I was on my way to one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s major exhibitions when something unexpected stopped me in my tracks: John Wilson’s ‘Self-Portrait’ (2002). This haunting, sanded pastel and paint work is part of the revealing exhibition Bearing Witness to Humanity: The Art of John Wilson.
Wilson had lived for years in Boston, a city that has never developed an artistic identity as strong as that of New York or a number of other major American cities. Wilson was a painter, public sculptor, printmaker, teacher, children’s book illustrator and activist. He was well-known and respected among fellow black artists, yet virtually invisible in the mainstream white art world, to the extent that his work is rarely included in surveys of modern and contemporary black artists working in the United States. This much-needed exhibition – from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has the largest collection of his art with 90 works – should give him the visibility he has long deserved.
Wilson’s parents, who immigrated to the US from British Guiana (now Guyana), encouraged him to study art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. When he realized that black people were not represented in the museum’s collection, he devoted himself to ‘witnessing’ [their] humanity.” This realization anticipates that of internationally recognized black contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall, who told Griselda Murray Brown about the Financial timesin 2018: “It’s less about changing the narrative than about participating, being part of it.”
After graduating from Tufts University (affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts), he received the James William Paige Traveling Fellowship in 1947. This allowed him to go to Paris, where he studied with the French artist Fernand Léger. Wilson was drawn to Léger because of his socialist and humanist beliefs and his commitment to celebrating the dignity of workers. These beliefs would grow stronger for Wilson over the years, setting him apart from the American avant-garde’s growing commitment to art for art’s sake, a position from which many black artists understandably felt alienated, especially at a time when the civil rights movement was beginning to develop.
In the summer of 1949, after returning from Europe, Wilson taught at Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (an acronym for Worker’s Children’s Camp) in New Jersey, where he met Elizabeth Catlett and Paul Robeson. The following year he visited Mexico on a grant from the John Hay Whitney Foundation, where he remained until 1956, studying mural painting in Mexico City and connecting with David Alfaro Siqueiros. His classmates included Catlett and Charles White, who would later teach and influence the art of Kerry James Marshall.
Two things should be clear from Wilson’s biography. He, along with White, Catlett and their colleagues, were where the action took place and, like them, his story is about being a black artist determined to ‘be part of the story’, especially in terms of what it was like to live in the US in the 20th century. In this regard, Wilson is both important as an individual artist and essential to understanding American history and art. In fact, an institution should mount an exhibit highlighting the artists, writers, and others who taught at the interracial Camp Wo-Chi-Ca—including Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, and the dancer Pearl Primus.
Wilson portrayed the spectrum of the black experience, making visible the sense of deep isolation, fear and anxiety that accompanied oppression and marginalization in the US, as well as pride, family and community. His lithograph “Streetcar Scene” (1945) shows a Black Boston Navy Yard worker in uniform sitting on the streetcar, surrounded by mostly white women, all of whom ignore him. He looks at the viewer, his hands folded over his lunch box, dignified yet reserved, and very aware that he is the only black passenger. He seems to know in this situation that he has to prove that he is not threatening – his uniform and button down confirm that he is a paid, productive member of society – and not interacting with the other passengers.
Among the more than a hundred works in the exhibition is a charcoal drawing by Martin Luther King Jr. The face is both idealized and tired, while the torso is schematic. The horizontal and vertical lines separating the head and torso can be read as a sign of King’s martyrdom and as the crosshairs of the assassin’s gun. Nearby is an impressive two-metre high bronze model of King’s Head, modeled in 1982 and cast in 2021.
Also on display are pages from Wilson’s sketchbooks, including works from Paris and Mexico City, which show him absorbing lessons from Léger and the Mexican muralists. I see these pieces as integral to his commitment to portraying the daily lives of black people in the US – their aspirations and fears. Anyone would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Wilson’s synthesis of empathy and artistic ambition. In the “Self-portrait” from 2002 and the lithograph “City Child (1965), Wilson, inspired by the novel by Ralph Ellison Invisible man (1952), addresses the invisibility that people of color experience in this country. In the prologue, Ellison writes, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” In a country where the president demonizes immigrants and people of color, Wilson’s work reminds us that beauty, art, and politics do not have to be divisive, and that the right to be seen should never be defined by others.
Bearing Witness to Humanity: The Art of John Wilson continues through February 8 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan). The exhibition was curated by Jennifer Farrell, Leslie King Hammond, Patrick Murphy and Edward Saywell.
