Right in the middle of the exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” opening Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum, is Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot 2008 painting “Femme Piquée par un Serpent.” It shows a black man in handy but casual dress lying in a distinctly twisted position, against a backdrop of Wiley’s signature flowers, borrowing title and pose from a 1847 marble sculpture by Auguste Clésinger. What you think of that really depends on what you’re asking.
If you see the painting as a Venti-sized rehash of Wiley’s ongoing work, his decades-long study of the rarity of black faces in Western museums and art history, it’s one note, but hard to argue with. Vibrant colors and careful composition, it is visually appealing and even today, when it is no longer so unusual to see black figures on museum walls, seeing one this large still evokes a thrill.
On the other hand, considered strictly as a painting, “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” (“Woman Bitten by a Serpent”) doesn’t offer that much. There are no details to be lost in a jpeg reproduction, no visible elements played by human hands, no sensual pleasure to be found on the surface, nothing strange, mysterious or exciting. It is simply the skilled illustration of an idea.
Of course, you could also ask for both — for a clear concept project about painting (and the historical exclusion of black subjects and artists) that is also a Good painting. If you do, you’re likely to respond to “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” with ambivalence and disappointment.
I was thinking about that — about artistic endeavors that succeed and fail at the same time — as I walked through “Giants,” the latest celebrity exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. (“Spike Lee: Creative Sources” closes Sunday; a Paul McCartney photo show opens in May.) “Giants” draws on the extensive art collection of married music superstars Keys and Beatz (Kasseem Dean), bringing together 98 works — many oversized and recently vintage — by 37 artists. Most of them are American, but they also come from several countries in Europe and half a dozen in Africa, and range in generation from Ernie Barnes, who died at 70 in 2009, to Qualeasha Wood, was born in 1996.
Stylistically, however, it would be hard to imagine a more narrowly focused show. That almost all the faces are black, or that where there is a political subtext, it’s about an issue of particular concern to Black Americans, that’s great. But that the work is almost entirely figurative, that so much of it is of similar size, done in similar colors, composed in the same way, and hung in the same way, is not so great. So many superficial similarities have a leveling effect. It becomes difficult to appreciate the shade or individuality of a piece when at first blush looks like a greener or redder version of the piece to its left.
If you can tune out this flattening effect, you’ll find some great artwork from the collection. (The show is in the museum’s special exhibition space on the ground floor, which means you’ll also have to pay $25 per adult to get in.) They include vibrant paintings that the South African artist, Esther Mahlangudoes with traditional Ndebele house designs. by Arthur Jaffa overwhelming 7,000-pound truck-tire sculpture “Big Wheel I.” a lavish room-sized multiple of Meleko Mokgosi; and 14 charming, oval and round Jamaican landscapes from Barkley L. Hendricks.
There is an entire wall of black and white photos Gordon Parks, including both well-known images of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Langston Hughes and sensitive photographs of less famous figures, and a wall opposite Jamel Shabazz’s most candid color photographs of well-dressed Brooklynites and early hip-hop pioneers. Deana Lawson’s oversized staged photographs of domestic interiors, hung together on yet another wall, are as unsettling and powerful as ever. All of these would be more effectively hung around the exhibit rather than crammed into commercial-looking displays, but the photos themselves rarely miss.
A sound form from Nick Cave it’s reliably enjoyable as it is by Jordan Casteel portrait of clothing designer Fallou Wadje who sells t-shirts in Harlem and Hank Willis Thomas contributes a stunning 2017 fabric piece titled “You Shouldn’t Be a Prisoner of Your Own Ideas (LeWitt).” An eight-foot square of green and white stripes with an X in the middle, it’s made from decommissioned prison uniforms.
Before you get to any of these, however, you have to go through a sort of shrine to the collectors.
There’s a larger-than-life photo of Keys and Beatz in formal wear, posing on a BMX bike. And lots of real bikes from Beatz’s collection. And his turntables. And the piano keys she used in her 2014 “We Are Here” video. And the portraits of the couple by Wiley, Derrick Adams and Shabazz, who took them by reproducing a bleak 1970 Gordon Parks photo of Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver with his wife, Kathleen, in Algeria. Once you reach the art, you’ll find it scattered with small living room spaces surrounded by Bang & Olufsen speakers, the couple’s favorite brand, playing a special playlist compiled by Beatz, as if the couple had invited you into one of their homes to see what was on their walls.
The series opener asserts that Beatz and Keys “have stood as giants on our cultural landscape for decades.” it does not say that Beatz was on the museum’s board until late last year, when he resigned to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, nor has it been announced to the press what pieces, if any, the couple plans to donate to the museum.
What you say about all this depends, again, on your expectations. Is the point of the whole show to prove how many talented black artists there are in the world? Or to give a boost to some of the younger and lesser known of them? Those are important goals, and it would be hard to argue that the Giants didn’t meet them. You might even imagine that the overhyped hype of Keys and Beatz — who are influential artists in their own right — is meant to serve as a similar kind of show. Or is it just a matter of keeping the museum lights on by getting visitors in the door? Given the current climate, I couldn’t argue with that either.
However, one can’t help but wonder if the same point could not have been made in a less aesthetically claustrophobic way, one that rejected iconography and left more room for the subtlety, depth and sheer complexity possible in visual art. After all, isn’t that what museums should be sharing with new audiences in the first place?
Giants: Art from the Dean Collection by Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
February 10 through July 7, The Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, (718) 638-5000; brooklynmuseum.org.