FEATURED IN DisCerning Eye
Mark Jenkins’ writing is at a new level in DisCerning Eye, his new art critic platform born of the Washington Post’s baffling decision to cut its galleries section. Jenkins covers arts in the nation’s capital with vigor, and we are grateful for it. Here’s DisCerning Eye’s museum/gallery review of Joseph Holston.
JOSEPH HOLSTON
Review by Mark Jenkins | December 4, 2024
Joseph Holston, Grand Finale, 2013. Oil on canvas, 42 x 50 in
OVER HIS LONG CAREER, JOSEPH HOLSTON HAS WORKED in many styles and media. But he's returned often to jazz musicians, the theme of "Call and Response," his AU Museum show. Most often, he shows them at work, and at play, merging with the sounds they make. In these prints and paintings, the riffs are represented by curved-edge blocks of Cubist-style color, often pitting blues and purples against reds and oranges. The heads are usually black circles, suggesting notes from a musical score come to life atop a swinging body.
Joseph Holston, Jazz at Takoma Station, 1990. Etching. 12 x 14.75 in.
Holston was born 80 years ago in a rural, racially segregated area of what is now an upscale Maryland suburb. His images are archetypal, yet rooted in local experience. Among his most recent works is a painting titled "Jazz at Takoma Station," named for a club in northwest D.C.
The show includes a few more realistic works, although even they have fanciful elements. A 1990 screenprint, "Jazz," is dominated by a crossways golden saxophone, and the man who holds it is surrounded by clippings about the Black experience. The musician emerges from his culture, yet remains embedded in it.
Joseph Holston, Jazz, 1990. Screenprint, 35.5 x 25 in.
THE VIEW OF HOLSTON'S CAREER WIDENS SUBSTANTIALLY in Amy Kaslow Gallery's survey, "Black Lives, A Retrospective." It includes many additional prints of stylized jazz musicians, but also work that's either more abstracted or more realistic than the musical numbers at the AU Museum. Skill, not a specific style, is the unifying factor.
Joseph Holston, Miz Emily, 1982. Oil on canvas, 56 x 33 in.
Joseph Holston, Black Boy, 1972. Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in.
Although most of the pictures are expressionist and often based on geometric forms, there are two photo-derived paintings that depict African Americans in impoverished circumstances, yet illuminated by golden light. "Miz Emily" has a near-Biblical feel, while "Black Boy" poignantly calls attention to its subject's mismatched shoes.
Joseph Holston, Two Nudes 1989/2003. Hand-colored etching, 22.50 x 19.25 in.
All the prints and paintings are representational, but Holston's modes range widely. His Cubist-influenced still lifes are aggressively one-dimensional yet fractured into multiple planes that represent theoretical depth. There's a hint of Futurism in "Two Nudes," whose overlapping bodies suggest the same person at different moments. The orange field of "African Mask," a boldly colored etching, seems to embody the life, or lives, behind the flat surface. As in his jazz pictures, Holston uses color and shape to potently suggest sound and motion.
Joseph Holston, African Mask, 2010. Etching, 23.75 x 28 in.
Joseph Holston: Call and Response
Through Dec. 8 at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW.
Joseph Holston: Black Lives, A Retrospective
Through Feb. 16 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda. amykaslowgallery.com.