Barbara Chase-Riboud: speaking to the African American experience.

Barbara Chase-Riboud is an African American artist whose work encompasses sculpture, drawings, novels and poetry. Her work is often characterized by its use and variety of contrasting materials. The influences that shape her work are as varied as the materials she uses.

Converging influences

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1939, Chase-Riboud was encouraged by her family from an early age to develop her artistic talents. After studying ballet and piano, she began to focus on the graphic arts. She sold a set of prints to The Museum of Modern Art while she was still in high school. After graduating from Temple University, Tyler School of Fine Arts, she worked for a fashion magazine in New York City. Travels in Egypt during that period had an impact on her life and artistic perspective.

Chase-Riboud began working in cast bronze, the material used in All That Rises Must Converge, while completing a master's degree at the Yale School of Art. It was during this period that her work became characterized by its use of contradictory elements: hard/soft, fluid/static, ethnic/Western.

After graduating from Yale in 1960, Chase-Riboud traveled extensively in Europe, China and Africa. Her exposure to artistic traditions in other parts of the world drastically changed her work. Fascinated by African masked dancers, she made sketches exploring the ways in which the masks concealed the structure of the human form in order to take on a magical presence. At the same time, she became interested in the manner by which the masks used contrasting materials-wood, shells, straw, bone, feathers, bells, etc. - to achieved startling juxtapositions which altered their traditional associations.

Raising Our Awareness

All That Rises Must Converge, and a body of similar works from the late 1960s and early 1970s, resulted from experiments in the use of contrasting materials. The bronze and silk sculpture unexpectedly uses bronze - a hard, static medium - in a fluid, liquid way, while the silk is knotted and twisted into strong coils and placed at the bottom of the piece as though supporting it. This unconventional use of materials creates a tension and opposition between the two materials. Some of the aspects of one are transferred to the other. Metal becomes soft and silk becomes hard in order to achieve a unity of opposites.

In addition to formal concerns, Chase-Riboud also incorporates the ideals of the Civil Rights movement and elements of the African American historical experience. The title of the piece is adapted from a collection of short stories by American writer Flannery O'Connor. The title story concerns an episode that takes place on a public bus between a group of individuals - black and white, old and young, rich and poor - in a newly but uneasily integrated southern American city in the early 1960s. However, the sculpture does not directly illustrate the story but rather alludes to a common theme of alternating tension and unity amongst opposing forces.

A series of works similar in conception to All That Rises ... was dedicated to Malcolm X, shortly after his assassination. Chase-Riboud's intention in this series was to embody the idea of Malcolm rather than to make monuments to a dead man. Thus, the use of opposing materials functions on a figurative level rather than on a narrative one. The work intimates or suggests rather than explains or reveals.

Technical Concerns Unmasked

The composition of All That Rises ... is essentially figurative - based on the human form. Recalling the manner by which the African and Oceanic masks she encountered concealed the human form while still suggesting a human presence, the works she created prior to this evolved from transformation. In the process, she realized she needed to get rid of the legs to avoid the look of organic monsters. Her solution to standing the pieces without legs was to create a series of skirt pieces. The "legs" of her anthropomorphic figures were hidden by coils of twisted rope. In later works, these coils thickened and solidified. in All That Rises Must Converge, the coils serve as the support itself rather than the concealer.

Chase-Riboud's use of materials is significant in the context of African and African American artistic traditions. The artist's use of the lost-wax method of bronze casting recalls the plaques and masks created in the classical African kingdom of Benin. The coils and knots of silk suggest the handiwork of folk art traditions, such as weaving, rug making and hair braiding.

Questions about the Work

* What does this work look like to you? Is it a figure or something else? What does it remind you of? How does it make you feel? Would you call this work abstract or figurative? Why? Can a work of art be both?

* Without knowing anything about the artist, is there any way to tell that is was made by a woman? By an African American? Do you think that facts such as an artist's sex, race, ethnic background or sexuality have any bearing on the way we perceive a work of art? Why or why not?

Activities

Elementary

Use a collection of diverse materials to create sculptures - either free standing or wall assemblages. Include materials that are different in terms of texture, color, size, shape. Ask students to divide the materials into as many pairs of opposites as they can think of: hard/soft, shiny/dull, smooth/rough, natural/humanmade, etc. Explain that the sculptures to be constructed should use two materials that demonstrate a pair of these opposing categories.

Middle School

Discuss Chase-Riboud's decision to "remove the legs" from her figurative structures. Create simple human forms out of clay. Ask students to remove one element that makes it recognizably "human" - legs, arms or head - and replace this element with a component that is different in form, structural relationship and medium from the rest of the figure.

High School

* Assign students to read Flannery O'Conner's short story, "All That Rises Must Converge." Discuss relationships to Chase-Riboud's sculpture. Does a title the artist gives to a work of art have to have a relationship to the work itself? How does it effect the way we see the work of art? Ask students to find other examples of the way in which the title of a particular work of art effects our understanding of it.

* Display Chase-Riboud's sculpture between a reproduction of a bronze mask from the African kingdom of Benin and a classical Greek sculpture such as a kouros. Ask students to identify which elements All That Rises ... has in common with the others. Consider form, composition, use of materials and the way in which each work conveys an emotional or aesthetic response. Is Chase Riboud's sculpture more similar to one of the works than the other? Comparisons could also be made to photographs of African masked dancers and Egyptian statues, or examples of Oceanic sculpture. The display can also serve as a starting point for students to create their own works incorporating elements of art from different cultures and societies.

* Mature students might be interested in reading Barbara Chase-Riboud's historical fiction and collections of poetry available in most libraries.

Resources

Bearden, Romare, and Harry Henderson. The History of America's Black Artists. New York: Double-day, 1993. _____. Originals: American Women Sculptors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. Bontemps, Jacqueline F. Forever Free: African American Women, 1862-1980. Normal, IL: Illinois State University Press, 1980. Jones, Virginia W. Contemporary American Women Sculptors. Boston, MA: Oryx Press, 1986. Perry, R. A History of Afro-American Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.

John D'Addario is an assistant in Education at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.