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, That Was Then, 2013
Henry Taylor, That Was Then, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 95 × 75 in. (241.3 × 190.5 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Henry L. Hillman Fund 2013.12. © Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photograph by Sam Kahn
Taylor often reflects on his Southern heritage in his work. This painting of an elderly Black man standing amid plowed fields is one in a series of works Taylor based on Farm Security Administration photographs of Southern sharecroppers in the 1930s, and while it is not explicitly a depiction of a Taylor family member, it honors his ancestors’ legacy. Taylor adds the word “BOY” three times to the background of this work as if to suggest that the man was called that degrading epithet many times. Given the persistence of racially abusive language in the United States, the painting’s title is likely ironic.