βArchibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist,β a wildly uneven exhibition devoted to the African-American painter Archibald Motley (1891β1981), is bookended by two Major Statements, pictures strong in tenor if different in focus. Upon entering the retrospective, viewers encounter Self-Portrait (Myself at Work) (1933), a take-it-or-leave-it avowal of artistic purpose. Motley faces us holding in his left hand a palette imbued with an otherworldly purple and in his right a brush that conjures forth a nude woman from a canvas. The composition is compartmentalized and clear: a crucifix hangs on the back wall; a neoclassical sculpture is placed next to the painterβs palette; and, hanging from a window is a grotesque profile bust similar to those seen in Leonardoβs sketchbooks. With movie-star good looks and unflinching gaze, Motley is every inch the bohemian. This may have been a poseβan adjacent self-portrait depicts a stodgier personageβbut the resulting picture radiates authority.
The conclusion of βJazz Age Modernistβ is The First One Hundred Years, a canvas begun around 1963 and completed in 1972. Good luck getting a look at it. The days I attended the show, there was a logjam of viewers around the painting. Who can blame them for taking their