Art Talk
Meleko Mokgosi at the Fowler Museum
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp talks about Bread, Butter and Power.
By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp • • 4m ListenHistory painting in the traditional overview of Western art brings to mind canvases that can take up the entire wall of a museum like Jacques Louis David’s idealized view of Napoleon crowning himself emperor of France from 1807. There aren’t many contemporary artists who ally themselves with this genre.
Photography has come to dominate pictorial realism. An exception is Meleko Mokgosi whose 20-panel installation from his ongoing series Democratic Intuition is bringing a new audience to UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Organized by Fowler curator Erica Jones, it is the artist’s first solo museum show in Los Angeles.
Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Installation view, Fowler Museum at UCLA Courtesy the artist and Honor Fraser, Los Angeles Photo © Monica Nouwens
Meleko Mokgosi Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery Photo © Monica Nouwens
Meleko Mokgosi Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery Photo © Monica Nouwens
Meleko Mokgosi Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery Photo © Monica Nouwens
The scene is, like many of the most memorable images in this show, a bedroom. In some cases, there is little separation between sleeping and living spaces in the lives of the sitters. A man perches on the edge of his bed while evangelical ministers orate on the TV. His prized possession is a life-size ceramic sculpture of a black and white spotted dog.
Meleko Mokgosi Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery Photo © Monica Nouwens
Meleko Mokgosi Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery Photo © Monica Nouwens
Rather than turn his back on traditional painting, however, Mokgosi uses it to involve his viewers in that legacy both intellectually and emotionally. Not one painting in the series tells us what to think, it just tells us to think. The end wall of the show includes a shelf with his own collections of books and his handwritten notes on a few texts. The last panel of his installation includes hand-printed notes on gender and power.
