When: closing March 10, 2019
Last week, I saw a lot of things at the National Gallery, this week it was back and forth to the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum. The first show I saw was one on silhouettes, an art form I'd given very little thought before now.
One of the difficulties facing the National Portrait Gallery is that so much of their collection consists of images of white men. That's not their fault, white men were the people who held high office, owned the land and had the money to commission portraits of themselves for most of this country's history. However, I've noticed that the NPG has tried very hard to add portraits that more completely reflect America as it is today, and America as it has always been - a nation of many different kinds of people. This show of silhouettes might strike you as monochromatic, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Don't be fooled by the apparently simplicity of silhouettes; there's a lot more going on in these representation than you'd think at first glance. The silhouette contained in "Flora: Bill of Sale" is one of the earliest known representations of an enslaved person. Martha Ann Honeywell, a silhouette artist was not only a woman, she was also born with no hands or forearms and only one foot. Nonetheless, she curt silhouettes, wrote verse and sculpted waxworks. If she were alive today, she'd surely be featured in the Smithsonian's exhibit of works by artists with disabilities. Moses Williams, an enslaved young person, was not only the subject of a silhouette by Charles Willson Peale, he was also quite gifted at the art of silhouette himself.
But it's not only historic pieces on display in this show. Four modern-day artists working with silhouettes are featured also. Kara Walker, whose work I've seen before at American Art, has a room full of depictions of violence towards African-Americans in silhouette. Kristi Malakoff has constructed a silhouette maypole, a sort of intersection of silhouette and sculpture. I loved the little birds flying above the action below. Camille Utterback invites the visitor to create a silhouette by moving around her room; it seems odd at first but is actually kind of fun.
My favorite was Kumi Yamashita's room. She folds paper and projects a light onto it to make a silhouette shadow on the wall. It's hard to describe but really impressive. Reading the wall notes, I was reminded of her incredible work from the Outwin competition - a portrait of her niece made of one continuous piece of thread wound around innumerable brads on a piece of wood. Just stunning.
Verdict: Very interesting combination of old and new silhouettes - well worth a visit.
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