Robert Colescott had the uncanny ability to criticize and question everything without getting entirely too cynical.

Robert Colescott was uniquely attuned to art history’s exclusion of people of color, and he basically made a career out of using its styles, themes, and ideas against itself. Pretty badass if you ask me. As a trained artist, Colescott’s education inundated him with the glory of western European art history. Even though he studied with the technologically-minded visionary Fernand Léger for a year in Paris, he was still trapped by the dominant, but limited, views on the study of art.

During his time in Paris, Colescott constantly visited museums, soaking in all the art he could. There’s no doubt that he was seeing some great art. However, his decision to use the greats as fodder for paintings about racial tensions and decolonizing the canon didn’t occur to him until he finally left the Western world. In the 1960s, Colescott visited Egypt to study and teach at the American Research Center in Cairo. This trip, and his subsequent return to the United States during the height of Black liberation, inspired him to finally embrace his African heritage and black identity.

Living, studying, and working outside of the Western world helped Colescott understand the damaging legacy of these famous images and the role that art played in subjugating black bodies. Unlike the beautiful paintings of Kerry James Marshall, Colescott’s work is garish and disruptive. They’re more like the disturbing worlds that reside within the works of Nicole Eisenman. But unlike the generally off-putting nature of Eisenman’s work, it’s easy to see that Colescott is making very specific points about race and identity. Despite these heavy themes, humor is Colescott’s ammo. His paintings rely on irony, sarcasm, and biting wit to dismantle the idea of a singular narrative and correct the historical record by inserting his voice.

Colescott’s art demands to be seen and heard, and it seems like the art world might finally be ready to look and listen...a full decade after his death. The first Colescott retrospective debuted in 2019 at the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati and will be touring to museums like the Portland Art Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center through 2021 and possibly (hopefully) beyond.