Will Barnet & Bob Blackburn: An Artistic Friendship in Relief
Orangeburg, S.C. – The Arthur Rose Museum at Claflin University will be the first Historically Black College or University to host a major art exhibition showcasing the works of two great American artists – printmakers Will Barnett and Bob Blackburn.
The exhibition, “An Artistic Friendship in Relief,” is on display at the Arthur Rose Museum from Wednesday, April 1, to Sunday, April 19, 2009, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to the public. A reception for the exhibition will be held at the museum on Thursday, April 16, at 6 p.m.
“This is one of the most highly recognized shows by two of America’s greatest American printmaking artists,” said Professor Habibur Rahman, art department chairman. “Bob Blackburn, an African American, is considered the pioneer of printmaking.” “I am very excited to have this exhibit at Claflin.”
“An Artistic Friendship in Relief,” sponsored by the Art Department and the Arthur Rose Museum with support from Hofstra University, features 51 original prints from the collection of Wesley and Missy Cochran of La Grange, Ga., that track the parallel and intersecting artistic journeys and constructive collaboration of these two great American artists over a 51-year period.
The prints of Barnet, the elder and mentor, who is still alive at 97, are echoed by those of his protégé, Bob Blackburn, whose participation in the Harlem Renaissance, led him to expand the gains of this movement by creating the Printmaking Workshop in New York in 1948. Blackburn’s workshop became the most well respected printmaking workshop in the United States. In fact, artists from around the world came to work with him.
Their work is included in major libraries and museums, including the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim, Whitney, Brooklyn museums, New York Public Library, Schomburg and Hatch-Billops collections (New York), the American Art Museum at the Smithsonian, and the collections of Harmon and Harriet Kelley (Texas). Bob Blackburn’s last major project is a monumental work commissioned by Arts for Transit in 2001, two years before he died. It is a series of large, lively ceramic and glass mosaic murals against the platform wall of the 116th Street station in Harlem (Lexington Avenue Line), entitled, “In Everything There is a Season.”
Dr. Barbara Lekatsas, the guest curator, conceived the exhibition theme “artistic friendship in relief” from the prints in the Cochran Collection, and interviewed the artists in preparation of the exhibition catalogue essay.
“The Wesley and Missy Cochran Collection is a great collection of 20th century prints and is especially rich in its African American collection. This collection embodies diversity,” said Dr. Lekatsas. “These two men had over a 60-year relationship in terms of collaboration, creation and in helping each other and educating, as well, future generations of artists.”
Both are internationally recognized for the elevation of printmaking as art, she continued. These two artists literarily elevated printmaking by showing the possibilities of printmaking. They are in every major collection throughout the country. This is an exhibition of national importance indicating what the artists could do to further a dialogue that transcends all sorts of divisions.
Dr. Lekatsas, a faculty exchange scholar from Hofstra University, currently teaches comparative literature at Claflin and has been working with Arthur Rose Museum Director Herman Keith, Professor Rahman and the art department itself, to bring this exhibition of American prints to Claflin University. An expert on Surrealism and the Avant-Garde, she teaches within the Department of Comparative Literature at Hofstra University and writes about art and literature.
In an interview with Dr. Lekatsas before his death in 2003, Bob Blackburn spoke of the Printmaking Workshop as “an institution designed to give.” Blackburn was also influenced by the French art movements, as was Barnet. Their work reflects abstraction, cubism, yet also New Deal Realism. Blackburn modeled the Printmaking Workshop on Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris, which moved to New York during wartime. Barnet and Blackburn both attended that famous workshop and Barnet helped Blackburn set up the Printmaking Workshop. They remained friends and collaborators for over sixty years. Their contribution to the evolution of the art of the print is internationally recognized.
