A brand new exhibition on the Drawing Middle, “Actually an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L,” exhibits how the artist prolonged his apply of principled unreason—or what his grandmother as soon as described lovingly as his tendency for “foolishness” and “devilment”—into objects of two and three dimensions. There are lots of methods for an artist to double as a social critic; Pope.L’s most well-liked mode was absurd jokes with elusive punch strains. Throughout greater than fifty years of art-making, earlier than his loss of life, in 2023, he labored in acquainted kinds—drawing, portray, sculpture, video—but in addition made ample use of peanut butter, mayonnaise, sizzling canine, ice cream, Spam, and Pop-Tarts. He studied with the Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks at Rutgers, and due to that lineage he’s usually positioned within the traditions of conceptual and efficiency artwork. However, should you have a look at the precise knowledge on provide on the Drawing Middle, you’ll see that Pope.L’s graphic work has a deep filiation with the artwork brut of Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet, who in nineteen-forties France collected graffiti, the work of kids, and the artwork of psychiatric sufferers, wished an artwork that was crude and “uncooked,” untarnished by tradition. The much less expert or tutored the fashion appeared, the higher.
“Harriet Tubman Spins the Universe” (1998-2017).Artwork work by Pope.L / Courtesy Property of Pope.L / Mitchell-Innes & Nash; {Photograph} by James Prinz
In Pope.L’s “Harriet Tubman Spins the Universe” (1998-2017), he places the abolitionist on a plank of Sheetrock in the midst of a swirl of peanut butter. The piece looks like an replace of Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus,” if it had been spun in a gyroscope and sprayed with acrylic paint. Tubman is all however indecipherable, roughly limned with white paint and lined by pink, black, and yellow smudges and drips. The private filaments of that means for Pope.L right here embrace the peanut butter itself—an affordable, calorie-dense meals that was a staple of his upbringing—and the organizing power of Black ladies in his life, notably his grandmother, Desma Lancaster. She is alleged to have proven quilts on the Studio Museum in Harlem within the nineteen-sixties, and was the primary particular person to open Pope.L’s thoughts to artwork.
