Malcolm X: the artists' view - Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts

Art in America, May, 1994 by Ann Wilson Lloyd

There was no polite restraint in Boston artist Dana Chandler's overtly political works. His sculpture Fred Hampton's Door (1974) is a brightly painted, bullet-hole-riddled facsimile of the apartment door of the Black Panther leader who was killed by Chicago police. Chandler's figurative paintings inspired by newspaper photos of racial incidents, The Beast (Cicero, Chicago, Illinois), 1967, and The Beast Revisited (Forsythe, Georgia), 1987, are deliberately brutish, as is his politically and formally hard-edged painting of X'd-out silhouettes symbolizing gang killings, Ten Little Niggers (1982). Ten Little Niggers alone among the works by established artists addressed Malcolm's legacy in a present reality; violence and drug culture are completely at odds with Malcolm's precept of community responsibility as the key to black unity.

One wished that both shows had included more work clearly framing or responding to current social issues. Despite its lofty organizational premise, the national show was no more than a loose assembly of works "about" Malcolm X, while the ICA missed an opportunity to show more polished work by rigidly adhering to the national show's installation-heavy format. Even so, the sense of context contributed by the paintings of Crite, Wilson and Chandler, combined with stimulation of the ICA's public programs, compensated for the touring show's depersonalized handling of a figure we have yet to fully comprehend. (1.) "All politics is local" was a favorite phrase of the late Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, former U.S. representative from Massachusetts and Speaker of the House, and the title of his recent book. Also see "The Ballot or the Bullet," a speech given at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Apr. 3, 1964, by Malcolm X: "The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more."

"Malcolm X: Man, Ideal, Icon" was organized by Kellie Jones for the Walker Art Center, where it debuted Dec. 12, 1992-Apr. 4, 1993. It traveled to the ICA Boston [July 14-Oct. 17, 1993] and the Detroit Institute of Arts [Dec. 5, 1993-Feb. 27, 1994] and will appear at the Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C. [Apr. 1-June 1], the Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta [June 26-Aug. 15], and the Yerba Buena Center for Contemporary Art, San Francisco [Sept. 4-Oct. 15]. It is accompanied by a brochure by Jones and historian Robert Bellinger.