Hammons’ 'The New Black,' 2014 presents a blue painted canvas draped over with a piece of black tarp, frayed at the edges. Here, the artist cloaks a painting, executed in emulation of Abstract Expressionism, the mark of indisputable value in the art historical canon, by covering it in a fabric representative of debris, the stuff of the street and the temporary shelter. Calling to mind Rauschenberg’s act of rebellion, in which he erased a drawing by De Kooning and exhibited it under the title 'Erased de Kooning Drawing,' 1953, Hammons manages to go far beyond this reactive move, digging into the deeper questions of the hierarchy of artistic materials and representation. In a double gesture, the artist at once obstructs the view of the abstract painting with a material considered to be trash, and, through the elegance and grandeur of the fabric, evokes the entire history of the female form represented as obscured by draping fabrics, from Greek Antiquity to Picasso. The game of visibility and invisibility in artistic representation, and the constellation of values that come with it, is hence radically reconfigured. The eminently visible, the definitional incarnation of Art, the painting, whose access, however, is carefully and exclusively curated in our contemporary world, is shrouded in the symbolic matter of the socially invisible, the displaced and the nameless, the utterly excluded. With this reversal come the concerns of the visibility of race, indicated in the thrust of the title, 'The New Black,' proposing to introduce black into the sphere of art in a new way: replacing the immaculate white of Grecian robes, the black of the tarp material presents itself as the new norm for the practice of veiling, just as the shrouded painting replaces the female body as the symbol of the forbidden, the enticing, the sinful, and the unattainable. Instead of white, black becomes the color of innocence and virtue and the emotive, broad brushstrokes of cobalt and aquamarine, the signal of corruption. 'The New Black' is a direct attack on racism and the standards of erudition that uphold it. Looming beyond the confines of a typical canvas, the work stands almost statuesque in its unavoidable confrontation and jarring tactility, challenging the limits between painting, sculpture, and installation.
A related work, 'Untitled,' 2010, comprising a canvas painted with synthetic polymer paint covered in black, gray, and red sheets of plastic, is held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. Hammons’ iconic African-American Flag, 1990, a flag designed after the American flag but in red, black, and green instead of red, white, and blue, is also held in the permanent collection at the MoMA.
