Knowledge of the Past Is the Key to the Future: Some Afterthoughts on Discovery
Robert Colescott American
As in the larger series which shares this work’s title, Colescott reinvented the compositions and subjects of European Old Master painting, presenting history as a jumble of vignettes that leap across time. Here, Christopher Columbus, a Catholic cardinal, the skeleton of the Viking-helmeted Leif Ericsson, and the signature ships of transatlantic exploration blend into fragmented scenes of colonialist violence. Colescott often looked to Western art history to examine the ways in which Black subjects are absented, demonized, or mythologized in its most celebrated works. Here the blending of past, present, and future implies that American racial traumas are indelibly linked to the country’s origins in colonial conquest and the myth of discovery.
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