OK, I want to read a poem for Robert Colescott, who is here
and who is a friend of mine.
And I had the honor of writing a poem for when
he did the Venice Biennale.
He was the American representative at the Venice
Biennale in Venice, Italy.
And so I wrote this poem, which went in his catalog.
And so I just wanted to introduce
Bob Colescott, great painter.
[APPLAUSE]
I don't get a chance to see him too much.
So I will read this poem for him.
It's called "Robert Colescott's One-Two Punch
at the Venice Biennale".
"1.
Before anything else at the first crack of day,
light prowling through your studio during the hush hours
after midnight.
In the dry air surrounding the desert where you live,
a stone's throw outside of Tucson, obelisks
of cactus standing tall, guarding the entrance
to your sanctuary.
The first thing you do when you approach the white canvas,
stretched, four corner square before you
on a huge white wall, is paint the surface bright red
after thinking about it for days.
The tug and pull of your brush strokes over the surface
creates swirling shapes of music that
move in and out of themselves, magical shapes that
are mysterious backdrops for paradoxes
about to become known.
Roiling at the point of birth, inside the womb
of your canvas, red shapes that seem to burst and boil
over there, seams hot as volcanic lava flows.
Boiling and roiling-- red underneath its own skin
of flames, red as blood pulsating
through veins underneath skin.
At the point of creation, the muse
lifting the idea, an embryo that will evolve into something
within a canvas, a womb filled with blood, painted bright red.
Your adrenaline flowing now, Colescott,
flowing onto the surface through your refiguring brain,
birthing the idea, layer after layer of colors swirling
through the snapshot you have taken
inside your head of what you're about to do here.
Whatever comes to you, like improvised music,
will find its way up there, stroked
as images upon your sea of red primer
where what the viewer first sees will provoke humor then
pleasure before fast becoming a problem.
Shapes, emerging as color fields take on form,
break through the surface of red primer
that is a womb filled with blood, a letter from yourself
to yourself, a conversation if you will, here
and there, bodies lumped down grotesquely on the faces,
primeval in their distortion, blotchy with Earth tones that
shock the senses, pulled in and appalled by what
they think they see here.
At first glance, lumpy body shapes of brown,
and black, and white, touched with hints of pink and yellow,
look balmy as caricatures.
Demons cut loose from a bad dream swirl,
point guns at the river viewer from your canvases, Colescott.
A doctor holding a hypodermic needle
stands next to a priest holding a severed black head,
two gorillas stabbing another, two gorillas stabbing another,
a skeleton with a green head leers off to the side,
red chains around a wrist in a painting invaded
with orange crabs, a tale of gumbo spilling out
of a black woman's mouth, a pig in the corner,
a cup of coffee perched on her nose.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame in blackface
moves inside a circle holding a blonde next
to a white something, cannibalizing a black man's
body over a black football player,
"the death of the old mulatta", chains and guns
in Saudi Arabia.
Jesus-- Jesus, contemplating the world for lunch
as a golden hamburger.
Black slaves chained to tree trunks, blooming cotton candy
leaves that hold maps of a new world and Europe.
Look like red lip monkeys or gorillas
in front of a pile of bananas and corn,
while somewhere else a silver Choctaw nickel
holds a half-breed Negro smoking a cigar,
whimsy as gorillas and mulattos do the tango
a rogue white bilingual cop speaking out
both sides of his mouth castigates
a Mexican and black man drunk on sleep
amongst skulls, rats, and garbage.
Cactuses growing from ghettos of rock and sand.
Broken down dreams, is that how they choose to see us,
Colescott, as a man behind a crumbling wall of red brick
threatens, firepower in his hand, a raised black nightstick
about to back up the badge on his chest, spitting invectives
and realism?
3.
And what are we to make of these besotted misbehaving
figures, lumpy shapes of clay posing as humans,
their actions mirroring what we see and do each and every day?
Are we to go--
are we to go beyond the tough aesthetics
rendered here, gloating idiots bamboozling the senses?
What we think and know of ourselves cloned here.
Pretenses stamped into our heads as cartoons.
We grow ourselves into caricatures
of popular culture you turn on their heads through parody,
skewed standards of beauty pierced
by your cryptic social commentary, myth, allegory
imploded.
Symbols of religion, religion, turned upside down
on their head, heads.
Crudeness, biting satire, or messages you
send to yourself mapping fears.
You hold frustration and anger communicated through madcap.
Sophisticated literary allusions rendered lush and lavish colors
through painted narratives.
You reveal the mongrel history, the interconnectedness
between races.
Power, manipulated when standards are control.
Beauty arbitrarily stolen from the eyes of the beholder,
and tell us Africa is a source of life.
Black artists here in America, the avant-garde cutting edge.
And it's a subversive agenda you are working here,
Colescott, the art of irony subfusing everything you do,
exaggerated manners, distortions,
reversal of images brought down to us through history.
Silly white invention laid down on us as truth.
And I see music in your paintings, Colescott-- rhythm
and mastery, your own way of viewing truth.
Magic as surprise, things revealed
once we have gone inside and look
beyond the archetypical images.
You paint deep down inside content,
what has evolved over time--
the view through white eyes and black eyes too.
There up on your canvases, the world
revealed in glorious colors, narratives
that allow us to walk right through an open door
to enter the freedom of your expression.
In astonishment, we hear the music
of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis jumping
right out of your paintings.
White, brown, black, red faces tinged with pink and yellow.
Races transmogrified through reversals of history--
blonde and black lumpy figures of clay, posing as humans."
[APPLAUSE]