“I spent a couple of years in Egypt and was influenced by the narrative form of Egyptian art, by 3,000 years of a ‘non-white’ art tradition, and by living in a culture that is strictly ‘non-white’ . I think that excited me about some other things, some of the ideas about race and culture in our own country; I wanted to say something about it.”
—Robert Colescott
‘Sex and race, those are my raw materials’, stated landmark American painter Robert Colescott in 1998, ‘I can’t seem to get unhooked from those issues’.Indeed, Colescott’s career, spanning over six decades from the 1960s up until his death in 2009, is characterised by an unashamed interaction and confrontation with taboo issues of gender and racial stereotypes. Born to a mother and father who, although mixed-race, were considered White-passing, Colescott struggled with his identity as an African American boy, as he grew up amidst Jim Crow Laws and growing Civil Rights unrest.
The present work tackles the titular topic of miscegenation: denoting sexual and / or reproductive relationships between partners of different ethnicities. Now a derogatory term often used by the White Supremacist movement, it is employed by Colescott to depict a circus-flyer style advert for a ‘half girl half ape’ named Princess Urana. Using this once-frequent racist stereotype, Colescott creates a racialised double entendre that criticises the fear and disgust surrounding interracial couples that was perpetuated throughout the middle decades of the 20th century. In doing so he adopts the role of caricaturist by equating mixed-race children, like himself, to a bestial abnormality in a ‘lighthearted’ cartoon style.
Painted in Colescott’s usual bold, bright tones and featuring his typically crude depictions of women, Miscegenation is a wonderful example of the core foundations of the artist’s oeuvre. Whilst at a glance simply humorous satire, Colescott’s works provoke outrage and shock once his true message has been understood and absorbed. His robust and unapologetic approach to racial criticism has ensured his legacy stands as one which defined what it meant to be an African American; he never shied away from the difficulties faced by Black people, instead reclaiming the vitriolic hate, and repurposing it as his own form of protest.
Colescott’s work is included in a number of major collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
