Journal of Contemporary African Art94 • Nka

David Hammons:Concerto

in Black and Blue

Ace Gallery, NYNovember 14, 2002

February 1, 2003

Upon entering Ace Gallerygigantic warehouse-like space,one wondered what music DavidHammons had in mind when heorchestrated Concerto in Blackand Blue. While the title echoesjazz resonance, Hammons chosethe strident sound of the Japan-ese harp Koto to reveal his pieceto the public of the openingnight. (A Japanese womanplayed the instrument on a plat-form set at the far end of thegallery, much to the dismay ofthose who expected the blows ofJazz). Concerto has sinceremained silent. After the noisyfuss of the inauguration, nothingbut the sound of the visitors’steps, whispers, and occasionallaughs, was to be heard. Decep-tive as the title sounds it roots

the piece in Hammons usual playof words and makes it a state-ment in itself. As Hammons leftthe gallery empty, and in thedark, he reconstituted theparameters of an isolation cham-ber wherein, one having lost thesense of sight, the ear wasenhanced to make up for thatdeficiency. Having trapped visi-tors in a black cube Hammonsprovided them with a lighteningdevice emitting a blue flashbeam so that their lost visioncould partially be recovered. Asthe lights kept going on and off,they created an ever morphingsculpture of light that could oth-erwise be seen as a fireflies’ bal-let, depending on whether onewanted to take a conceptual orsensorial approach to it. Relyingupon the phenomenologicalexperience of color, light, space,and sound Hammons Concerto inBlack and Blue was like a discon-certing hide-and-seek gamewhere music sounded like a playof words, light failed to providefull visibility, and color remainedhelpless in grounding materiali-ty. Deploying a wide range ofeffects, Hammons used the intri-cacies of language to exhaust the

nity and jazz critiques alike. Theformer dismissed his playing offof a derogatory vision of theblack male, while the latterregretted that a great artistictalent had been taken over bythe entertainment machine.Beyond arguments that could bemade as to whether or not Ham-mons’ Concerto is a clin d’oeil toArmstrong’s Rhapsody, Armstrongperformance in Rhapsody in Blacka Blue offers a critical frameagainst which to reflect on thenew development of Hammonswork. Having left the street thathad granted him relative inde-pendence and abandoned low-brow materials that located hiswork in the field of the subver-sive, how close to art-worldspectacle is Hammons Concertowith its grandiloquent settingand fancy flashlights? Is the voidin Concerto in Black and Bluetranscendence or vacuity?

As a whole, the title groundsHammons practice in the “signi-fyin’”, a literary theory delineat-ed by Henri Louis Gates andconvincingly applied to his workby Coco Fusco1. Each word ofthe title further illustrates howhidden meaning can be revealed

David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue, Photograph by Katharina Bosse

meanings of words heavilycharged in racial and culturalconnotations. He also used bothlight and color to foregroundissues of visibility and invisibili-ty, materiality and immateriality,specifically as they come intoplay in debates around race andessence.

Music—A Play of Words

Despite its free-flowing formand the jazzy resonance of itstitle, Hammons Concerto in Blackand Blue was far from an improv-isation. In his usual doubleentendre fashion, Hammonsencoded complex references inhis title that calls for an inter-textual reading of the work. Thetexts here could be partitions,for Concerto in Black and Bluecertainly recalls more than justone Jazz title. Coincidentally ornot, the title that comes closerto Concerto in Black and Blue isthat of a film short featuring ajazzman. In Rhapsody in Blackand Blue (1932) Louis Arm-strong, clad in faux-leopard skinwas cast as a modern minstrel, arole that owed him much despisein the part of the black commu-

David Hammons, Concerto in Black and Blue, Photograph by Katharina Bosse. Originally published in The New Yorker

Spring / Summer 2001 Nka • 95

through an alteration of the rela-tionship between a given termand its usual meaning. If“Black” obviously refers to thecolor black, that of the darknessof the gallery space, and ofnight, and “Blue” to the color ofthe flashlight beam, both “black”and “blue” refer to skin color. Inblack talk, black people who arevery dark skin are seen as soblack as to being blue and arecalled as such. “Blue blacks” areso black that they are lost in theconfines of the bluest night, theultimate blackness. As the bluelight casts all visitors in a blueshadow regardless of their skincolor, the spectrum of race-defining terms in Concerto inBlack and Blue is fully playedout, and subverted, as darknessenvelops them all and blue istheir only color. This said, havevisitors become all black (blue)or colorless instead?

Light and (In)Visibility—A House with Lights

Hammons’ use of light in Con-certo in Black and Blue is rootedin an African American traditionthat sees blackness as the ulti-mate experience of invisibility.In Ralph Ellison oft-cited Invisi-ble Man (1952)—to which JeffWall gave a brilliant illustrationand interpretation in a recentphotograph—light is used as acritical tool to give form to theconcept of the (in)visibility ofrace. In the novel the blackcharacter needs more light thanhis white neighbors to see, andabove all be seen. Interestinglyenough, Hammons once con-tributed a piece to Tribes, thegallery of his friend the blindpoet Steve Canon, in whichinstead of adding more lightbulbs to the house as did theinvisible man in his basement,Hammons replaced the existingwhite bulbs with blue ones.2 Ifthe House of Blue Lights (1993)as it was called is a forerunner toConcerto in Black and Blue, thelatter problematizes issues ofinvisibility in a more elaboratemanner. Where in The House par-ticipants could not avoid theblue light unless they hid undersome piece of furniture, in Con-certo it was up to them to turnthe light on or not—that is toactivate the flashlight—toremain in the dark or not, andthey could not avoid it as therewas no place to hide. Further-more they were threatened byblindness. The uniformity ofcolor of each and everyone in theroom seemed to call for a

metaphorical color-blindness.Blindness, at least temporary,was also very much real for it isthe result of having a flashlightthrown into the face, an unpleas-ant reminder of nighttime securi-ty check. Within this spectrum,a few details become meaningfullike the choice of Koto as theinaugural instrument, an instru-ment traditionally played byblind musicians in Japan.Unless, beyond experiments inthe value of color in the econo-my of vision, Concerto was hom-age to Steve Cannon? Homage toman’s ability to live without hav-ing to rely upon vision, necessar-ily rooted in the deceptive realmof images and objects that lightand color help to shape. But inConcerto blindness was morepunition than celebration. Oneway or another, we, I vedenti(Alighiero Boetti)3 are all poten-tially bound to blindness in Ham-mons world, going blind andblinding one another in theprocess, as a result of our look-ing too hard and need to relyupon vision to define each other.In Concerto in Black and BlueHammons defies our need tocome into light as he ponderswhether the predicament of raceis being put upon us by force orwhether we willfully embrace it.

Color and (Im)Materiality—Transbluency?

Colorful or colorless, certainlycolor matters. But why blue? Theelectric blue of Concerto in Blackand Blue is reminiscent of YvesKlein’s IKB (International KleinBlue), the color he patented andthat came to stand for the mate-rialization of space. Klein’s blue,which he reportedly was able tocapture after years of looking atthe Mediterranean sky in anattempt of finding its essence,when translated on canvas in hismonochromes, opened up thefield of vision as it expandedoutside of the frame in a well-known visual effect. It is thateffect, “the pictorial climate ofthe sensibility of immaterializedblue” that was sought in TheVoid (1958). Commenting on thefiliation between Hammons’ Con-certo and Klein’s The Void, theemphasis has been placed on theall encompassing experience ofnothingness—white for Klein,black for Hammons—failing torecognize how much of an exper-iment on the value of pure colorit was. In fact, Klein had placedblue elements outside the galleryspace proper (blue curtains,

entryway painted blue) so thatfilling their eyes with blue visi-tors would be able to recover the“aura of blue” once in thewhitened gallery space. Whileblue in the monochromes andThe Void was used to capture theessence of space (“the blue ofthe blue depth of space”) Kleinused it to capture the essence ofthe body—as it was, mostlyfemale—in his Anthropometriesto which Hammons Spades seriesbears some interesting resem-blance in the imprinting process.In Concerto, if color reduced tosimple light was far less materialthan painting in the Anthro-pometries and the Spades, itequally served to convey thephenomenological presence ofthe body in an almost photo-graphic process.

A struggle between light andcolor in a darkroom where one isthreatened to have his imagefixed according to his likeness,Concerto in Black and Blue is animpossible dilemma betweenmateriality and visibility or thelack thereof. Hammons talentresides in his ability to transferlongstanding art historicaldebates on the power of colorand light in defining essence,into contemporary Americandebates of racial belonging. Hisachievement lies in his managingto encapsulate the essence ofeach and every man, not justblack, and in recognizing hisontologically fleeting quality.Not unlike Thomas Hirschhorn’sCavemanman (2002) but withmeans phenomenological morethan political, Hammons Concer-to seems to veer toward the con-clusion that a man = a man.Hammons however, is not advo-cating for a color-blind world butfor a more enlightened one. He,for sure, is beginning to see thelight. “I am beginning to seethe light” “Blue Light: Transblu-ency” as Duke Ellington wrote onhis partitions.4 Neither vacuity,nor pure transcendence, as it isvery much preoccupied withessence, Hammons: Concerto inBlack and Blue is transbluency.What best but music and a made-up word to wrap up a Hammonspiece?

Claire Tancons is a curatorialintern at the Walker Art Cen-ter, Minneapolis

1 Coco Fusco brilliantly appliedHenry Louis Gates literary theoryof the “signifyin’” to Hammonsartistic production. A “quintes-sential form of black creativity”signifyin’ in Fusco’s words opensup a space for “a culturally spe-cific practice of creating newmeaning through an alteration ofthe relationship between a giventerm and its usual meaning.” SeeCoco Fusco, "Wreaking Havoc onthe Signified: The Art of DavidHammons," Frieze no22, May1995, pp. 34-41. Republished inCoco Fusco, The Bodies That WereNot Ours and other writings (Lon-don; New York: Routledge andINIVA, 2001), pp. 43-482 The House of Blue Lights wascreated to celebrate the gallery’s15th Charlie Parker Anniversary.Jazz, once again proved to bethe inspiration and core of Ham-mons artistic practice.3 I Vedenti, the term used by theblinds to designate those whocan see was used by AlighieroBoetti from 1979 onwards toremind us that vision is just oneof the perceptive means that wehave at our disposal.4 I am beginning to see the lightand Blue Light. Transbluency aretitles of Duke Ellington pieces.

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