ART ON THE FRONTLINES

Paul Verdell’s art embraces Blackness and
the current political climate.

INTERVIEW BY IMANI LATEEF @imanilateef

Toledo artist Paul Verdell, by way of California, has found himself at the center of a protest focusing on The Toledo Museum of Art and their choice to take a “non-political” stance in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breona Taylor and so many others by the police. This interview finds him weeks after he quit his part time job with the museum. We discuss where the museum should go from here and how Black artists should approach politically charged art carefully.

IMANI: So yeah, the last time we talked, we talked specifically about creating political work.

PAUL: Yeah.

And no sooner than like a day or two later, you see this letter from our museum. What did you feel? What was it like seeing that letter?

Honestly I didn’t see it the day that they published it because, with everything going on with COVID, I hadn’t been working at the museum. I just kind of was in my studio the whole time.

And then I saw them post about the Alison Saar show that was coming. And then I was like, Oh, let me check this out. And then I saw some of the comments on that and I was just like, wait, these are some weird comments. Why are they attacking the museum? And then I see that initial post that they had sent out Tuesday.

And then I was like, Oh my God, this is not good. They had the fact that they were claiming neutrality and that they didn’t want to be involved in the quote-un-quote politics of what had happened to George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and just black people who are getting killed in general unjustifiably by the hands of the police.

I had to sit on it for a minute. I thought they had the Kehinde Wiley show at the museum, they have several pieces of black art in the museum. And I was like, I can’t work here anymore because I would just be mad at work all the time.

So instead I said, well, I’m going to have to quit. And then I talked to Yusuf about it. He was the one who said, let’s go protest. Let’s let them know that that’s not okay.

So it just felt like it felt like a slap in the face. You know I liked the museum.

I was talking to Yusuf [ Lateef ] about the banner project, how you guys are taking it to each protest and people are adding basically the voice literally to the banner. Hopefully, with the intention of, ultimately, the art museum would display it right there on the front of the museum.

Yusuf came up with the banner. He was the one who explained it to me and I was like, that’s a great idea. We should definitely do that. And I remember him saying too, I want people to put whatever they want to put on it.

And I said, well, that sounds like fun and everything but when I was at school, we did something very similar where we allowed people to put whatever they wanted to draw on the walls and it just went left so fast. I’m not a censorship person, but I can understand where people wouldn’t want to see certain sayings.

So we came up with the prompt, “What does black lives matter mean to you?” And that works because people have direction on what to say.

So coming back around, how do you see that applying to your work with #BlackLivesMatter. How do you see that impacting your work?

Yusuf said to me a couple of days ago, “We’re Black, everything is technically political. The moment we walk into a door, into an establishment everything becomes political”. And I’ve been thinking about that. I see a lot of artists who kind of do this overtly political, protest work. That’s shocking. That’s amazing. And that has a lot to do with the Black Lives Matter Movement.

I don’t want my work to be like that. I definitely want my work to embody Blackness because it’s who I am. Right. So when I create my work, my hope is for it to be political on its own.
I had people telling me you shouldn’t let all of that rest on your shoulders as far as political work and stuff. And I understand that too.

I saw some artwork of George Floyd and I’m not ready to do that. I’m not ready to draw him. I’m not ready to do any of that type of work.
That’s important because it’s a hard thing for me to see.

That’s so interesting because what you do is portraiture. Any other time you would draw this man. But now these people, their very faces, carry political undertone.

Consider George Floyd’s death visually. He carries the features of the quintessential Black Man. Full lips, broad nose, dark skin. He’s the textbook Black Man.

You know, I know it was therapy for some people. For me, it just continues to build my anxiety. I remember when Nipsey hussle died. I had done portraits of rappers. I would do these different portraits and pastels. And I remember somebody messaged me and said, would you do one of Nipsey?

This was right after his death. Super fresh. I was like, why are you asking me this? Why would I want to make a profit off of some man’s death like that? I’m not ready to do that.

That’s where it gets really difficult for us.

It starts to get difficult because sometimes. Other artists or people who follow you expect that out of you or they expect you to do stuff like that.
And I don’t want them to think that.
Everybody grieves differently and if that makes you feel like better to paint George Floyd and present that and say, this man was a great man. And that becomes your own protests. That’s fine, you know, I don’t have a problem with that. But I do believe that the unfortunate thing is with social media there are opportunists.
You make a piece of George Floyd or you make a piece of Breona Taylor or something and you put it up and someone hits you in your DMs or a gallery or somebody is like, Oh, we love this. We would love to sell it.
And to me, that just becomes an opportunity for somebody to monetize someone else’s pain. You don’t want to be that person.

IMANI: Black artists aren’t a monolith. You have artists that depict the pain and anguish of what we’re going through. Then there’s artists that depict the beauty and the glory and the celebration of blackness, right? Artists that are more subtle in their approach.

Right. And I tend to lean on that end. See, that’s the same with me too. I take that route.

IMANI: Of course this begs the obvious question, how do you respond to the irony between not politicizing your work but demanding our institutions take a stronger and even “Blacker” political stance?

Well it’s like I said before, just being black is political. That’s the unfortunate thing, but it’s real. So whenever I paint a black body it’s political even when I paint a white body it’s political because I’m a black man doing it.

So as an institution they can’t just opt out of it because it’s uncomfortable for them.

Here’s a good example the Toledo Museum of Art has an artwork by the first world renowned African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. It’s a painting called Disciples on the Sea, and it’s just two men in a boat. It was painted in 1913 and if you didn’t read the info next to the painting you’d most likely think a white person painted it.

The moment people find out a black man painted it, so much history just explodes from that work.

Which brings us back to our art museum discussion. We talked about how the art museum is the first place for young black kids to see art. It’s the first time they may see themselves historically reflected in art. It is also important for young artists to see other Black artists experimenting with a variety of mediums and genres. In this vain, where would you like the museum to go from here?

You know, if you’re lucky to have parents who are interested in art, right? You’ll probably go to some gallery shows, right? That’s not the case for most people. That wasn’t the case for me as a child, my mom didn’t really go to galleries much. My family wasn’t really that big in art.

So I had to see art at a museum. And one of the first museums I started to really kind of click with art was the Toledo Museum of Art. And that’s where I started seeing artists like Kehinde Wiley.
I’d love to see the art museum focus less on antiquities. Like antiquities are cool and stuff, but you know, the modern and contemporary is really where it’s at. And that’s always kind of been where it’s at.

Yusuf, Terry Burton and I. We’ve talked about this too.

Whoa that’s the trifecta.

Yea the trifecta. We think that there should be some sort of promise, you know, not just apologies, but some sort of promise for the future.

I’m not calling for Adam to step down or anything like that. I know the internals of museums when you hire somebody like that right away. I mean, look, did he screw up really big? Oh yeah. But there’s a lot of things you can screw up when you’re new to the job.

So my whole thing is, I’m not calling for him to step down or anything like that. But maybe when he’s done, they should consider a Black woman to be the director of the museum.

What I’ve noticed in all these institutions, they are far more comfortable being diverse than being Pro-Black. And I understand what these entities are going through. I’ve seen first hand, companies lose tons of money from taking a pro-black stance.

I get it that businesses are worried. But if you see the direction the country is somewhat going now; obviously there is still a lot of work to be done. But sometimes you gotta stop being afraid.