Virginia has a big role in America’s 250th birthday come July 4th, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is playing its part.
One new exhibit highlights Virginia native and Founding Father George Washington, but with some of the most famous depictions of him amended by a modern artist.
Junius Brutus Stearns made a series of paintings of George Washington just in time to honor the 50th anniversary of the first president’s death. That timing wasn't on accident; he aimed to sell prints in time for the memorial.
And at the VMFA’s Pictures More Famous than the Truth, you’ll see all 5 of Stearns’ original paintings, but you’ll see them alongside the work of modern artist Titus Kaphar.
Leo Mazow is the curator for the new exhibit.
“A lot of people are invested in either the deification or tearing down of George Washington," Mazow said on a tour of the exhibit Wednesday. "Titus thinks neither is helpful.”
Stearns’ paintings show young Washington’s marriage to Martha Dandridge. In another he’s speaking to his plantation overseer, slaves in the background, drinking water and languishing in the fields. Another shows a gathering of the founding fathers, George prominently in frame. Another yet another shows him on his deathbed. All tell the, or an idealized, story of Washington.
'Washington wasn't around for him to pose," Mazow said. "So, the likenesses of Washington and several others are completely off. It's one of the obviously ways fact and fiction kind of coexist here."
But these traditional images are placed alongside Kaphar’s work. Shadows of Liberty is a portrait of Washington on a horse, appearing the liberator (or conqueror). And attached to his jawline: “Rusted nails, descending from which are stained pieces of canvas that have writing on them," Mazow explains. "Those are scans of names of enslaved persons from the ledgers at Mt. Vernon.”
The addition of the brutal mane of human bondage, in artist Kaphar’s eyes, Mazow said, are comparable to the process of updating the U.S. Constitution.
“He thinks of his work as amendments, continuations, redressing the things that were told in the early works of people like Junius Brutus Stearns,” the curator says.
The nails are worth note as well; they resemble those used in Nkisi n'kondi, or "nail figures" from the ceremonial sculptures created by those in Kongo and central Africa.
"These nails could be used for spiritual purposes, or administrative," Mazow says, pointing to the nail figures also on display. "
"When you put these nails into Washington, Kaphar is forcing a conversation with the ancestors, those who are left behind," he added, before pointing to a more literal interpretation. "The nails were also used to make something legal, to give it gravitas; to literally hammer in a point."
Mazow points to a similar, bust-style Washington portrait sits opposite the first. Called "In the name of God, Amen," it too has rusty nails affixing scanned pages to the first president’s face, this time from his will in which he freed some of those slaves.
"The will is the exact kind of document, covenant, that you would use in an African context to make it official," he said. "This is not a corrective, it's a continuation of Stearns' story, one that doesn't end."
Titus Kaphar and Junius Brutus Stearns: Pictures More Famous than the Truth runs through late July.
