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Black Arts at Oxy

John Outterbridge

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John Outterbridge Bio

John Outterbridge (b. 1933 Greenville, NC) is a Los Angeles based artist working primarily in assemblage sculpture. Outterbridge has been an influential educator, community activist, and participant in the Black Arts movement in Southern California throughout his ongoing career. He took up this role soon after moving to Los Angeles upon graduating from the Academy of Art in Chicago. Much of Outterbridge's work deals with oppressive realities the black community faced (and continues to face) in Los Angeles, including quickening impoverishment as a result of deindustrialization, police brutality, job discrimination, and a deficit of educational and artistic resources. The 1965 Watts Uprising greatly influenced Outterbridge particularly because of his relationship to Noah Purifoy whose work in the exhibition 66 Signs of Neon marked the beginning of a public commitment to community building and his assemblage work.

In the early 1970’s Outerbridge worked with the city officials to develop an arts education program at the already existing Compton Communicative Art Academy (CCAA) which received state and local funding to teach community classes in across all art disciplines. The Academy collapsed in 1975 due to inadequate funding after white flight from the area created an economic vacuum which made many public projects in Watts and Compton impossible.

In 1975 Outterbridge succeeded Noah Purifoy as art director of the Watts Towers Art Center. The Watts Towers Art Center held enormous sway in the black community in L.A. as an alternative form of self-governance and self-determination. Community involvement meant that Outterbridge was not far removed from black radicalism. Education was a contested arena as proven by the shooting of Southern California Black Panther Party president Alprentice Carter at UCLA by another black radical organization when he was helping coordinate leadership for a new Black Studies Program. When asked about his involvement in arts education programs in Compton and Watts, Outterbridge has said, “‘in a way, we were all panthers,’” which demonstrates his sympathy for revolutionary black nationalism as well as the general attitude among peers like Noah Purifoy towards art as a means of social change.

On one hand, Outterbridge’s work as an educator fit neatly within revolutionary black nationalist constructs of community organizing and empowerment. Revolutionary nationalists like the Black Panther Party focused on separatism in the form of black social and economic independence from white Americans, and they attempted to maintain a somewhat uniform internal identity (at some point denigrating symbols of Africa) to achieve their goals. On the other hand, Outterbridge's actual work makes use of African motifs and references to reconstructed black cultural mythology as well as black spiritual practice which is often seen in his dolls and fetishes (many alluding to Gullah culture). His work aligns more closely with black cultural nationalism which was active in seeking social change but contrasted with radical nationalism, because it emphasized the importance of reconstructing some cultural and historic lineage which had been stripped of black people during slavery. The division between revolutionary and cultural nationalism was a source of significant conflict and debate within the black community in L.A. (see Alprentice Carter) and nationwide; however, the distinction between the two which put them at odds was somewhat artificial. John Outterbridge assumes a unique place at the junction of revolutionary and cultural nationalism. His career and work reveal a symbiosis between these two branches of black activism during the Civil Rights era.

Outterbridge continues to live and work in L.A. and recently showed his exhibition called Rag Man at the gallery Art + Practice in Leimert Park. Several of his works also were shown for four months from 2011-2012 at the Hammer Museum as part of the exhibition Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980.

This page created by Vanessa Todd and Allison Wendt in December 2016.
John Outterbridge, "Traditional Hang Up," 1969 John Outterbridge uses everyday objects and materials and transforms them into works which are not predicated on notions of beauty, but on understanding his surroundings and other peoples' lives. Much of Outterbridge's work makes use of his exposure to African folklore and Gullah culture (the last group of people in North and South Carolina to speak creole and retain majority African traditions) over the course of his upbringing in the South. Outterbridge's assemblage pieces offer a unique perspective on the traditions and struggles within the African American community in part because of the convergence of black folk culture and city concerns and sensibilities in his sculptures.
The piece "Traditional Hang Up" was put on display at Occidental College in October of 1971. It is an assemblage allows Outterbridge to juxtapose diverse materials to achieve a patchwork effect. Disjuncture factors in heavily to any reading of "Traditional Hang-Up" because it sets the tone of irony and hypocrisy that appears in the individual elements of the sculpture. The piece was part of Outterbridge's first assemblage series called the Containment Series. Other works from the Containment Series deal with physical and psychological restriction; many are panels using metal and highlight industrialism. Among those works, "Traditional Hang Up" stands out for its unusual T-shape which resembles a partial crucifix and for its overt politics by incorporating an American flag.
The arrangement of the stars and stripes in the piece creates only a fragmented view of the American flag not an exact imitation. The flag is a piece of steel, rather than the rag or cloth which Outterbridge used in later pieces, which strips it of all the lively animation a flag normally possesses. By changing the nature of the flag, he comments on the representation of African Americans who are not given the opportunity to express themselves as individuals to the same extent as the white majority.
Similarly to the way he saw the flag operating as a tool of deception, Outterbridge viewed the relationship of African-Americans to Christianity as fraught with lies. While in many later works, spirituality is plays an affirmative role, in "Traditional Hang-Up" the crucifix-like shape speaks to Outterbridge's view that Christianity had done as much to justify violence against African-Americans as it had done to provide them spiritual support.
The bottom half of "Traditional Hang-Up" is made from a carved wood, which is filled with figurines that resemble skulls stacked one upon the other. These skulls allude to the mass murder of Africans on trans-Atlantic slave ships and the deaths of so many more black people by the hand of slave owners, lynching mobs, and governmental authorities after reaching American land. The name of the piece and its T-shaped composition extend the reference to murder: the name refers to hanging, and the shape hints at the shape of gallows.
John Outterbridge critiques nationhood and the American flag as false propaganda for a country which has from its genesis instituted governance and spirituality for the purpose of systematically killing and oppressing African Americans. Additionally, a flag left tattered is seen as a sign of disrespect, and this element of "Traditional Hang-Up" implies that murder of African-Americans has brought disgrace to the flag and to the country. This broader understanding of the flag's significance was complimented by Outterbridge's personal experiences with the flag. He enlisted in the army at age 19 and saw many neighbors and friends go serve the American military during his youth. Outterbridge recounts in an interview that he considered the American flag dubious because of its use in support of white supremacy; however, he also expresses pride in the flag’s role in his life and in the many African-Americans he knew to serve under the flag. It often decorated windows of homes in his childhood neighborhood to commemorate family members who died in military service. While "Traditional Hang Up" critiques the flag as a symbol which obscures reality, Outterbridge viewed it as a symbol which can be taken back.

Page created by Vanessa Todd and Allison Wendt in December 2016.