A striking example of Theaster Gates’ “tar paintings,” Creamy Rich Sky, Asphalt Horizon Roll, 2014, employs richly evocative materials in a quiet composition. First exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans as part of Prospect.3: Notes for Now, a citywide contemporary art exhibition, this work is divided into three horizontal registers. Each with their own luster and texture, the monochrome expanse is nuanced by its robust use of media: wood, rubber, tar and metal. Typically found in the context of roof construction, these materials are familiar to Gates, who learned to handle tar and rubber while working for his father, a longtime roofer. As Gates has explained, “Working with my dad was essentially my MFA... Could I reflect on roofing and through roofing channel all of my sculptural ambition and all of my painterly ambition?”i Creamy Rich Sky, Asphalt Horizon Roll achieves both sculptural relief and painterly dynamism, demonstrating Gates’ expert wielding of tar with the guidance of generational knowledge.
“My dad was a roofer, construction guy, he owned small businesses, and at 80, he was ready to retire and his tar kettle was my inheritance... by elevating the material and my dad's skill, could we start to think about tar just like clay, in a new way, shaping it differently, helping us to imagine what was possible?”
—Theaster GatesTar has a potent material history, with layered historical and socioeconomic implications. In addition to its association with manual labor such as roofing, tar also evokes broader projects of urban development, which are integral to Gates’ artistic practice. In his home city of Chicago, Gates has spearheaded initiatives such as the Rebuild Foundation, which transforms abandoned sites on Chicago’s South Side into community centers, archives of Black art and housing for artists. Ubiquitous in city landscapes, the use of tar in Creamy Rich Sky, Asphalt Horizon Roll links the work to Gates’s multifaceted engagement with the built environment.
Tar also holds racial connotations: in the mid-19th century, the phrase "tar heel” was used as a racist epithet in pro-slavery discourse and minstrel humor. Slave owners would use tar to violently punish enslaved people; as Frederick Douglass stated in his autobiography, “the slaves became as fearful of tar as of the lash.”ii In his tar paintings, Theaster Gates harnesses these fraught evocations, letting the medium articulate its own complex history.
Ad Reinhardt, Ultimate Painting, 1963. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Viriginia Dwan, 2021.100.1, Artwork: © 2024 Estate of Ad Reinhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. The subtly modulated blackness of Creamy Rich Sky, Asphalt Horizon Roll encourages comparison to the monochromatic work of Ad Reinhardt, who famously created a series of Black Paintings that appear monotonous, yet upon closer inspection reveal depth of color. However, Gates and Reinhardt are diametrically opposed when it comes to their philosophies of abstraction. While Reinhardt sought to preserve the “purity” of abstraction with his Black Paintings, distilling his works to their essence as paint on canvas, Theaster Gates is insistent upon selecting materials that resonate far beyond their surface. Tar and rubber are more than mediums, representing shared familial memories of labor, craft and knowledge, and acting as stoic reminders of the legacies of racism. While both Reinhardt and Gates are interested in probing the complexities of the color black, Gates pushes further, invested in the texture and political dimensions of Blackness.
“...at what point does the use of the trowel for spreading tar become an artistic mark, and when does this waterproof rubber material torch down stop being the material that keeps water out and become a canvas instead? Is it not the relationship between what a roof needs and what a painting needs that defines where I imagine marks come from?”
—Theaster GatesiSadie Dingfelder, “Why Theaster Gates took an ax to his own painting at the NGA,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2017, online.
iiFrederick Douglass, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” Documenting the American South, Beginnings to 1920, 1999, online.
Condition Report
Description
View our Conditions of Sale.
Provenance
White Cube, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2016Exhibited
New Orleans, Prospect.3, October 25, 2014–January 25, 2015
Literature
Michael Anthony Farley, "Outside Looking In: P.3," Bmore Art, November 17, 2024, online
Rebecca Lee Reynolds, "Reviews: Prospect.3: The “Other” Biennial," Burnaway, n.d., online (illustrated)
18
Creamy Rich Sky, Asphalt Horizon Roll
wood, rubber, tar and metal
72 3/4 x 97 1/2 x 5 3/4 in. (184.8 x 247.7 x 14.6 cm)
Executed in 2014.
Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000
Avery Semjen
Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com
New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art
New York Auction 25 September 2024