SONIA CHEUNG<\/p>\n
After adornment the next most striking manifestation of the Negro is Angularity. \u00a0Everything that he touches becomes angular. . . . The pictures on the walls are hung at deep angles. <\/span><\/i>Asymmetry is a definite feature of Negro art. . . . The abrupt and unexpected changes. . . . . The presence of rhythm and lack of symmetry are paradoxical, but there they are. \u00a0Both are present to a marked degree. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Negro dancing is dynamic suggestion. . . . every posture gives the impression that the dancer will do much more. . . . [the spectator] finds himself keeping time with the music and tensing himself for the struggle. . . . He is participating in the performance himself–carrying out the suggestions of the performer. . . . The white dancer attempts to express fully; the Negro is restrained, but succeeds in gripping the beholder by forcing him to finish the action the performer suggests.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u2014Zora Neale Hurston, \u201cCharacteristics of Negro Expression\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n In her essay \u201cCharacteristics of Negro Expression, \u201d African-American writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston assets that angularity, asymmetry, and dynamic suggestion are features that characterize African-American art. \u00a0However, these two untitled etchings by Glenn Ligon seem to exhibit none of these characteristics. \u00a0The prints are paired and presented like a spread of an open book, symmetrical and perfectly aligned both with each other and with the frame. \u00a0The full, thick, black capital letters are imposing vertical columns of weight on the white background that assume stability and certainty. \u00a0They are grainy upon close inspection\u2014there is not a single truly sharp angle or edge, even at the top where the words are the most legible.<\/p>\n But looking at the etchings as more than just a two-dimensional image, the viewer finds angularity as promised by Hurston\u2019s claim that “everything [the Negro] touches becomes angular.” \u00a0A sharp rectangle with four crisp vertices was impressed into the paper by the outer edge of the plate when printing–created entirely by physical force. \u00a0The angularity is achieved by the physical \u201ctouch\u201d and only in the third dimension perpendicular to the paper and the wall. \u00a0The light gray shadows cast by the paper onto the mount make apparent the fact that only the top parts of the prints are fixed. \u00a0The etchings are hence hung at a deep angle to the wall. \u00a0The two pieces of paper moves, trembles, and sways abruptly with the slightest vibrations of the frame.<\/p>\n Similarly, although asymmetry is not seen in the etchings at first glance, it is apparent in the linguistic dimension of the prints. \u00a0The etching on the left reads, \u201cI do not always feel colored,\u201d negatively declaring the existence of exceptions to the norm, moments and gaps of \u201cdo not\u201d in the otherwise continuum of \u201calways feeling colored\u201d; and on the right is \u201cI feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background,\u201d a positive statement of the most intense, violent situation charged and saturated with emotions.<\/p>\n Each statement is repeated again and again, breathlessly, without punctuation or pauses in between, but the spacing remains the same, keeping up the rhythm even as the words becomes less legible further down, increasingly blurred by stains of different degrees of blackness. \u00a0Not a single letter is altered in each repetition, but with each suggestive iteration all is changed: the viewer sees the calm, restrained statements become increasingly urgent and anguished but muffled cries between drowning, violent blotches as his eyes move down the print, and \u201ctens[es] himself for the struggle,\u201d like the audience of the negro dancer in Hurston\u2019s essay. \u00a0These emotions, tensions, and meanings are filled in by the viewer himself, prompted by the “dynamic suggestion” of the etchings. \u00a0The etchings are then not unlike “the Negro dancer” who “succeeds in gripping the beholder by forcing him to finish the action the performer suggests.\u201d<\/p>\n Ligons’ prints are hence filled with dynamic contrasts of stability and instability, restraint and dramatic expression. \u00a0As the viewer of the etchings, like the beholder of negro dancing, is forced into \u201cparticipating in the performance himself–carrying out the suggestions of the performer,\u201d the opacity and possibilities allowed by the suggestive piece are perhaps crystallized and reduced into the viewer\u2019s single experience. \u00a0And as I write these sentences on my experience of Ligon\u2019s etching, which include describing as clearly as possible my \u201ccompletion\u201d of the etchings\u2019 \u201csuggestions,\u201d I am perhaps assuming the role of “the white dancer” who “attempts to express fully,” in contrast to \u201cthe negro dancer.\u201d \u00a0This piece of writing is then inevitably totalizing and \u201cwhite\u201d as opposed to the \u201cnegro\u201d etchings that stop at suggesting. \u00a0Thus, perhaps \u201cI feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background\u201d may be read with such a suggestion–I want to feel colored, so I will create a white background that I can be thrown against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SONIA CHEUNG After adornment the next most striking manifestation of the Negro is Angularity. \u00a0Everything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/afk2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}