Re-presenting history: girl with a pearl necklace by Barbara Walker and Titus Kaphar
What could be more astonishing than discovering in the same exhibition, The Time is Always Now, two contemporary reinterpretations by Barbara Walker and Titus Kaphar inspired by the same neoclassical painting. A re-reading of Western art history painting through two Black artists’ point of view.
In a room entirely painted in bright red, at the heart of the exhibition The Time is Always Now at the National Portrait Gallery, she is there. Isolated in the corner of her graphite drawing, drawn with gray and black pencils. In the next room, she is still there, this time full of colors, larger but still in the left corner of her painting. This young black girl has no name, but she has a story. A personal story within the grand History, a story that has not been transmitted.
Barbara Walker, artist and illustrator from Birmingham, renders black figures, marginalized in the paintings of white neoclassical artists, central in her Vanishing Point series, started in 2018. Walker was inspired by Pierre Mignard’s 1682 oil on canvas titled Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth with an unknown female attendant, which the visitor can observe a few floors above — the National Portrait Gallery having acquired it in the 19th century. But two centuries later, it is not the duchess who is the center of attention, it is this “unknown female attendant”. Walker thus shifts the dominant art historical perspective. The young girl, dressed in a dress and wearing a pearl necklace, holds in her hand red coral and a nautilus filled with pearls. Walker worked with shades of gray and black to bring out more details in her stoic gaze and discreet smile. In the center, invisible at first glance but imposing even in her absence: the Duchess of Portsmouth, her hand pressing down on the young girl’s shoulder, as heavy as the weight of a forgotten heritage.
Through this graphite drawing on embossed paper, Walker questions the viewer about this representation of Black figures offered by the 17th-century oil masters and their works dedicated to the glorification of colonialism. She literally changes the perspective by changing the vanishing point, focusing only on the girl. The more one looks at this young girl, the more one wants to get to know her. Impossible because she has been objectified for several centuries as a mere “attendant”. Walker explains: “The girl is a possession. It’s emotionally and psychologically disturbing but, as I draw, I imagine that I’m extracting and saving her.” To extract her from the duchess’s arm and from this colonialist painting is also the visitor’s desire.
Hardly has the visitor had time to reflect on the legacy of marginalization and erasure, that the young girl presents herself, represents herself again to him. She transmits her story to him again through the eyes of Titus Kaphar, an American painter. The oil on canvas entitled Seeing through time 2, highlights those who are the forgotten ones of history. Skillfully, Kaphar combines two paintings — one to conceal and one to reveal. He thus places at the heart of his work this woman with a deep and powerful gaze but hidden by the contours of the duchess’s silhouette, contours that we would like to finally get rid of to fully appreciate the other layer. The young girl is still present, smiling more, with her green dress, her white pearl necklace, and her nautilus filled with the same pearls, a symbol of beauty for those who wear them. The same pearls as the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer and as Louise de Kéroualle but not the same fame.
Walker and Kaphar deconstruct neoclassical works to highlight this forgotten figure, to address the absence of Black representation in Western art history. Reducing the duchess to a simple perceptible outline, is to focus attention on this young girl; the visitor only has eyes for her: finally. Previously on the margins, she is now central, essential, unforgettable.
The Time is Always Now: Artists reframe the Black figure, The National Portrait Gallery, London, until 19 May.
