Hope in the northward journey
Great Migration of 20th century captured emotively by artist ransome in Opalka exhibit
Between 1910 and 1970s, about six million Black people moved from the South to other parts of the United States, especially the North and Midwest. The main motivations were finding better jobs and escaping Jim Crow laws and widespread racism.
This Great Migration is at the core of the paintings and collages by the artist who now goes by the name of ransome, seen in “Up South” at the Opalka Gallery. It’s beautiful art, and ransome, originally from North Carolina, is a facile and prolific artist. Many of these works are scenes of everyday life, and they are permeated with colorful, flat patterns like bits of wallpaper or floral fabrics.
“Waiting on the Road,” used for the exhibition card, is a loosely representational painting, showing a young man with a suitcase in front of a clapboard house in the country, some firewood on the porch. For the sky, a patterned patch of pink flowers is pasted in, and by the porch there is a torn bit of paper with further flowers.
Collage elements appear throughout the show, and are unapologetically decorative, adding artful warmth. Ransome’s influences suggest Romare Bearden (who also depicted the rural South and the urban North) much more than Jacob Lawrence (with his famed series about the Migration). Unlike both Bearden and Lawrence, who were responding to the reality around them, ransome is depicting the past. It’s not that it isn’t pertinent to him — ransome migrated to the North in the late 1970s — but these new works are about a very 20th century history.
Migrants often jumped from rural settings to deeply urban settings — New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago. The painting “New Arrivals” is simple enough, showing two
young Black kids on a fire escape. We can sense the ramifications, the isolation and bewilderment, above the built environment far below.
Ransome’s works don’t quite feel illustrative, but the thought occurred to me. They avoid that tightly controlled feeling of Norman Rockwell’s best paintings, which wink at you. (You might not expect to read ransome and Rockwell in the same paragraph, but there is a similar intention in showing Americana with succinct optimism.) But there are, it seems, vestiges of an illustrator’s graphic design sensibility in the ever-enchanting colorful backgrounds and the poised compositions.
There is also a hint of social realism throughout, though some will surely note that complications — like hardship, loneliness, or even the Civil Rights Movement itself — have been minimized in the paintings. Another simple truth remains in them: hope.
The promise of opportunity is symbolized in ten portrait-like collages called “Talented Tenth.” This term refers to a century-old idea that one in 10 young Black men would show qualities of leadership and would be expected to use that to better the larger community. The heads here are completely black — no features are visible in front of the floral backgrounds — and each figure is wearing a colorful coat decorated with medals, epaulets, or cords of some kind.
There are other sorts of artworks here, some disturbing and potent, giving the show some gravitas. “Lynch Boxes” are small sculptural objects evoking that horror of gang murder. Elsewhere, three tall, four-sided objects with figures all around forming complex, full body portraits of diverse Black subjects. Then there is a huge installation in the center of all this, “Altar,” made with black wood, hanging blue bottles, artificial candles, and small painted portraits.
For me, the ambitious, dimensional works end up supporting the more straight-up paintings and collages. In these, ransome brings a not so long ago past right here, right now.