CWOW introduces a second generation of ‘The Newark School' that refines downtown’s seminal assemblage art 

 

Published: Sunday, February 20, 2011, 8:00 AM

By Dan Bischoff/For The Star-Ledger

 
Photo: Noelle Lorraine Williams, All things Considered....Please Stay

Courtesy of City Without Walls  

James A. Brown shows 32 drawings in a collage called "Paradoxical Realities,"small pages covered with sharp caricatures of clowns, monkeys, white and black people, and phrases such as "White Only," "I gotta racket for you" and the N-word.

There’s magic in the word “school” around here. The New York School is the name given to a small coterie of abstract artists in the late 1950s and ’60s who launched the first internationally respected original American art style, abstract expressionism. The New York School is famous now, but back in the day it was mocked or ignored — and not necessarily in that order.
So a new exhibition at City Without Walls and two other locations downtown, called the “Newark School,” is laying claim to historical vindication — what once happened to a circle of downtown artists across the river could, likely will, happen here, too. And this show is not devoted to the mostly African-American collage artists who put Newark on the map, aesthetically anyway, in the 1970s and ’80s, but to a new generation just coming of age today.
“What we call the ‘Newark School’ has an urban sensibility, an unorthodox approach to materials — assemblage has long been its dominant expression — and a quirky sense of humor,” says Alejandro Anreus, who co-curated the exhibition with Petrushka Bazin. “It has grown with time and changed from its origins among a relatively small group of artists who started combing through the abandoned ruins of the old city after the riots and white flight.
“What we hope to show is how a first generation of artists, people like Victor Davson (co-founder and head of Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art), Willie Cole, Bisa Washington, Chakaia Booker and Kevin Sampson, among others, laid the groundwork, if you will, for a new generation of Newark artists today,” Anreus says.
James A. Brown’s work, Anreus continues, is a critical bridge between the two generations, bringing in Pop references, sound, video and elements of painting together to define that urban identity.
Brown is certainly the most confrontational personality in either generation, showing here 32 drawing/collages called “Paradoxical Realities,” small pages covered with sharp caricatures of clowns, monkeys, white and black people, and phrases such as “White Only,” “I gotta racket for you” and, of course, the N-word. Brown is an artist who holds the nettle of racism in his palm — and then makes a fist.
That’s not really what the first generation Anreus mentions did. They turned the detritus of the industrial city into African totems, fashioning clan shields out of scavenged steam irons (Willie Cole) or black scarecrows out of feathers and rattan (Bisa Washington), making the city bloom with brave cultural markers even as white eyes fled them. Inside that art was a dogged refusal to be either mocked or ignored that the new generation takes as a starting point, allowing them to be much more direct.
Most of the work here is by African-Americans, not surprisingly, since so is most of Newark’s population; there are a few white artists, an even smaller number of Hispanics, and no Asians. And while not all the work makes a direct reference to race in American culture, the politics by and large do seem inward-looking and identity based.
“What you need to realize is that the older generation of artists in the ‘Newark School’ all lived through a tumultuous period in American history,” says co-curator Bazin. “But the younger generation did not. They are more idea-driven in their art, though they share certain basic stylistic practices with the older artists, like using found objects. All of them are very into layering themes and materials.”
What you see in the younger artists is a similar aesthetic but pushed much farther in their media, she says. “An artist like Noelle Lorraine Williams gets at what I’m trying to say — she makes figural, sculptural work, but its full meaning is tied to a performance by the artist.”
The Jersey-City-born Williams makes dwarf-sized dolls, usually knitted out in neatly sewn white-vinyl suits; in this piece, “All Things Considered,” the figure rises on four insect-like legs and sports a bird-like mask. Williams’ work can be scary and antiseptic, and quite political in its way — this one includes a tiny figure of a big-bellied black woman on the floor, like a deflated balloon. But it’s her technical skill that draws the eye, the polished, sophisticated presentation that wows judges, not the transformation of raw materials, found or handmade.
Sculpture is the coming medium for many of the younger artists. Like Williams, J.C. Lenochan uses found objects, in his case books, with a similar aplomb. His series “The Melanin Chronicles” (a reference to the skin pigment that gives our skin its shade) includes stacks of real art books on a school desk, such as “Negro Art” or “Native Art,” supported by a much larger book marked “White Art” (the absurdity mocks all broad categorization). The child’s desk is, technically, a “found object” — it’s more than a pedestal, but not quite the subtly transformed objects shown by Willie Cole.
Some of the older generation, such as Jersey City’s Charlee Swanson, are included (here he shows a trademark composition made from salvaged barbed wire, his favorite medium), but this is very much a second generation show, and reaches further than you might expect. Ibrahim Ahmed III, for example, was born in Kuwait City, and his painting/collage compositions, done on old window sashes with the glass intact, are among the most lyrical images here, suggesting carved Arab shutters overlain by gestural splashes of paint.
It’s a very big school.
The Newark School
Where: City Without Walls, 6 Crawford St., Newark
When: Saturday through April 30. Open Thursday to Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Also open at two other venues: through April 29 at Seton Hall University Law School, 1 Newark Center, open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and March 17 through April 6 at Arts High School, 550 Martin Luther King Blvd., by appointment.
How much: Free. For more information, call (973) 622-1188 or visit cwow.org.