week | Five
The 1971 documentary gives an overview of five African American visual artists as the bloody ‘60s turn into the hopeful ‘70s.
Photo: 110 St Harlem Blues, by Romare Bearden, courtesy DC Moore Gallery
-
Art Doc of the Week | Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus
This 1972 documentary filmed one year after the photographer’s suicide is intimate and revealing.
Top Photo: Roz Kelly / Getty Images
-
Art Doc of the Week | Dorothea Lange: An American Odyssey
The iconic photographer’s images of 20th century Depression-era America speak to current battles around class, race, immigration, and poverty.
Photo: Dorothea Lange
-
Art Doc of the Week | Out and Bad: London’s LGBT Dancehall Scene
The struggles and joys of forging queer identity within dancehall culture.
Photo: Dazed/Bernard Miller
-
Art Doc of the Week | And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead
Director Billy Woodberry’s poetic take on the life and work of beat poet Bob Kaufman.
Photo: Billy Woodberry
-
Art Doc of the Week | The Sound of Redemption
Director N.C. Heikin turns saxophonist Frank Morgan’s life into one of 2015’s best documentaries.
-
Art Doc of the Week | It Came from Kuchar
The Bronx-raised Kuchar twins helped pioneer American underground film.
Photo: Indie Pix
-
Art Doc of the Week | Tamara de Lempicka
The visionary artist, an OG Material Girl, is still struggling to get art world respect.
Photo: http://www.delempicka.org/
-
Art Doc of the Week | Jaco
A documentary on the life and music of Jaco Pastorius also probes link between mental illness and creativity.
Photo: JacoPastorius.com
-
Art Doc of the Week | Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue
A new documentary on the late rock icon digs beneath the lore to find a complex woman and artist.
Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images
-
Art Doc of the Week | The Many Faces of Billie Holiday
Lady Day was much more than her blues, as this documentary makes clear.
Photo: The William P. Gottlieb Collection
-
Art Doc of the Week | Anita Sarko
The legendary DJ’s words on art, culture and creativity resonate powerfully in the wake of her recent death.
Photo: Svetlana Samoshina
-
Art Doc of the Week | Antonio Gaudi
Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara lets out his inner fanboy as he pays tribute to his hero, iconic architect Antonio Gaudi.
Photo: The Criterion Collection
-
Art Doc of the Week | Poetry of Resilience
Katja Esson's documentary allows poets to reclaim the depth and possibilities of art.
Photo: Jeremy Sutton Hibbert
