Mel Casas, Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash)

0:00:05.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art looking at a large canvas. This is by Mel Casas. It’s called Humanscape 70 (Comic Whitewash). The first thing we recognize are figures from the Marvel and D.C. Comic superhero universes. The comic book figures are oriented every which way.

0:00:25.6 Victor Gomez: Hawkman flying through, Spider-Man clinging onto the right side of the canvas, and you have this tilted movie screen which makes the composition even more dynamic.

0:00:37.9 Dr. Zucker: Batman is coming at us foot first, Superman seems to be flying through space, Thor seems to almost be falling out of the canvas, but the boy seems stable.

0:00:49.1 Gomez: He is also not making eye contact with the viewer but rather looking off into the distance.

0:00:55.6 Dr. Zucker: The boy, however, is not completely disassociated from the world of the comic because we see a thought bubble coming from him with the word “wow”.

0:01:06.6 Gomez: And this “wow” can be interpreted as amazement or this moment of awe.

0:01:11.3 Dr. Zucker: The boy seems to be in his own thoughts, perhaps his understanding, his appreciation, his sudden realization that the world of the comic book hero that exists above his head is not the world that he lives in.

0:01:25.7 Gomez: And I think when you look at these letters that are painted towards the bottom of the canvas, you realize that he has made a conscious decision to incorporate these white, male superheroes, putting them within the same picture plane of this boy who is not white, this boy who is not in any way depicted as heroic.

0:01:48.3 Dr. Zucker: And that distinction is made so clear by the fact that Captain America is most directly adjacent and seems to be looking directly at him, although he does not return Captain America’s gaze.

0:02:00.3 Gomez: And it’s almost as if Captain America is reaching for the boy, for his attention.

0:02:05.3 Dr. Zucker: In fact, with his right hand fingers spread, he almost seems desperate in the futility of his efforts. The term whitewash means to cover up, but the artist is incredibly clever and knows his art history, and is not only drawing on imagery of popular culture of comic book heroes but is also drawing on the visual culture of contemporary art. In the middle of the canvas is this enormous, stylized brush stroke, this whitewashing of the black field with the gold stars. And it’s a direct art historical quote of the work of Roy Lichtenstein, the famous American pop artist. And so the criticism here exists on a number of levels. There is the criticism of comic book culture and the way it doesn’t quite fit with a multi-racial American youth, but it also has to do with the way the artist, perhaps, himself feels a certain tension with mainstream American visual culture, that is, the kind of art that is seen in major museums.

0:03:06.8 Gomez: I think what Casas is driving at is the fact that media as a whole, whether that be through television, art, advertising, has the power to affect the way we think and the way we see ourselves. Here, Casas is really thinking about media, the impact of the things we consume.

0:03:28.9 Dr. Zucker: What I find so compelling about this painting is, on the one hand, its subject has serious social critique, but on the other hand, it’s a pleasure to look at. The artist has engaged our eye in so many ways, drawing not only on the incredible dynamism of the art of the comic book but also the way that fields of color can enliven and disrupt our sense of stability.

0:03:52.5 Gomez: Another thing worth noting is the color palette. You see the way he is incorporating a lot of these blues and reds and whites and how familiar and patriotic a lot of these colors can feel. We even talked about the gold stars and the way it might allude to this flag-like imagery. We might read this white brushstroke as being very painterly but also flowing and dripping into the larger expanse of the canvas. Looking at the boy, directly above him the drips almost seem to be pouring down as if they were gonna land on him. And I think it’s interesting to think about this idea of whitewash and how prevalent or how much it can pour into other aspects of life outside of media or what we tend to know or consume in art.

This work at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Alejo Bendetti, Men of Steel, Women of Wonder: Modern American Superheroes in Contemporary Art, exhibition catalogue (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2019).

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