Whistler’s mother herself, who once tried to stop the black wife of her uncle and their children from acquiring family land, makes an ironic subject for a painting whose official title, on reflection, feels more than a little racially charged: “Arrangement in Grey and Black”.īut it is a painting from a subsequent generation of artists, Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) – often credited with being among the first abstract works ever painted – that reveals just how easily the colour can curdle from soulful luminosity into something rather shadier. The artist of course shouldn’t be tarred by the appalling allegiances of his brother, who wore the grey uniform of the Confederacy in its doomed efforts to perpetuate slavery, but the fact adds context. Some may find it tough to stare squarely in the eye American painter James McNeill Whistler’s iconic sidelong portrait of his seated mother (painted in 1871) knowing, as we do, the artist’s penchant for racist remarks and his fondness for slapping abolitionists in the face.
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