© Fred Wilson
On view
Modern and Contemporary Art
Theodora Walton William Walton III Pavilion
Theodora Walton William Walton III Pavilion
Convocation,
2004
Fred Wilson, born 1954, Bronx, NY; active, New York, NY
Published by Crown Point Press, established 1962
Published by Crown Point Press, established 1962
2020-326
For Wilson, the concept of Blackness functions as a sociopolitical category and an aesthetic system. Both concerns are represented in Convocation. The drops of black ink on the print are anthropomorphized to resemble an assemblage of people. Some have faint speech bubbles emanating from them that seem to be in conversation. The phrases in the bubbles are quotes drawn from work by white authors describing Black characters subjected to racial trauma, including Caesar from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave (1688); Bella from Eugene O’Neill’s The Moon of the Caribbees (1918); Daisy and Sookey in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955); and Steve Daniels in Athol Fugard’s A Lesson from Aloes (1978).
Information
Title
Convocation
Dates
2004
Maker
Medium
Spit bite aquatint with color aquatint and direct gravure
Dimensions
image: 50.8 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in.)
sheet: 77.5 × 86.4 cm (30 1/2 × 34 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, the Henry E. Bessire, Class of 1957, Contemporary Art Fund
Object Number
2020-326
Place Made
North America, United States, California, San Francisco
Signatures
Signed and dated lower right: Fred Wilson '04
Culture
Techniques
[Crown Point Press, San Francisco, CA]; purchased from the above by Princeton University Art Museum, 2020.
