Fort Worth Modern, April 2024 —

Surrealism was the longest-lived of the 20th Century art movements, demonstrated here at the Modern using Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, the show’s subtitle. This trip, and its souvenirs, reminds me of the influence and power of surrealism. Capital-S Surrealism began as a post-world war  throw back to retinal or tangible artwork after the more etherial Dada movement. Under the direction of Andre Breton, a writer, surrealism moved art away from protest and nihilism to self reflection and imagination, and produced sellable products. Painters, sculptors and poets joined up, and younger artists like Salvador Dali made it really lucrative and popular. Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko made surrealist work in the 1940s, until they realized they had something better on their palettes.

This show, Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 uses more than 80 artworks to show how this movement affected and was used by artists from the Antilles. And how this influence is a through-line to AfroFuturism. It runs from March 10, 2024 to July 28, 2024.

Hanging above the grand – and wide – staircase (upper photogragh) to the upper floor of the museum are two large tapestries by Myrlande Constant. Along the landing’s back wall is another (first two images) of what Constant calls Vodou themed flags, or drapo Vodou. Colorful and exuberant, they are beaded paintings that come with a fringe and texture. The genre – drapo Voudou (‘Drapeau’ is French for flag) implies politics, or flag waving at minimum, and the spiritual or mystical, depending on where you categorize vodoo (vodou). Constant is Haitian, and represents themes from her native land, of which history I know very little (gained freedom during the French Revolution – 1791). Still, I can feel hot conflict and calm learning on a green and fertile landscape.

From 1968, included in this show (3rd image) is a stylized print called the Untitled Portrait of the Revolutionary Poet and Playwright LeRoi Jones or Amiri Barack, by Emory Douglas, the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. More hard-edged than I expect of surrealism, the print proceeds yet reminds me of the famous ‘Hope’ poster of Barack Obama, a black face that is not suffering, but regal.

Ja’Tovia Gary’s installation of a vanity, a sculpture in neon, colors an entire room pink. The work is called Citational Ethics Series (Zora Neale Hurston, 1943), and references Hurston’s 1943 essay about High John the Conquer, a folk figure who inspired hope for enslaved people. Some of Hurston’s text is engraved in the obsidian mirror. Imagine sitting at this vanity, reading (maybe Édouard Glissant) not concerned with appearance.

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan’s 2021 piece called Inside the Labyrinth contrasts a calabash with bronze. It’s delicate quality feels like modernist Alexander Calder, but goes postModern with its organic gourd.

Modern Art – what this museum shows – is a term with many meanings. As a student of art history, I suppose it starts after Impressionism and is a 20th Century phenomena, and dictates what we call art of this century: post-modernism, a term that seems extremely general and not anything of its own. But this show gives us a good idea of what organically grew in the Caribbean from what the curator thinks is ‘modern’ or surrealist. And is growing there now.