We landed the cover of INDYweek, thanks to a thoughtful and nuanced review by Chris Vitiello.
The cover image is a detail of Motley’s irresistable 1961 oil painting, “Hot Rhythm”. The play on words is fun, too; a few smartphones around here auto-correct the artist’s name to heavy metal rock band Mötley Crue.
We always appreciate Vitiello’s bright eyes on our exhibitions.
“Instead of telling the story of an artist’s development,” Vitiello writes, “the show presents Motley as a major American Expressionist painter.” He goes on to point out how this exhibition, which originated at the Nasher Museum, seeks to restore Motley to the annals of art history. “In this, it answers a big question: Why isn’t Archibald Motley better known?” Vitiello writes. “How come museum gift shops stock Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden calendars but not Motley ones? His Jazz Age scenes of raucous nightclubs are Harlem Renaissance slideshow standards, but his name remains outside the mainstream that Lawrence and Bearden inhabit. While the other painters are wonderful stylists, Motley is a full-blown Expressionist.”
“After its Nasher debut, Archibald Motley continues on to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York,” Vitiello writes. “After that, Motley will likely be known as a great American Expressionist whose critical vision reveals more about race in the 20th century than almost any other artist of his time. Maybe he’ll finally get that kitchen-wall calendar after all.”
We also enjoyed how Vitiello considered the Motley exhibition alongside N.C. State’s Gregg Museum’s presentation of Phyllis Galembo’s large-format photographs of West African ceremonial and tribal costuming.
IMAGE: Cover of INDYweek, February 12, 2014. Archibald J. Motley Jr., Hot Rhythm, 1961. Oil on canvas, 40 x 48.375 inches (101.6 x 122.9 cm). Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne. Image courtesy of the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.