DNA: Sepia: III

A contemporary of artists Sam Gilliam, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams, and Howardena Pindell, McArthur Binion has been equally committed to abstraction for more than four decades. His paintings are traversed by grids hand-drawn with an oil stick, with wavering lines that intentionally resist the cool perfection of Minimalism. The grids are further complicated by Binion’s underlayers of paper, in this case in this case pages from his address book. He refers to this aspect of the work as its “under conscious” and “emotional genepool,” alluding both to DNA—the title of the series—and to Freudian thought.

Binion’s work tests the divisions that art history has set up between abstraction and representation, or between supposedly apolitical and politically engaged work, a distinction that has plagued debates over what constitutes —and should be celebrated as—“black art.” Binion’s subtle enmeshing of abstraction and autobiography recontextualizes the grid, pointing to Southern quilts and West African textiles, while the artist himself sees the work as occurring “at the crossroads—at the intersection of Bebop improvisation and Abstract Expressionism,” suggesting a dual heritage.