Director's foreword / William M. Griswold -- Introduction / Key Jo Lee -- "To decode the full spectrum": Jack Whitten's Rho I / Christina Sharpe -- An approach to Lorna Simpson's Cure/Heal / Key Jo Lee -- "Spit-bite" notes in conversation with Ellen Gallagher's Bouffant Pride: an introduction / Robin Coste Lewis -- A gust of grace: Simone Leigh's Las Meninas / Erica Moiah James.
Summary:
'Perceptual Drift' offers a new interpretive model drawing on four key works of Black art in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection. In its chapters, leading Black scholars from multiple disciplines deploy materialist approaches to challenge the limits of canonic art history, rooted as it is in social and racial inequities. The opening essay by Key Jo Lee introduces the concept of "perceptual drift": a means of exploring the matter of Blackness, or Blackness as matter in art and scholarship. Christina Sharpe examines Rho I (1977) by Jack Whitten; Lee explores Lorna Simpson's Cure/Heal (1992); Robin Coste Lewis analyzes Ellen Gallagher's Bouffant Pride (2003); and Erica Moiah James considers Simone Leigh's Las Meninas (2019). This approach seeks to transform how art history is written, introduce readers to complex objects and theoretical frameworks, illuminate meanings and untold histories, and simultaneously celebrate and open new entry points into Black art.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.