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Rashid Johnson’s Visual Feast
The new Rashid Johnson survey at the Guggenheim is sprawling and stunning.
In some of his early self-portraits — he started out with photography after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — he photographs himself after the fashion of famous Black historical figures as part of his “The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club” series. The inclusion of an installation from Johnson’s “Broken Men” series, made in homage to the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, is instructive, suggesting the artist’s ideas of blackness transcend the U.S. and are more diasporic in form. Beyond bodily experiences, and equally as profound, is Sanguine, a large-scale performance installation at the top level of the museum featuring plants that conjoin into a hanging garden; a piano is hidden among the greenery, and a large painting nestles at its core.
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