Photo Pest: The Bountiful Whitney

Artist Henry Taylor, the youngest of eight children in a California family, portrays himself as Henry VIII, a sly allusion to the erasure of Africans from European art that usually depicted royalty or the landed gentry.

Untitled (2021)

In this atypical work, it looks as if Taylor is paying tribute to his mother Cora. But it also could be read as a menu of threats facing their community: the shape of her name looks like a gun; the Brer Rabbit syrup reflects racist stereotypes; salt may contribute to significantly higher rates of blood pressure among blacks than whites; and the kitchen may symbolize the prison of domesticity for women.

"Cora, (cornbread)" (2008)

Taylor, who earned his artistic chops sketching patients at a mental institution where he was employed as a psychiatric technician, has been painting portraits, mostly from memory, for three decades. Here he freezes a horrific moment in time, when a Minnesota police officer shot and killed Philando Castile during a routine traffic stop. Afterward, his girlfriend--and mother of his four-year-old daughter, also in the car--streamed the incident live on Facebook. A jury eventually acquitted the police officer of second-degree manslaughter but the white hand aiming a gun at a black body indicts systemic racism for all time.

"THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH!" (2017)

Looking at this large canvas, it's hard not to think of the crop dusters that jealous white supremacists in Oklahoma used to fire on the well-to-do residents of black Wall Street in the early 20th century.

Untitled (2022)

A peace sign and gun offer an irresistible juxtaposition, probably observed rather than imagined.

"Girl with a Toy Rifle" (2015)

Brotherhood and ubiquitous police patrols are facts of life in African American communities but it's hard to parse the meaning of the low-flying jet liner.

Untitled (2006)

The Whitney exhibition also includes sculpture and installations by Taylor.

One of Taylor's brothers headed the Ventura, California chapter of the Black Panthers.

Portrait of My Brother Robert Randy Taylor (2010)

Everyone who lived through the tumultuous 1960s remembers this iconic photo of Dr. Huey P. Newton, the Panthers Minister of Defense.

Taylor renders the image as a collage and incorporates it into an installation I found mesmerizing, perhaps because of my admiration for the Panther's advocacy of black self-defense coupled with community services.

Huey Newton (2007)

These documents are displayed on the speaker's podium, hidden from view in the photo above.

The installation also includes photos of contemporary African Americans who have died needlessly as a result of the same kind of police violence that gave rise to the Panthers half a century ago.

I won't deny that Black Panther style probably made a bigger impression on me than their politics, at least initially.

Untitled Installation (2022)

It certainly would be easy to spot this luggage on an airport carousel.

Untitled Suitcase (2021)

I'm pretty sure this is the Obamas relaxing in Hawaii. Taylor seems less concerned with likeness than mood in most of his work.

Untitled (2020)

From afar I was certain this was Jimi Hendrix. In fact, Taylor is nodding cheekily to an internationally acclaimed artist whose neutral depiction of the Bader Meinhof gang may suggest a controversial political affinity as well.

"Before Gerhard Richter there was Cassi" (2017)

Taylor also pays homage to Noah Davis, an artist who depicted African American life minus the negative stereotyping, by painting him as a boy but giving the work a loaded name. Cancer felled Davis at the age of 32, just a few years after he co-founded the Underground Museum, which quickly became a black cultural hub in Los Angeles.

"A Young Master" (2017)

The Whitney's rooftop views often compete with the sculpture on display, but I particularly enjoyed Rose B. Simpson's "Counterculture." According to the exhibit text, these totemic, contemplative figures, sculpted from clay, represent the indigenous people that traded away Manhattan to the Dutch for shiny trinkets according to old-school education.

With congestion pricing looming, those shiny trinkets aren't looking like such a bad deal at the moment.

What would the Lenape think of Little Island

. . . or the High Line, both artificially created environments that provide urban dwellers with selfie backdrops in a world that almost entirely has lost touch with simple joys of nature.

Back inside the Whitney introduced me to Harry Smith, an unfamiliar, uncategorizable artist whose varied work enchants and alarms. Imagine if the Tin Woodman dropped acid. Now you don't have to!

Smith drew this demonic self-portrait in 1952.

Take the Whitney's staircase for expansive views of the sun setting over New Jersey. Did you know that the Gansevoort Peninsula opened in October?

"Inheritance" on the sixth floor provides Whitney curators with an opportunity to showcase new or rarely seen works dating back to the 1970s. Most birthday videos don't end up in a museum but this one--"Ninety-Three" shot by Kevin Jerome Everson in 2008--did. It's eerily compelling.

Sadie Barnette's father was a Black Panther, too. His surveillance and persecution by the FBI--which resulted in the loss of his job at the United States Post Office--informs her work.

"Family Tree II" (2022)

"Bob's your Uncle" by Joan Wallace (1991)

Chitra Ganesh created 27 linocuts to illustrate a short story she found in a turn-of-the-20th-century Indian magazine. Sultana, the heroine, travels to Ladyland where women are in charge.

"Sultana's Dream" (partial) by (2018)

"United States of Attica" by Faith Ringgold (1971)

"Red Exit" (detai) by Andrea Carlson (2020)

Sturtevant took the concept of candy-based art--pioneered by Ed Ruscha in the "Chocolate Room"--a step farther. You can take a piece. Just one, though, a sign insists. It tasted like a Sugar Baby.

Blue Placebo (2005)

I'm generally not a fan of daylight savings time, but it allows you watch the sometimes dramatic change in light over New York while the museum is open. Downtown residents pay big bucks for the incredible views included in the price of a Whitney admission. And because you experience them so infrequently, they're always a treat.