Tales from The b.a.SKET: Black Art Sketches for the Contemporary Art Lover

By D. Amari Jackson

This week, we reach into the b.a.SKET and pull out an outspoken 20th century icon in negative light…

On March 25, 1964, an historic and unprecedented meeting took place in Washington, D.C.

Capitol Hill was abuzz as the Senate held a hearing to debate the civil rights bill originally proposed by late president John F. Kennedy and aimed at ending segregation in public places and racial discrimination in employment. Unsurprisingly, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in the building, given his ongoing rallying of President Lyndon Johnson to use the latter’s substantial political weight to push the legislation through Congress.

But what was surprising was that King was not the only iconic, internationally renowned Black leader at the Senate hearing that day. Upon completing a press conference outside the hearing, King was approached by his former critic, Malcolm X, less than a month removed from the controversial figure’s public split from the Nation of Islam.

The two luminaries shook hands and communicated briefly as Malcolm relayed his willingness to become more active in the politics of the civil rights movement, something he was unable to do under Elijah Muhammad. Although the extraordinary meeting only lasted minutes, its significance has been popularly analyzed and debated ever since.

Four decades later, in 2005, artist Fred Wilson presented an image of Malcolm taken that day by photographer Marion S. Trikosko as it had never been presented before. Employing a special lighting process in the frame that enables a transparent work to be illuminated, the unorthodox Wilson juxtaposed this image of a mesmerized Malcolm watching King speak at the presser with the 1884 painting, Madame X, by John Singer Sargent. The dual image was then inverted in color with both figures appearing as ghostly, negative images.

Entitled X, the stunning image was yet another provocative and unique artistic contribution from the Bronx, New York-born Wilson, a 1999 recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, and the Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Object, Exhibition, and Knowledge at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.  

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Amari Jackson is a creator, author, TV/web/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel, The Savion Sequence; creator/writer/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look; writer/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier; and current writer/coproducer of Listen Up! on HBCU GO/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.

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