Exhibition of the week Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk). Until 22 October
“The 1960s was the heroic age of African-american politics,” said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. Even now, issues such as “black identity, black rights and blackness itself”, first raised by the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers, are “as alive as they’ve ever been”. In this sense, Tate Modern’s Soul of a Nation, a new exhibition devoted to African-American art of the era, is a timely endeavour. The show brings together some 150 works created between 1963 and 1983, presenting a “bewildering array” of art, many by radical artists, or groups, with “wildly divergent ideas” about what a “black aesthetic” should be. It takes in everything from abstract painting to poster art to “surreal sculptures”, packing in “enough themes and ideas to power three shows its size”. This “rich, absorbing and thought-provoking” display is “an epic response to an epic subject”, and is “without doubt one of the shows of the year”.
The exhibition begins with the work of the Spiral Group, a collective of artists who came together in 1963 to “add their voice to the fight for civil rights”, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. This section contains some powerful stuff, not least Norman Lewis’s painting America the Beautiful (1960), a “patchwork of flickering whites on a black background” that depicts Klansmen “rampaging through the night”. However, the quality soon dips. A self-portrait by Barkley L. Hendricks literally interprets a review of his work that described him as a “brilliantly endowed” painter, and ends up as a “double entendre from the Sid James book of profundity”. The “nadir” comes with a series of assemblages by Betye Saar, which crassly co-opt Haitian voodoo imagery to negligible effect. Worse, many works here are inspired by the early “mad and murderous” rhetoric of Black Power leader Malcolm X, giving voice to “artistic attitudes that no one ought to support”.
Some of the work on show is “great”, said Matthew Collings in the London Evening Standard. Among the highlights are the abstract canvases of the Guyanaborn British painter Frank Bowling, and the graphic art of Emory Douglas, a Black Panther minister who designed and illustrated the group’s newspaper: in We Shall Survive without a Doubt (1971), a child’s glasses reflect the breakfasts the Panthers provided free for the poor. Some of what’s here, though, feels merely propagandistic and dull. Just because a show’s theme is “worthy”, it does not follow, of course, that everything in it is good. “Nevertheless, the curators ensure there’s no let-up of energy of one kind or another.”
The bestselling historian, novelist and broadcaster Simon Sebag Montefiore picks his seven favourite books. His latest novel, Red Sky at Noon – the third of a trilogy set in 20th century Moscow – is published by Century at £16.99
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
by John Guy, 2016 (Penguin £10.99). A masterwork. After so many biographies of the Virgin Queen that repeat the same old stuff, here is a beautifully written revisionist portrait of the Queen in the high years of her reign, revealing her as vicious, random, capricious, and, above all, lucky.
The Girls by Emma Cline, 2016 (Vintage £7.99). A superb, chilling novel of doomladen adolescence. A girl comes of age around the Manson Family, which she joins as the terrifying slaughter gets closer, getting intimately intertwined with Charles Manson himself and his diabolic assistants…
Deng Xiaoping by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine, 2015 (OUP £22.99). The best biography of the man who, along with Mao, was China’s dominant statesman of the 20th century. He was three times a victim of Mao’s ruthless purging, yet in the 1950s, Xiaoping was shooting so many enemies that even Mao told him to stop. Later, he ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre, but also opened up China to the global economy.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, 2013 (Abacus £9.99). A novel about love, art and life, written with astonishing virtuosity and imagination; even better than The Secret History. This heartbreaking
book is a masterpiece of modern American literature.
Lastly, three superb biographies in Yale’s outstanding English Monarchs series. Cnut the Great by Timothy Bolton, 2017 (£30), is a gripping and revelatory biography of Britain’s Danish conqueror. William the Conqueror by David Bates, 2016 (£30), is the best ever biography of the ruthless Norman bastard – masterly and exciting, but always measured and scholarly. Henry IV by Chris Given-wilson, 2016 (£30), combines excellent scholarship with brilliant storytelling, relishing the detail of bloodspattered drama equal to any episode of Game of Thrones.