Artist Robert Colescott's explorations of human absurdity reveal ambiguous relationships between belief and practice, individual and culture, and sex and morality. His works illuminate what writer Barbara Babcock calls, "a tolerated margin of mess," which she defines as areas of duality that obliterate conventional societal codes.
Colescott’s provocative paintings are worlds saturated in satire, where mischief and transgression are not mutually exclusive. He colors outside the lines of societal standards by subverting our self-insulating insistence on the need for comfort and safety. With a wink and a mischievous smile, we’re invited to observe a rogues gallery of contradictions prancing through surreal "Taboos'R'Us" pastiches or bucolic settings –– some cloaked as stereotypes, others in Disney dayglo –– behaving in ways we'd rather not know about. Colescott lays waste to our preconceived notions of social order. Are women sexually harassed or willing participants? Is the Black man a victim or the aggressor? Are we trapped in history or is history trapped in us? Should we really believe what we’re seeing? These dichotomies are not meant to be understood concretely, but more as something to be seen through, offering something beyond the superficialities of consumerism, structures of the past, or plain old complacency. There’s always more than one story. Colescott shows us, in the words of James Baldwin, "the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
Colescott provokes examination of a kind of counter-culture experience, an immensely uncomfortable process of inquiry and shedding. I believe that this kind of assessment and the discomfort that results is the most powerful vehicle for transformation, a gateway to personal and societal accountability. In a culture where our worst attributes are treated as virtues to aspire to, Colescott’s art is a portal to different ways of thinking, imagining unconventional societies where broadmindedness, compassion, and wisdom prevail and all people are POC (People of Consciousness.) Then, and only then, can we evolve into a society where egalitarianism is categorically defined as a birthright. From this perspective we can reclaim our humanity.
What are you willing to let go of? What do you want to grow into? Whatever life you're in is a channel for change. Herein lies the beauty of Robert Colescott's tolerated margins of mess. He has shown us the way. It would behoove us to follow.