Meleko Mokgosi at the Fowler Museum
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp talks about Bread, Butter, and Power on KCRW's Art Talk
Department of Art Alumnus Meleko Mokgosi’s large-scale episodic painting cycle Bread, Butter, and Power forms the newest chapter in his ongoing series Democratic Intuition, which seeks to explore ideas about the many ways that democratic concepts influence our lives, loves, and relationships on macro- and micro-levels. This twenty-panel installation interrogates the theme of feminism in the context of southern Africa, and considers the consequences of dividing labor practices by gender. Mokgosi describes himself as a history painter, a term not used by many contemporary artists. Hunter Drohojowska discusses the exhibition on KCRW's Art Talk.
"History painting in the traditional overview of Western art brings to mind canvases that can take up the entire wall of a museum like Jacques Louis David’s idealized view of Napoleon crowning himself emperor of France from 1807. There aren’t many contemporary artists who ally themselves with this genre.Photography has come to dominate pictorial realism. An exception is Meleko Mokgosi whose 20-panel installation from his ongoing series Democratic Intuition is bringing a new audience to UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Organized by Fowler curator Erica Jones, it is the artist’s first solo museum show in Los Angeles.
Three walls of the large gallery are lined with the connected paintings in the manner of a frieze. Though not narrative in a linear fashion, stories are being told with a deep knowledge of recent and past history.
Born in Botswana, educated at Williams College and UCLA, now living in New York, Mokgosi uses the recognizable styles and techniques of pre-modern painting to reflect the lives and aspirations of those living in Southern Africa. This entire installation is conceived as a single entity, chapter five of what will be seven chapters.
If this were simplistic photo-realism, it might generate a shrug of indifference. Mokgosi is blessed with a rare mastery. He executes a storyboard for each picture. Mokgosi then executes the painting directly on raw canvas which means very little latitude for error or alteration. Even seemingly spontaneous strokes of paint from a squeegee to suggest foliage or bed linens are premeditated and controlled."— Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Apr. 5, 2018
This post is an excerpt, read the full article on the KCRW website.
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