“It's become clear that in American educational systems you weren't really getting a very broad-based understanding of history; it was [a] very directed kind of way of understanding American history. And this cousin of mine [who] was [living] overseas was...[learning] European [history], women's history, people of color, things like that, and I thought this was very interesting that we weren't getting that in my public school...So I thought, "Well, how am I going to import this idea of this personal kind of understanding of education into the work?" and so I was looking for a kind of loaded object, and the chalkboard, which I was moving back and forth around the room, became the kind of obvious object for me.”
G ary Simmon’s Black Chalkboard (Double Grin) is from the artist’s most famous Chalkboard series using his “erasure” technique first explored by the artist in 1990. Simmons looked to chalkboards as his primary medium as they symbolize the very formative time in which history is taught to young minds—ultimately marking the very moment their world view is shaped. While working in his studio, which also served as a vocational school at the time, Simmons laboriously moved stacks of chalkboards from one side of the room to the other in order to free space in order to create. Through conversations with family and the physical act of moving these chalkboards time after time, Simmons thought to recontextualize and reinvestigate the American educational system as well as the stereotypes presented by the mass media through his works. Simmons depicts the highly exaggerated caricatures of African Americans seen throughout the stereotypical media of the Twentieth Century and then erases them away leaving behind ethereal, ghost like traces. More than the simple act of wiping away, Simmon’s use of the eraser is a form of mark making in itself, which leaves behind the visible traces of the sweeping movement—juxtaposed against the tight lines of the previously untouched cartoon. The resulting blurred and ghostly images often refer to intersections of pop culture, race and class. In doing so, Simmons forces the viewer to confront the realities of America’s dark past by using the symbolism of the eraser to powerfully deface and control the outcome of the final image. While seemingly fleeting, these images cannot be avoided and the viewer must confront their own relationship with the history they were once told in order to work to reinvestigate their own relationship with the stories and opinions they were once taught.
Gary Simmon’s Chalkboard Series in Museum Collections
Pivotal Works by African American Artists: Curated by a Private Collector
