Rendered with palpable care and immense love, Jordan Casteel’s Crockett Brothers exudes an intimacy communicated through the remarkable intricacy and finely executed details. Crockett Brothers typifies Casteel’s empathetic and humanistic approach to figurative painting, one that foregrounds the grace, dignity and interpersonal relations of her subjects. A stunning example of her “Brothers” series, a body of work produced just prior to the beginning of her tenure as an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Crockett Brothers epitomizes Casteel’s ethos as an artist. Describing the purpose of the series, Casteel notes: “The intent of the paintings is to expose my vision of black men as a sister, daughter, friend and lover. That perspective is one full of empathy and love. I see their humanity and, in turn, I want the audience to engage with them as fathers, sons, brothers, cousins – as individuals with their own unique stories to share.” (Jordan Casteel in conversation with Allie Biswas in: “Jordan Casteel: ‘My perspective is one full of empathy and love’”, Studio International, 15 October 2015 (online)) To achieve this she sought to portray her subjects, who themselves are overwhelmingly intimately connected to the artist, within familiar interior spaces, on the basis that “home tends to be where we are our most vulnerable and intimate selves.” (Ibid.)

The warmth, proximity and tenderness of the artist’s gaze in Crockett Brothers is apparent, but despite the intimacy of the space there is no voyeurism present here. Instead the subjects emit agency, integrity, and a genuine participatory engagement, resulting in paintings that possess both the lightness of a candid photograph and gravitas of an Old Master portrait. Casteel’s process also speaks to the intimacy of these settings. Rather than working from life, the artist will bring a camera into her subject’s space and photograph them, sometimes hundreds of times. This cornucopia of visual information becomes the stimulus for her paintings, which constitute an amalgam of images, constructed both with an eye to the composition of the final painting, and a focus on an emotionally true representation of her subject. A key challenge to this emotional acuity was Casteel’s decision with this series to move from representing solitary figures to painting groups, as the retention of the character of the individual is complicated by their relation to others, but Casteel accomplishes this difficult feat masterfully in Crockett Brothers.

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Jordan Casteel at the New Museum

The density of visual information conveyed with deftness and naturalism in the present work lends it a great sense of ease, poise and critically, place. From the small oval family portraits hanging in a frame in the upper left corner of the picture to the seated figure in green lightly touching the mouthpiece of his saxophone with his thumb, it is the presence of personalizing and individualizing details that make Casteel’s paintings so revelatory. These works are conduits for the celebration of shared humanity, and Casteel considers herself a steward of the responsibility of conveying these characters correctly.

Her practice locates her within a generation of twenty-first century painters of color such as Amy Sherald, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye who have together reinvigorated the figurative painting tradition. Building on the work of artists such as Betye Saar, Barkley Hendricks, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold and Kerry James Marshall, these artists create works that, among many other things, assert the individuality of the subject. Radiant, lovingly observed and deeply felt, Crockett Brothers is a vital contribution to Casteel’s oeuvre, embodying the qualities that make her one of the most exciting and celebrated artists of our time.