Henry Taylor: B Side
Oct 4, 2023–Jan 28, 2024
The dress, ain't me
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Taylor is the youngest of eight children in a large extended family whose members—from his mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins to his own three children—appear frequently in his work. Taylor's parents moved from the East Texas cotton town of Naples to Oxnard, California, in 1944, making them among the millions of Black Americans who left the segregated South in search of greater economic opportunities and social freedoms during the post-World War II phase of the Great Migration. Their experiences, and the stories he heard from them growing up, instilled in Taylor a sensitivity to the cultural and political currents affecting Black Americans. As with his other works, Taylor paints his family from memory, in-person sittings, and snapshots.
Henry Taylor, Cora, (cornbread), 2008
Henry Taylor, Cora, (cornbread), 2008. Acrylic on canvas, 62 5/8 × 49 7/8 × 3 1/8 in. (159 × 126.7 × 8 cm). Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. © Henry Taylor. Photograph by Jeff McLane
This work is an homage to Taylor’s mother, Cora, whose name the artist has playfully circled (as if in a word search puzzle) within the hand-lettered “corn bread” seen at the top. To further the connection with his mother, Taylor depicts items from his childhood that he associates with her: a large pan of golden cornbread (a staple at Cora’s dinner table), an empty pot, and a container of Morton iodized salt. Hanging above the stove in anticipation of being poured over the cornbread is a bottle of Brer Rabbit syrup, a subtle critique of this country’s long enabling of racist stereotypes.