Henry Taylor: B Side
Oct 4, 2023–Jan 28, 2024
Resting
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Within Taylor's broad range of subjects are works that delve into political and social allegory and current events. In some, he addresses police brutality in ways that can be terrifyingly direct but also tender. Several paintings memorialize young men murdered by the police and reference the US penal system through images of prison walls, guard towers, and citizens with their hands up. In others, he packs images and text into surreal compositions whose elusive meanings comingle reportage, personal memory, and common outrage. Together, these works extend a long tradition of socially charged history paintings. As with Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814), which Taylor cites as a precedent, the emotional message is one of horror and grief.
Henry Taylor, Warning shots not required, 2011
Henry Taylor, Warning shots not required, 2011. Acrylic, charcoal, and collage on canvas, 75 1/4 × 262 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (191.1 × 666.1 × 4.5 cm). The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee. © Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Brian Forrest
This painting features Stanley “Tookie” Williams—the larger-than-life cofounder of the notorious Los Angeles street gang the Crips, professional bodybuilder, and convicted murderer, who in his later years became an advocate for antigang education while serving a death-row sentence at San Quentin State Prison. Taylor paints Williams standing amid an array of symbolic motifs in front of a high prison wall. The image of the horse, which figures in this and many of Taylor’s other works, may refer to the artist’s grandfather, a horse trainer, who was ambushed and shot to death by white vigilantes in Texas in 1933. The work’s title, stenciled onto the composition, refers to policies that allow police officers to fire often deadly shots without warning if they consider themselves or another individual to be in imminent danger.