What a viewer sees within an Oliver Jackson creation depends on the proximity of one’s eyes as they gaze upon the canvas.
And merely giving attention to the center at eye level and walking away – the way many tend to consume visual art – is a disservice to the art.
Jackson’s said his Sharpeville Series was inspired by photographs he saw of the Sharpeville massacre, where South Africans were brutally shot down for rising up against the system of apartheid in 1960.
“Seeing is everything in Oliver’s work,” Robert L. Pincus, art critic and writer, said. “All he asks of you is to look and look carefully.”
Jackson makes it impossible to look away and within his composition style is the capacity to change the viewing habits of his observers forever.
Take his “Sharpeville Series I” painting, for example. Mainly composed of squares sketched on top of muted neutral tones, the work is most muted and most neutral in the place on the canvas where viewers typically focus in on as their starting vantage point. At the top right of the painting is a small group of black faces with somber expressions. They peer down at a trail of red painted at a 45-degree angle near the bottom left of the painting. Eyes will instinctively glance back and forth between the two focal points. The relationship between the two figures, and the space between the two, conjures up as many questions as emotions while attempting to interpret Jackson’s motives in creating the work.
“If I put this mark next to that mark, it’s intentional,” Jackson told Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of modern art at the National Gallery of Art, during a gallery talk with the esteemed artist and sculptor in conjunction with the 2019 exhibition “Oliver Lee Jackson: Recent Paintings.”
“I hope that it has the effect that it resonates – that it shifts you. Then it belongs to you. I’m just an agent in many ways. But I’m an agent with intention. I have purposes, but my purposes are not your experience. I can’t control that part of it, and I don’t intend to – that’s not important to me.”
“Sharpeville Series I” is among the 12 paintings currently hanging in galleries 249 and 257 of the Saint Louis Art Museum as part of “Oliver Lee Jackson.” The exhibition opened last week and will be on display through February 20, 2022.
“Oliver Lee Jackson” showcases work that spans five decades and represents the wide-ranging scope and depth with respect to the artist’s creative range.
The exhibition is curated by Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art, and Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, with Molly Moog, a research assistant. “Oliver Lee Jackson” is free and open to the public.
Jackson’s said his Sharpeville Series was inspired by photographs he saw of the Sharpeville massacre, where South Africans were brutally shot down for rising up against the system of apartheid in 1960.
He said seeing the horrific effects of institutional racism, racial terror and colonization Black people have experienced outside of his own African American lens gave him the creative “aha moment” that inspired the series.
“I was removed enough that I could use those images without getting entangled in 400 years of personal anger – and see it more clearly,” he said. “It was a kind of cosmic poetry.”
His connection with the Diaspora extended far deeper than the pain and exploitation experienced through the residuals of colonization and broader than what he offers with the Sharpeville Series.
“[Africa gave me] a sensibility that spoke without the dichotomies made in Western art,” he said. “They say, ‘You can’t paint marble. It should be white.’ Well, that’s academic. The marble doesn’t care. When I went to Africa, you could paint it, use cloth, put beads on it – as long as it moved the person. The whole thing was to make it right.”
Africa’s power and influence and her art are a common thread within the creative world. Among countless devotees was the great Pablo Picasso – who spoke of his transformational experience while visiting France’s Trocadero Museum of Ethnology, now called the Musée de l’Homme, in 1907.
“…To examine all those objects that people had created with a sacred and magical purpose, to serve as intermediaries between them and the unknown and hostile forces that surrounded them, thereby trying to overcome their fears, giving them color and shape,” Picasso said, according to French writer Max Jacob. “…I understood what the painting really meant. It is not an aesthetic process. It is a form of magic that stands between us and the hostile universe, a means of taking power, imposing a form on our terrors as well as our wishes. The day I understood that, I found my way.”
Jackson’s approach to art was also forever changed when he saw the beauty of “the makers” of Africa – and how they applied the continent’s infinite natural resources to express its boundless cultural wealth.
“It freed me up to use my sensibility in terms of the world,” Jackson said. “To combine it in a way where the feelings that I had were reflected in the sensuality of the piece – so that my feelings were clear, precise and rich.”
“Oliver Lee Jackson,” will be on view in Gallery 249 and Gallery 257 of the Saint Louis Art Museum through Feb. 20, 2022. For hours and additional information, visit www.slam.org.
