Frank Bowling’s forthcoming major retrospective at Tate Britain has been a long time coming. So long in fact, visitors to it will be able to ‘experience’ what Tate describes as ‘the entirety of Bowling’s 60-year career’. As ‘one of Britain’s most visionary painters’ who ‘went on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and RB Kitaj and who ‘became the first Black artist nominated as a Royal Academician’, Bowling has finally been recognised by the upper echelons of Britain’s art establishment. Like Rasheed Araeen’s retrospective in 2017-18, organised by the Van Abbemuseum, Eindoven before touring to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (as well as MAMCO, Geneva and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow) that charted Araeen’s 60-year career (Interview AM413), Bowling’s retrospective characterises recent institutional attempts at slowly inserting black artists into British art history. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these exhibitions. Both Bowling and Araeen are in their 80s. Furthermore, these shows also mark a break from posthumous recognition bestowed on artists such as Ronald Moody, Aubrey Williams, Anwar Jalal Shemza and Donald Rodney. Accompanying the display of substantial bodies of work spanning several decades are equally substantial monographs on Bowling and Araeen respectively, which include essays by a coterie of curators, critics and art historians. These exhibitions and monographs reflect the museum sector’s continuing attempts to diversify the canon. But is academia’s instrumental contribution to these exhibitions evidence of a move towards expansive and pluralised notions of art history? In any number of retrospective exhibitions staged in Britain over the past few years, including those on Hannah Höch, Eva Hesse, Thomas Ruff, Käthe Kollwitz and more recently Joan Jonas, Anni Albers and Franz West, academics often play key roles, be it as curators, writers or advisors. Often testament to their sustained and prolonged academic inquiry, it follows that these artists figure prominently in course offerings on modern and contemporary art. Given that postwar black artists have been largely excised from dominant art history narratives, is the academy suitably equipped to follow the museum sector in diversifying its curriculum or does its role in historical revisionism mask prevailing racial and cultural hierarchies within art history? This article considers the racial and cultural politics of academe in Britain today. It argues that while feminist-based theories, for example, have played an instrumental role in challenging notions of the canon, conversely post-colonial discourse in its many forms, though equally important, remain largely marginalised if non-existent across course offerings of many art history departments in Britain. Concepts of difference and pluralism are more widely reflected in the 21stcentury Britain not least by universities eager to project themselves as tolerant and inclusive environments. However, from their curricula to employment practices, academe remains largely impervious and resistant to change. Is this a consequence of an unspoken white privilege which continues to pervade and dominate the field of art history?
In 2000, as part of a presentation for my MA in History of Art, I explored the politics of black artists in British art. Ruminating on why Bowling had and continued to be frozen out of mainstream narratives of British art, I showed Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman, 1968. From Bowling’s now widely acclaimed map paintings series. The paintings represented an amalgamation of ideas pertaining to abstraction and representation, culture and identity, as well as being a witty homage to the revered US painter Barnett Newman. Comprising shimmering green and red sections, intersected by a luminous yellow crevice, reminiscent of Newman’s ‘zip’ affect, a faint but discernible white outline of the map of Guyana, Bowling’s country of birth, reinforced the interplay between representation and abstraction. This confluence of narratives and entry points to Bowling’s work were, so I thought, sufficient to spark and sustain a productive discussion in an art history context. However, at the end of my presentation, and possibly as a means of igniting a discussion amongst the student group, an art history lecturer ventured the opinion that Britain was awash with painters working in studios waiting to be discovered. Although a fleeting, if not flippant comment, that would not find its way into print, the lecturer’s observation did represent for me, a certain hostility within art history teaching, towards asserting that the art world is a racially structured space. This personal experience took place within what could be considered a relatively liberal and progressive art history department. Nevertheless, it embodied in microcosm, the formidable challenges and obstacles within art history. For the record, in 2000, at the age of 65, Bowling was not ‘waiting to be discovered’. His exemplary practice and the high regard in which he was held was reflected in many important exhibitions of Bowling in the UK and the US, which belied his systematic exclusion for the mainstream art world. In the intervening years, Bowling’s stock has risen significantly within the museum arena. However, art history teaches us nothing if despite a plethora of awards, exhibitions and critical attention we are offered only a selective view of history. Tate’s foregrounding of Bowling’s time working alongside Hockney and RB Kitaj is a case in point. Scouring through Tate: A History from 1998 by Frances Spalding there is not one mention of Bowling. Following Lubaina Himid being heralded as the oldest practitioner to win the coveted Turner Prize, the BBC glibly commented that ‘Himid made her name in the 1980s as one of the leaders of the British black arts movement – both painting and curating exhibitions of similarly overlooked artists’. Where Bowling is now seamlessly positioned as part of post war British art, Himid’s recognition was framed by a casual acknowledgement about ‘similarly overlooked artists’. These seemingly different forms of historical recovery nullify rather than address the incalculable damage systematic art world exclusions have had and continue to have on individual practitioners and wider narratives of art history.
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Excerpt from 'Decolonising the Curriculum' Art Monthly May 2019 No.426