Titus Kaphar, the Artist Who Edits Art History

The American painter and sculptor challenges traditional forms that have been dictated by white interests. His new exhibition, located in a church in Brussels, asks why Black people are absent from Catholic painting.

In the United States, African American artists might be arrested leaving the galleries where they have just opened their shows. One day, in just such a circumstance, artist Titus Kaphar and his brother were stopped and questioned by an undercover police officer on suspicion of art theft. This is one of three life events that the painter and sculptor often uses to explain why he creates the art that he creates. The second was during a visit to the Museum of Natural History, where he had taken his 9-year-old son. His son asked a simple question that demonstrated clear insight into historic and systemic inequality. Standing in front of an equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt, who was flanked on one side by a Native American and on the other by an African American, Kaphar’s son asked, “Daddy, how come he gets to ride on the horse and those two guys have to walk?”

The 44-year-old artist, born in Michigan and raised between New Haven and California, far from his mother and the violence of his father, grew up with a foster family that supported him in his studies. Kaphar studied art history in college. In one of his classes, his art history professor arrived at the part of the book dedicated to Black artists, but decided to skip it and go on to the next chapter. Even though Kaphar protested, the professor claimed that there was not enough time or interest to cover the material. This was the third event that shaped the artist’s trajectory. Although Kaphar was unable to convince his professor to cover the material, he learned a much more useful lesson for the creative life he was about to embark upon: Exclusion is a part of the formula used to legitimize artistic canons. That which fails to reflect the interests of those who determine the canon stays sidelined. The two most affected groups in such processes are African Americans and women.

That day during Kaphar’s college experience provides us with insight into the essence of his work about the forgotten and about forgetting. About who and what is silenced. Kaphar’s life and works are inseparable. This is always true, but while many have a CV, some have a biography. In Kaphar’s case, his biography is so formative because he was born without privilege. He has nothing to lose, and that fact makes him a threat to social consensus, which historically has often been used by those in power to control artists. Art is the best social glue, but it can also be something more. Kaphar, who designed the cover of Time magazine in June in honor of George Floyd, represents a radical wing. He erases propaganda, corrects the discourse and discovers the truths that art, artists and patrons have hidden. In “Behind the Myth of Benevolence,” a linen with a portrait of Thomas Jefferson hangs partly unhooked, revealing behind it another portrait of Sally Hemings, a slave who was the mother of six of Jefferson’s children. The techniques that Kaphar uses to ensure that history be unprejudiced by the traditions of art and beauty are insightful and clear. Just as artists of the past used technical skill to clean up the legacy of those who were honored in portraits, each painting, sculpture or installation that Kaphar creates is a manifesto against hagiography. He rewinds and restores the many blemishes that have been removed and polished over in the course of making art as propaganda, paid for by the highest bidder.

Kaphar also says that the truth is a mark of beauty, and he uses the truth to “open hearts” and begin “difficult conversations.” Kaphar carefully studies the sculptural methods of Robert Rauschenberg and Sam Gilliam, using their, and other, methods to correct falsehoods that are written into the manuals of art history. He doesn’t want to erase or destroy them: Rather, he prefers to confront and discover them. He doesn’t believe in knocking down the statues of Edward Colston or Leopoldo II. He wants to answer them. Although they may be detestable and the majority of these monuments may not reflect contemporary values, Kaphar advocates creative sovereignty. A contemporary artist is capable of tearing down the worn-out references from the past.

In “Columbus Day Painting,” Kaphar uses pieces of cloth to hide the famous people who accompany Columbus in the John Vanderlyn painting from 1836. Vanderlyn’s painting was commissioned by Congress and still hangs in the Capitol rotunda, where it has been since 1847. Kaphar converts the famous people into mummy-like figures, and leaves the indigenous men to be the protagonists of the historical moment when Europeans disembarked in the West Indies. In “Shadow of Liberty,” Kaphar painted a portrait of George Washington on a horse, nailing strips of canvas to his body. On the strips are printed the names of the slaves that the first president of the U.S. owned. In “Ascension,” Kaphar cut out the silhouette of Michael Jordan in full flight, revealing behind him “The Descent from the Cross” by Roger Van Der Weyden, inviting a parallel between Jesus and Jordan.

Art is an opportunist fiction charged by political interests, and Kaphar neutralizes art without fear of discrediting it. He rips apart the artistic myth that imposes respect on centuries’ old ideas, defying white narratives. And he seeks raw reality, up to and including the country’s heart, its founders.

Now, in his new exhibition in a church in Brussels, organized by the Maruani Mercier Gallery, the artist denounces the absence of the Black population in Catholic art history. “The Evidence of Things Unseen” is a vindication of Black Christology and the Blackness of Christ as a person who deeply cared for all people, without discrimination. He uses Western pictorial tradition to subvert that tradition, to rebel against it.

In journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “Between the World and Me,” Coates writes, “Racism — the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them — inevitably follows from this inalterable condition.” Kaphar twists the canvas, he cuts, folds, and tortures it until it sings, until the truth shines forth and he has discovered just what the images had been made to hide. He silences the propaganda of the art — its origins in a racist culture, and all the accomplices that it has enjoyed throughout time.