“Black Dada is a way to talk about the future while talking about the past; it is our present moment.”
Charged with conceptual density and refined abstraction, Adam Pendleton’s Black Dada (K) of 2022 is an exquisite example of the artworks that weave through Dada, Abstraction, Minimalism, Street Art, and political activism that have come to solidify Pendleton’s position as one of the most compelling artists in recent history. The present work is part of the artist’s signature Black Dada paintings which he has been creating since 2008—the year he wrote a manifesto of the same name—that explore the interactions of Blackness and abstraction. Black Dada (K), in its rays of saturated cerulean blue, is part of the works that marked Pendleton’s subtle departure from his previously monochrome body of Black Dada paintings; it nonetheless continuous to carry the apprehensive visual tension and intellectual rigor that has come to define Pendleton’s celebrated career. Further attesting to his singular artistic vision, Pendleton was the recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2024 and has seen his works collected at prestigious institutions including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Collection, London.
Inspired by avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, Black Dada has been the backbone of Pendleton’s practice for more than a decade. The artist has often underscored how the concept is inherently multidimensional and transtemporal: “[Black Dada]’s a way of talking about the future while talking about the past. It’s about looking at Blackness as an open-ended idea that is not just related to notions of race. It looks at Blackness in relationship to politics, in relationship to art, in relationship even more specifically to the avant-garde. It’s kind of a framing device but it’s fluid and it’s unfixed.” (the artist quoted in: Hilarie Sheets, “‘I Want to Get People’s Attention’: Artist Adam Pendleton on Taking Over MoMA’s Atrium With a Monumental Tribute to Black Dada,” Artnet News, 13 September 2021 (online)) Conceptually engaging with varied histories and sociopolitical movements, situating these ideologies within the present context, Black Dada epitomizes Pendleton’s dedication to complicating narratives received from the past and opening up new possibilities of understanding Blackness.
With conceptual rigor from its very genesis, Black Dada (K) leans into the capacities of abstraction to foreground its capacity for both clarity and complexity. Atop the black canvas, bold azure planes—reminiscent of the color palette, spritz patterns, and droplets characteristic of spray paint canisters—fan out from the center. Pendleton then covers the entire plane with rowdy scrawls of black that hint at the gestures of graffiti, further solidifying his interest in street art and its capacity to connect the visual arts with activism, resistance, and disobedience. Pendleton embraces the obscurity and illegibility of abstraction to its fullest, thus reinforcing his outstanding interrogation of Blackness. Amidst these abstract elements, the letter “K,” printed in a simple and legible sans-serif font, emerges out of the picture plane from the right-hand side. In sharp contrast with the hand-painted appearance of the other elements, the K stands out as an entry point into the painting in its neat silkscreen print. Through the letter, Pendleton demands the viewer to engage with the work actively, deciphering the cryptic meanings, piecing together the letters carefully divulged across his paintings to read out the phrase “BLACK DADA.” In this sense, Black Dada (K), while being an outstanding individual work of art, also accentuates its position as a part of an interconnected set of works, perhaps further reinforced in its being a diptych, two canvasses juxtaposed to create a broader context. Much like how Black Dada as a concept is designed to traverse space and time, looking at the future while talking about the past, Black Dada (K) reaches across temporal and spatial boundaries to connect with its peer works and interrogate the capacities and limitations of Black Dada.
“I want there to be this moment of recognition where you realize there is language. It’s legible, but layered or abstracted enough to refuse an immediate or easy interpretation. I think sometimes if you immediately read something and understand it, you move on. I’m much more interested in this site of engagement, where you actually stop and think about what you’re reading and what you’re looking at.”
Oscillating between legibility and illegibility, abstraction and representation, and aesthetic abstraction and conceptual discourse, Black Dada (K) is a quintessential example of the artist’s singular approach to navigating the intersections of Blackness and abstraction. As a part of Pendleton’s most seminal and famous series, the present work entices the viewer to make connections amongst its bold color, intellectual rigor, and energetic composition, even with other works in the artist’s oeuvre. The resulting work is a painting that underscores the artist’s claim that “abstraction is as political as anything else,” beckoning us to follow the artist’s march towards repoliticizing a new avant-garde. (the artist quoted in: Stuart Comer, “History Is Never Finished: An Interview with Adam Pendleton,” The MoMA Magazine, 18 February 2022 (online))
