Mario Moore: Several Lifetimes in Portraits for Princeton
Several Lifetimes in Portraits for Princeton
Last September, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University unveiled an exhibition of new portraits by artist Mario Moore titled The Work of Several Lifetimes.
The show featured Moore’s work of etchings, drawings, and several large-scale portraits of Black men and women who hold blue-collar jobs at the university, as cooks, security guards, groundskeepers, equipment managers and custodians. A Detroit native, Moore relocated to New Jersey in 2018 upon receiving a prestigious Hodder Fellowship from Princeton, where he met and befriended the many individuals who are now memorialized in his portraits. As a young Black artist, Moore wanted to celebrate the often unseen work of the university’s many Black workers by creating portraits that highlight their incredible contributions to everyday life at the university.
In 2009, Moore earned a BFA in illustration from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, and an MFA in painting from the Yale School of Art in 2013. But his education in painting began long before his university degrees. It was at the home of his mentor, fellow Detroit artist Richard Lewis, that Moore had his first lessons in oil painting as a teenager, and where he first dreamed of attending Yale’s prestigious art school. “I saw [Lewis’] Yale art degree hanging on the wall, and seeing it I thought for the first time, maybe I could do that too,” Moore remembers. Years later, he would make that dream a reality. Describing Lewis as “the most incredible painter living today that a lot people don’t know about,” Moore still cherishes those early painting lessons, and the many afternoons spent with Lewis studying the works of masters such as Titian and Velázquez. “We would just go crazy over Titian,” Moore laughs.
In his Princeton paintings, Moore draws inspiration from that love and knowledge of art history, as well as the close relationships he developed with each of the sitters. One work from the series, The Center of Creation (Michael), depicts Michael Moore (of no relation), a security guard he met at the university’s art museum. He painted Michael standing at the threshold of an elevator, holding the door open to invite viewers into an imagined gallery space. The overall composition was inspired by Charles Willson Peale’s famous self-portrait The Artist in His Museum, 1822, and features several paintings within the painting, including works by Barkley Hendricks, Charles White and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Moore even included a past work of his own, cleverly inserting himself into this lineage of Black artists. The galleries shown are a real space in the museum used for the display of European paintings; however, Moore has selected new works for the walls, creating a narrative that speaks to his own painting heroes and the often-overlooked history of Black art in America. The Center of Creation is one of several paintings from the series that have been acquired by the museum for their permanent collection.
In a second museum-themed painting, Picturing Protest (Guy), Moore depicts Guy Packwood, another security guard, standing
this time in front of a real exhibit at Princeton from 2018, which featured images of protests from the civil rights, anti-war and feminist rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In this painting, Moore positioned Packwood squarely in front of the entrance, looking out at the viewer with his hands clasped together at his waist. Less of an open invitation, Packwood seems to stand guard over this history, alerting viewers to pay attention and acknowledge the importance of what they are about to see. To the right, Moore has included another portrait within a portrait, this time of Rosa Parks, who famously helped initiate the civil rights movement in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The subject of protests is one that Moore returns to often in his paintings, many of which address the devastating history of police brutality against Black men and women in this country.
In Several Lifetimes, Moore portrays three figures, from left to right, Howard Sutphin, Kaniesha Long and Valeria Sykes, all members of Princeton’s dining hall staff. In the background, the words of novelist Toni Morrison appear in a broken line across the top of the wall, “The Full Meal is the Work of Several Lifetimes.” The quote has a deep meaning for Moore, and comes from a keynote address that Morrison gave at Princeton during a symposium for the Princeton and Slavery Project, a scholarly investigation into the University’s involvement with the institution of slavery. “My remarks today [on Princeton and slavery] are simply an appetizer,” said Morrison during her speech, “The full meal is the work of several lifetimes.” The quote struck a chord with Moore, and perfectly captions the generations of work represented in the paintings’ three figures, as well as the University’s troubled history with slavery. The inclusion of the quote is just one of many thoughtful details in the composition. For instance, the frying pan is purposefully empty, as Moore wished to show Sutphin, Long and Sykes at work, but not serving others. It’s a subtle point, but a powerful one, to demonstrate that while proud of their work, the subject’s identity is not tied to their role as servers. Moore expressed that they are parents, friends and colleagues first and foremost.
In fact, in each of the paintings you will not see any people, students or facility, except for the workers portrayed. This was a deliberate move by Moore to ensure that his subjects were the sole focus of the paintings. His work Clyde Sky High was the first painted of the series and depicts Clyde Huntley, who works in the facilities department at the Lewis Center where Moore was in-residence for his fellowship. The two became friends after striking up a casual conversation about the struggle to find a Black-owned barbershop in suburban New Jersey. For this painting, Moore positioned Huntley in the top left of the canvas, standing behind a glass wall with a bright blue sky visible to the right. “You’re looking at him from above, with his hand on the railing with a sense of ownership,” Moore said, “I wanted to show this indoor and outdoor space, and paint him in a way that no matter where you view him from, you are the one looking up to him.”
Another painting from the Princeton series, Powers Field, a portrait of Hank Towns, an athletic equipment manager, is now part of the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-american Art. After his Hodder Fellowship, Moore was asked to stay on at Princeton to teach an Introduction to Drawing class, which he, like many others, faced the challenges of converting to an online format this past spring. He is represented by the David Klein Gallery in Detroit, and has had a solo show at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, and has shown at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, George N’namdi Center for Contemporary Art and Driscoll Babcock Galleries. His works are also part of public and private collections, which include the Detroit Institute of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.