With The Sword Swallower, 2017, Hank Willis Thomas offers a contemporary interpretation of Henri Matisse’s The Sword Swallower (L’avaleur de sabres), 1947, from the famed artist book Jazz. Akin to Matisse, who drew on the improvisational nature of jazz to depict images from circus and theater, Willis Thomas responds to the fanfare and performance of sport. The present work trades paper collage for colorful football kits, intermittently emblazoned with Premier League and Championship teams’ logos, stitched in an impressive, quilt-like work.
In referencing Matisse’s work, The Sword Swallower considers ideas of primitivism in Modern art and 20th century European views on African art. Willis Thomas has further explained: “I’m very much looking at Matisse and Stuart Davis as both European and American painters who were seen as very early and influential figures in abstract and modern art. Both were interested in popular culture, but also became really interested in abstraction around the time Europe and the United States started to encounter African art in a kind of commodifiable, collectible, way.”i
The present work responds to the legacies of Modernism through a postcolonial lens, reasserting lines of influence from African to European art. In addition, through the form of the fabric quilt the work draws on the tradition of Asafo flags made by the Fante community in Ghana. These flags, which reference both British heraldry and local mythology, embody the same ideas of global exchange, storytelling and demonstrations of power that are explored in Willis Thomas’ The Sword Swallower.
The Sword Swallower also responds to the spectacle of sport and its players. Thomas’ work is grounded by the recognition that sports have provided a major platform for the advancements of underrepresented and disenfranchised groups. Willis Thomas underscores, “It’s the spectacle, but sports is also a highly political landscape… When you think about Billie Jean King and even Michael Jordan, Jim Brown, and Muhammad Ali, it was really through their undeniable beauty, integrity, and creativity that the public was forced to engage with them as human beings.”ii
Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal...
i Hank Willis Thomas, quoted in Naomi Rea, “Hank Willis Thomas on His New York, Charlottesville and Modernism’s Debt to African Art,” Artnet News, October 3, 2017, online
ii Hank Willis Thomas, quoted in Antwaun Sargent, “Deeper Truths: A Conversation with Hank Willis Thomas,” Sculpture, November–December 2019, vol. 36, no. 6, p. 27
Provenance
Ben Brown Fine Arts, London Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
London, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hank Willis Thomas: The Beautiful Game, October 5–November 24, 2017
Literature
Naomi Rea, “Hank Willis Thomas on His New Work, Charlottesville, and Modernism’s Debt to African Art,” Artnet News, October 3, 2017, online (illustrated) George Vecsey, “Artist Sews Together Sports and Geopolitics,” The New York Times, October 4, 2017, online (studio view illustrated) Barney Trimble, “Hank Willis Thomas’ Politics of Sport,” Art Aesthetics Magazine, November 9, 2017, online Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal..., exh. cat., Portland Art Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Cincinnati Art Museum, 2019–2020, p. 217 (illustrated, p. 216) Antwaun Sargent, “Deeper Truths: A Conversation with Hank Willis Thomas,” Sculpture, November/December 2019, vol. 36, no. 6, p. 27