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  • December 31, 1969 | 7:00 PM
    December 31, 1969
    7:00 PM
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Day 8: Robert Colescott

Satire plays a huge role in Robert Colescott’s vibrant, at times claustrophobic paintings.  Colescott addressed issues surrounding history and racial stereotypes with wry, transgressive humor and keen observation. In 1975, he began creating a series of works that referenced classic Western art but recast central figures as black.

See images of George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page From an American History Textbook, and Eat Dem Taters alongside their Western art counterparts.  

Robert Colescott

Images, left to right: Vincent van Gogh, "The Potato Eaters", Oil on Canvas, Nuenen, The Netherlands: April, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Europe, F: 82, JH: 764. Robert Colescott, "Eat Dem Taters", Acrylic on canvas, 59 x 79 in., 1975
Images, left to right: Emanuel Leutze, "Washington Crossing the Delaware", 1851, Oil on canvas, 149 x 255 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Gift of John Stewart Kennedy, 1897, 97.34. Robert Colescott, "George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook", 1975, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 108 in.

30 Americans is organized by the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. The presenting sponsor at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is Altria Group.

Additional support has been provided by Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.



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