Lorraine O'Grady | |
|---|---|
.jpg) O'Grady in 2014 | |
| Born | (1934-09-21)September 21, 1934 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | December 13, 2024(2024-12-13) (aged 90) New York City, U.S. |
| Other names | Mlle Bourgeoise Noire |
| Known for | Criticism,Conceptual Art,Performance Art |
| Website | lorraineogrady |
Lorraine O'Grady (September 21, 1934 – December 13, 2024) was an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working inconceptual art andperformance art that integratesphoto and video installation, she explored the cultural construction of identity – particularly that of Black female subjectivity – as shaped by the experience ofdiaspora andhybridity. O'Grady studied atWellesley College and theUniversity of Iowa Writers' Workshop before becoming an artist at the age of 45.[1] Regarding the purpose of art, O'Grady said in 2016: "I think art's first goal is to remind us that we are human, whateverthat is. I suppose the politics in my art could be to remind us that we areall human."[2]
O'Grady was born inBoston, Massachusetts, on September 21, 1934, to Jamaican parents, Edwin and Lena O'Grady, who helped establish St. Cyprian's, the first West Indian Episcopal church in Boston.[2][3] Drawn to the form and aesthetics of the "high church" of nearby St. John's ofRoxbury Crossing, O'Grady recalled: "I was permanently formed by the aesthetics of that experience, of the rituals, which are a more stately and elegant version ofRoman Catholicism. I didbelieve until my mid-twenties, until my sister [Devonia] died, then I stopped believing."[2]
In 1955, O'Grady graduated fromWellesley College, where she majored ineconomics and minored inSpanish literature.[3][4] While at Wellesley, she was one of three Black women in her class; she toldThe New York Times that this trio of girls was "totally invisible". She married her first husband, Robert Jones, with whom she had a son, while she was in school.[3] She was later honored with a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award in 2017.[5] After graduating from Wellesley, O'Grady worked in theLabor andState Departments as an intelligence analyst.[3][1]
She pursued a master's degree in fiction from theUniversity of Iowa Writers' Workshop before becoming an artist in 1980.[6][7] While in Iowa, she met her second husband, Chappelle Freeman Jr. The two moved to Chicago in 1967, consequently forcing her to drop out of the MFA program.[3] While in Chicago, O’Grady operated a translation agency, specializing in seven languages. Her clients includedPlayboy and theEncyclopedia Britannica.[3][1]
O’Grady then moved to New York in 1973, becoming a music critic forRolling Stone and theVillage Voice.[3]
O'Grady died at her home in New York City on December 13, 2024, at the age of 90.[3][8][9]
In 1977, O’Grady began her “Cutting Out the New York Times” works: she collaged together clipped phrases from the newspaper; the rearranged words took on different meanings and formed miniature poems.[3]
In the early 1980s, O'Grady created thepersona ofMlle Bourgeoise Noire, who invaded art openings wearing a gown and a cape made of 180 pairs of white gloves,[10] first giving away flowers, then beating herself with a white studded whip, which she often referred to as, "the whip-that-made-the-plantations-move".[3][10] While doing this, she would often shout in protest poems railing against asegregatedart world that excluded black individuals from the world of mainstream art, and which she perceived as not looking beyond a small circle of friends. Her first performance as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire was in 1980 at theLinda Goode Bryant's Just Above Midtown gallery inTribeca.[11]
O'Grady also credited Mlle Bourgeoise Noire for curating exhibitions, such asThe Black and White Show in 1983 atKenkeleba House, a black-run gallery situated in Manhattan'sEast Village.[12] The concept for this event was to show the work of 30 black artists alongside that of 30 white artists.[12] Beginning in 1991, she added photo installations to her conceptually based work.[6]
In 1983, she choreographed a final participatory performance as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire calledArt Is..., which consisted of a parade float she entered in the annualAfrican American Day Parade in Harlem. It has become known as "O'Grady's most immediately successful piece".[13] The float was shepherded up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard by "O'Grady [in character as Mlle Bourgeoise Noire] and a troupe of 15 African-American and Latino performers, dressed all in white, [who] walked around the float carrying empty gold picture frames."[14] Art critic Jillian Steinhauer describedArt Is... as a float that consisted of an "empty nine-by-fifteen foot-gold-wooden wooden picture frame… O’Grady had [also] hired 15 young Black performers who walked and danced alongside it, carrying smaller golden frames that they held up before members of the crowd.”[15] The performance not only encouraged onlookers – primarily people of color – to consider themselves art, but also drew attention to racism in the artworld.[14] Published for the first time more than three decades later,[16] O'Grady's photographs from the performance continue to celebrate Blackness, and to claim avant-garde art as a Black medium.[17]
From 2015 to 2016,Art Is... was featured at theStudio Museum in Harlem, where assistant curator Amanda Hunt asserted that O’Grady's performance "affirmed the readiness of Harlem's residents to see themselves as works of art."[16] In January 2020, four of O'Grady'sArt Is... photographs were featured inArtpace’s exhibit titledVisibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace.[18] As a past summer 2007 International Artist-in-Residence at Artpace,[19] O'Grady's series was included in a show celebrating female-identifying artists.[20][21][22] The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art argued that the event made an impact for the Black community by describing how there were people everywhere shouting things such as "That's right. That's what art is. We're the art!" and "Frame me, make me art!"[23]
O'Grady worked on a performance in which she focused on Knights in the year 2020, with "O'Grady herself, outfitted in a custom-made, plated-steel suit of armor, poses against a black backdrop with her sword, jousting poles and ornate helmet, which in some images sprouts different varieties of palm trees". TitledAnnouncement of New Persona(Performances to Come!), the performance had its debut at the Brooklyn Museum.[24]
O'Grady was profiled at the age of 88 in an article inThe New Yorker magazine in September 2022.[25]
O'Grady first exhibited at the age of 45, after successful careers among others as a government intelligence analyst, literary and commercial translator, and rock critic.[26] Her strongly feminist work has been widely exhibited, particularly inNew York City and Europe. O'Grady's earlyMlle Bourgeoise Noire performance was given new recognition when it was made an entry-point to the landmark exhibitWACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,[27] the first mainstream museum show ofthis groundbreaking art movement. Her practice, seemingly located at and defining the cusp betweenmodernism and a "not-quite-post-modernist" present, has been the subject of steadily increasing interest since it received a two-article cover feature in the May 2009 issue ofArtforum magazine. In December 2009, it was given a one-person exhibit in the U.S.'s most importantcontemporary art fair,Art Basel Miami Beach. Subsequently, O'Grady was one of 55 artists selected for inclusion in the 2010Whitney Biennial.[28] Her work has since featured in many seminal exhibitions, including:This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s;Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art,[29] andEn Mas': Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean.
She was featured inWe Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–85, an exhibition organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, andRujeko Hockley, former Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art,Brooklyn Museum.[30] The exhibit was shown at the Brooklyn Museum April 21–September 17, 2017, at theCalifornia African American Museum October 13, 2017 – January 14, 2018, and atThe Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston June 27–September 30, 2018. It explores Black feminist art where the ideas come first, and then through multiple mediums including, video, sculpture, performance, photography and painting she decided which will portray her expression best. The work of each artist is placed in the historical context of cultural movements during 1965-85.[31] She engaged frequently in dialogue with contemporary artists, such asJuliana Huxtable.[32]
A retrospective of the artist's work,Lorraine O'Grady: Both/And, was on view at theBrooklyn Museum from March 5, 2021, to July 18, 2021.[33][34] For this exhibition, she collaborated on an anthology of her writings with the art historian and critic Aruna D'Souza.[35][36] Following its exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum,Both/And was on display at theDavis Museum at Wellesley College, on the campus of O'Grady's alma mater, from February 8 to June 2, 2024.[37][38]
O'Grady's collected writings were published byDuke University Press in 2020 and were edited with Aruna D'Souza.[39] In addition to the articles O'Grady wrote forArtforum magazine andArt Lies, her essay "Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity" has been anthologized numerous times, most recently inAmelia Jones (ed.),The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (2nd edition,Routledge, 2010). Reflecting on the great care apparent in the artist's writing, D'Souza observes: "O'Grady's words are a gift, a call to action, and a vision of a world as it could be."[1]
An early review by O'Grady of the nightBob Marley and the Wailers opened forBruce Springsteen at Max's Upstairs inManhattan, July 18, 1973, was rejected at the time by herVillage Voice editor, who said: "It's too soon for these two."[1] The review was first published nearly 40 years later inMax's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll, 2010, a photo book with texts by O'Grady,Lou Reed,Lenny Kaye, andDanny Fields, among others, and was recently reprinted inWriting In Space.[40][1]
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"Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity"[41] is an essay originally published in 1992 in the bookNew Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action. The first part of the essay was published inAfterimage 20 (Summer 1992). Widely referenced in scholarly works, "Olympia's Maid" is a cultural critique of therepresentation of Black female bodies, and the reclamation of the body as a site of black femalesubjectivity. On the importance of self-expression, O'Grady wrote that "to name ourselves rather than be named we must first see ourselves".[42]
O'Grady uses the paintingOlympia byÉdouard Manet as an example of theEurocentric depiction of Black womanhood. The painting features a nude prostitute, modeled byVictorine Meurent, with her black maidservant, modeled byLaure, in the background. "The image of the black female constructed in this period reflected everything the white female was not."[43] The West, she writes, has constructed the not-white woman as unseen.
The metaphors of both the prostitute and feminist psychoanalysis' thefemale eunuch as a way of describing Olympia’s maid’s positionality as a Black woman are used by O'Grady. The white body of Olympia is the only object ofmale gaze, and Laure's inclusion is subconsciously critiqued through the reading of the white figure. In a damaging critique of the painting from when it was originally shown, Amedee Cantaloube describes as "a kind of female gorilla, a grotesque rubber figure surrounded by black, a monkey on a bed, completely nude".[44]
"O'Grady specifically refers to a tradition of iconography of black female sexuality that casts black women as simplisticstereotypes, such as the 'Hottentot Venus,' 'Jezebel,' 'mammy,' 'Sapphire,' 'welfare queen,' and more recently 'quota queen' and 'baby mama.'"[45] QuotingPatricia Hill Collins,Janelle Hobson states that these stereotypes are products of the systems of power, meant to control those without white skin privilege and "distort the way black women see themselves and each other".[46] They also create the process of "unmirroring". Wheremirroring in terms of psychology refers to the imitating of one by another, unmirroring refers to the process in which a subjected figure imitates the distorted image of themselves, projected by the authority of the status quo.[46]
O’Grady references African-American artistAdrian Piper's art practice, specifically her performanceFood for the Spirit (1971), as an example of the proper representation of the subjective Black nude, though this is problematic because as of September 2012, Piper has "retired from being black".[47]
Conceptual artistRenée Greene's workSeen (1990) is also mentioned as representation based on Black female subjectivity, except according to O’Grady, the work falls short "because it is addressed more to the other than to the self" O'lGrady discusses the struggle in depicting race, identity and proper representation as a Black female artist, drawing examples from her own artwork: the politics of skin color, hair texture and facial features. In privileging a facial feature that looks a particular way over another or in pairing light and dark skin tones, hierarchies of difference are created. These hierarchies of difference exist because of historical ideologies and they have difficulty breaking down because they are supported by the preconceived importance of the whiteness in the West. O'Grady states:
"to win back that position for the African-American female will require balancing in mental solution a subversion of two objects which may appear specifically distinct: on one hand, phallocentric theory; and on the other, the lived realities of Western imperialist history"[41]
It comes from the understanding of the structures put in place by these two theories and an overall restructuring of these theories for progress to be made. Social change cannot happen, she writes, without the reorientation of the systems that exist to subjugate Black people.
O'Grady picks outpsychoanalysis as the "linchpin of Western (male) [sic] cultural theory."[41] She quotesJacqueline Rose's description of psychoanalysis and race: "To say that psychoanalysis does not, or cannot, refer to non-European cultures, is to constitute those cultures in total 'otherness' or 'difference'; to say, or to try to demonstrate, that it can, is to constitute them as the 'same.'"[41]
"The creation of a blackfeminist aesthetic must challenge dominant culture's discourse of the black body [as] grotesque and articulate a black liberation discourse on the black body [as] beautiful."[45] European and European-American society has historically viewed Blackness as ugly. It is up to those working withinBlack feminist theory and critique to reinvent a new positionality. This, O'Grady argues, comes at a time when subjectivity itself has been problematized by ideology. Ideology is a patriarchal practice and theory is what substantiates it; theories of the political and social as well as the ideological/intellectual aided in the creation of the devalued Black figure. Out of ideology, she writes, came the notion of binary logic:either/or-ism.
As a standard, the Western mode of thinking, as proposed by many feminists, is "either:or-ism". It describes two modes of thought or plans of action that can be reached, but never can the two be reached together. "The binary logic of the west takes on an added dimension when confronted with the presence of a black woman."[48] Behind the binary logic of science in the 19th century, literature and art situates the representations of Black woman at both the site and sight of violation. Either/or logic fragments that which it is applied to. Riffing off this logical ideology, O'Grady makes mention of a contrasting Eastern mode of thinking: "both/and" logic. It describes dialogical thinking and living, implying the functioning of both options within a scenario, and suggests the abandonment of the either/or hierarchy.[49]
In 1995–96, O'Grady held the Bunting Fellowship in Visual Art atHarvard University'sRadcliffe Institute for Independent Study. There, she became immersed in the internet during its early years.[citation needed][50]
In 1997–98, she was a Senior Fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics,New School University.[51] In 2009, she received the "Anonymous Was A Woman" award,[52] aUnited States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship in Visual Art in 2011,[53] the College Art Association's Distinguished Feminist Award in 2014, and aCreative Capital Award in Visual Art in 2015.
In October 2017, she received the Alumnae Achievement Award, the highest honor given toWellesley College alumnae.[54]
In 2024, O'Grady was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.[55]
O'Grady's work is in the permanent collections of theMuseum of Modern Art, New York;[56] theArt Institute of Chicago, Illinois;[57] theBrooklyn Museum, New York;[58] theDavis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley, Massachusetts;[5] theFogg Museum at Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts;[59] theLos Angeles County Museum of Art, California; theRose Art Museum,Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts;[60] theStudio Museum in Harlem, New York;[61] theWadsworth Atheneum,Hartford, Connecticut;[62] theWalker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota;[63] theWorcester Art Museum, Massachusetts,[64] andPérez Art Museum Miami.[65]
In 2016, O'Grady was the subject of musicianAnohni's video "Marrow" from theHopelessness album.[66]
O'Grady'sArt is…, performed in 1983, was referenced in the 2020 presidential election forJoe Biden. In an article by Alex Greenberger, he argues that the artist was "a key inspiration for a video put out by Biden and Kamala Harris… [in which] in the video, [there were] shots of people of various races holding empty picture frames."[67]
Her name appears in the lyrics of theLe Tigre song "Hot Topic".[68]
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