I think you can make the case that when you look carefully at art—at least paintings—many of the works that you can think of before around the later 19th century portray some form of abundance. Obviously, Dutch painting of the 1600s is really good at this, showing the material luxury of the rapidly expanding Dutch economy. Tables overflow with food, wine, and exotic fruit from the East Indies. Docks are crowded with strong, ocean-going merchant ships whose flags stand out in a brisk wind. In others, formally dressed Amsterdam oligarchs seek to press upon the viewer—that is, you—their comfort, success, and the respectability of their social station.
Painters who provided such portraits made a good living. Illustrating the scarcity that existed elsewhere in the city at the same time didn’t bring in any income for a painter.
I’ve never thought about this much until last weekend but lots of other paintings portray some sort of abundance beyond just material goods: an abundance of love, an abundance of intimacy or family ties, of comfort, of certainty, of righteousness, of justice. Most of the paintings you can think of, from famous portraits of George Washington to Bingham’s boatmen on the Missouri to Winslow Homer’s farmer in a new field have some sort of abundance as their background tone.
So, what does an art that comes from scarcity look like? Not just scarcity of material goods, but from scarcity of comfort, prestige, respect, love, justice?
These are some of the thoughts that occurred to me as I walked through a striking exhibit that’s up right now at the National Gallery in Washington DC. It’s called “With Passion and Purpose, Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson.” It’s on display through October 5 in the East Building. The Thompson are avid collectors of the work of contemporary black artists and the 60-odd works on display here represent just a portion of the collection they’ve promised to the National Gallery. The curators describe it as “the largest group of objects by Black artists to ever enter our collection at one time” ever.
Sometimes it’s very obvious and sometimes it’s less so, but most of these pieces have coordinates of scarcity rather than abundance. Once you realize what you’re looking at, it opens a door.
Let’s take a deeper dive into this next week and see what we can find.
