Rashid Johnson Makes Things to Put Things On | "New York Close Up" | Art21

How does an artist contribute his own personal story in the face of prevailing historical narratives? In this film, Rashid Johnson discusses the fluid nature of black identity in America and its escapist tendencies, from the Afrocentric politics of Marcus Garvey to the cosmic philosophy of Sun Ra. Johnson's invented secret society—"The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club"—is a framework through which the artist humorously upends, through repetition and juxtaposition, conventional expectations of historical influence and legacy. Inspired by a story by the artist Lawrence Weiner in which one character says to another that "a table is something to put something on," Johnson creates sculptures of shelf-like structures from materials such as black wax, mirror, tile, and branded wood. Each structure is filled with culturally resonant objects—such as Miles Davis and Ramsey Lewis jazz records, books by comedians Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby, and treatises by scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Debra J. Dickerson—as well as the artist's own photographs and hand-made objects. Featuring works from the exhibitions "The Dead Lecturer" (2008) and "Other Aspects" (2009-10), as well as works-in-progress in the artist's Williamsburg studio.

Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois, USA) lives and works in New York and Brooklyn, New York.

CREDITS | "New York Close Up" Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Cinematography: Andrew David Watson. Key Grip: John Marton. Sound: Nicholas Lindner & Nick Ravich. Associate Producer: Ian Forster. Production Assistant: Paulina V. Ahlstrom, Don Edler & Maren Miller. Design: Open. Artwork: Rashid Johnson. Thanks: Javier Cordero, Alex Ernst & Brian Lewis. An Art21 Workshop Production. © Art21, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.

"New York Close Up" is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support provided by The 1896 Studios & Stages.

For more info: http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup

[New York Close Up]

["Rashid Johnson Makes Things To Put Things On"]

Rashid Johnson--Artist

When I was making the pieces that...that resemble shelves I had just come across this book by Lawrence Wiener called Something to Put Something On.

And one character says to another character, I have something for you.

And the other character says what is it?

The other character says it’s on the table.

And then the first character says, what’s a table?

And he says a table is something to put something on.

And I was really, really interested in this idea of something to put something on, kind of the semiotic of how something exists and why it exists and what we call it.

So I started kind of making something to put something on.

And then the second question for me was, well what do I put on the thing that I made to put something on?

Uh, and then I think from there you start seeing me kind of using the things that were really around me.

Whether they were the books I was reading, the records I was listening to, the things I was applying to my body...

And all those materials began to kind of gel together to...to form what I thought was a, you know my conversation.

I think there’s always been this thing in my work that I’ve always been interested in around the domestic.

And around kind of hijacking things that we’re familiar with and you know essentially kind of occupying them.

And I grew up enveloped in this kind of Afro-centric conversation.

We celebrated Kwanza and my mother wore dashikis and had an afro.

But the thing that I think is most interesting for me is that one day they just weren’t wearing dashikis anymore and there were no more afros, and we weren't celebrating Kwanza anymore.

You know so that...that transition from Afro-centrism and from this kind of interest in kind of applying in African-ness...

Our acquiring an African-ness, to your parents becoming essentially just like middle-class soccer moms and what have you...

Like so that transition and that dichotomy I think is why humor has become so interesting for me around that conversation.

And around those kind of signifying materials.

A lot of the work that I grew up seeing by...by black artists very much depicted a problem.

I wanted to make something that didn’t necessarily speak to a problem.

So I developed a group that I called the New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club.

I think some of the photographs were inspired by like the photographs of James Van Der Zee and Harlem Renaissance.

And so it became this kind of den for this secret society and I started imagining these meetings and this discourse that would be happening...

With these characters in this fictional environment.

I think it’s very much kind of invested in the, like the history of escapism.

I always say black Americans tried to go from the south to the north, then you have say Marcus Garvey and he says let’s go back to Africa.

Then you have say Sun Ra and he says don’t worry about it, we’re going to go to Saturn.

And then you know I think I always talk about a book by Paul Beatty called The White Boy Shuffle where the protagonist suggests that all black people should just kill themselves.

So it's this kind of evolution, of this kind of escapist practice, I think is, for me, very funny..

Aaron McGruder writes a comic strip called Boondocks.

He had this quote where he says: "Why does every black person thinks that they were chased by dogs and sprayed by hoses?"

And I think what he’s trying to get to is that it’s important for you to in a lot of ways live your own history...

And if you are consistently burdened by a bigger history that may have affected your existence but is not your specific story...

Then you’re doing yourself a disservice.

It’s not fully about the predicament of history.

It’s about what you’re able to author yourself and how you’re able to form the future rather than living purely kind of in the past.