{"id":7912,"date":"2020-08-14T19:21:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T19:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=7912"},"modified":"2020-08-14T19:22:06","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T19:22:06","slug":"better-in-tune-with-the-infinite-the-uncharted-artistic-trajectory-of-hubert-massey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=7912","title":{"rendered":"BETTER IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE:\u00a0 The Uncharted Artistic Trajectory of Hubert Massey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0BETTER IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE:<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n

The Uncharted Artistic Trajectory of Hubert Massey<\/h3>\n
by D. Amari Jackson<\/span><\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
The fresco.\u00a0 Only the capable, the few.\u00a0 Its popular mystique stems from the medium\u2019s superior scale, its lengthy history, the scarcity of its masters.\u00a0 Not for the faint of heart or unsteady hand, the fresco is a challenging form that, for many, epitomizes the outer realms of visual art, its breathtaking scope, its expansive potential.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an extremely hard medium, one that hasn\u2019t changed since Michelangelo did the Sistine Chapel,\u201d acknowledges Hubert Massey, commonly regarded<\/span> the sole African American commissioned fresco artist in the country.\u00a0 Massey\u2019s bold work is a hallmark of the Detroit metropolitan region, colorfully adorning the walls, ceilings, and floors of such city landmarks as the TCF (formerly Cobo) Convention Center, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Athletic Club, and numerous other sites.\u00a0 The formula for fresco, adds Massey, \u201cis still the same.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
So is the challenge.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The technique most representative of fresco painting is known as \u201cbuon\u201d and involves the timely application of pigments mixed with water to a moist layer of fresh lime mortar or plaster.\u00a0 The painting of \u201cfresh\u201d lime\u2014hence the Italian term \u201cfresco\u201d\u2014with oxidized pigment must occur before the lime plaster dries, a difficult task since the consistency of the plaster is steadily changing while curing.<\/span> \u00a0Given the painting becomes an integral part of the surface or wall, the time-sensitive layering and drying processes, notes Massey, leave \u201cno room for error\u201d as you cannot go back and fix it.\u00a0 \u201cWhat you put down, stays down.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
This quality is what gives the fresco process its valuable, long-term durability.\u00a0 Though the lime permanently records anything touching it, it is relatively flexible in response to movement, moisture, and climate change.\u00a0 Combined with the natural oxidation of the pigment which, explains Massey, is \u201cbasically just crushed up stone,\u201d the colors \u201cdo not deteriorate over a period of time, they just get richer and deeper. They say a hundred years from the day that you painted a fresco, it\u2019s a hundred years richer; a thousand years from the day you painted a fresco, it\u2019s a thousand years richer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
The critically acclaimed artist further stresses the healthy nature of the process, referring to fresco as the \u201cvegetarian\u201d of the visual arts world.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s no artificial additives,\u201d clarifies Massey.\u00a0 \u201cThe medium is water, and the rest is just pigments, lime, marble, dust, river sand.\u00a0 Everything is organic, all from Earth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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Hubert Massey -Detroit Crossroad of Innovation, TCF Center<\/p><\/div>\n
Even more attractive for Massey is what he believes to be the infinite potential of his chosen medium.\u00a0 When he speaks of what his ultimate fresco would look like, his voice lightens as if conveying a magical vision playing out on an endless canvas in panoramic view.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cI would love one that allows me to do the ceiling, the walls and the floor, where you walk into it and you feel as if you were floating but, yet, when you look up in the sky, it is open-ended and has all these wonderful symbols and narratives that take you on a journey,\u201d conveys Massey. \u201cThat\u2019s what I would love to see, and I would love to be able to have that type of space to create in.\u201d Upon noting he experienced aspects of such potential art during a visit to Mexico City, Massey promotes his admiration for artists John Biggers and Charles White \u201cbecause they deal in that type of dimension, power and composition.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
He returns to his vision.\u00a0 \u201cBut I think it would be just marvelous to be able to see the ceiling and the walls all moving in harmony and working to create a piece of artwork that\u2019s awesome.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Awesome is a term commonly applied to an initial encounter with a fresco.\u00a0 Frescoes soar, in stature as in lore, climbing skyward toward the heavens, donning rotunda domes, claiming ceilings, bearing grandiloquent backstories, rich in repetition, if not always veracity,<\/span> seemingly true.\u00a0 The first frescoes, not labeled as such, adorned the walls, structures, and tombs of ancient Egypt, the country not yet labeled as such, telling mystical stories of birth, life, and death, resurrection and royalty, cosmology and infinity. The ancient practice was passed down, be it by training, dispersion, emulation, or conquest, or all the above, spanning geography and time in the form of<\/span> Greco-Roman murals, richly adorned Medieval era cathedrals and, most notably for our modern world,<\/span> within<\/span> the artistic extravagances of the Renaissance.<\/span><\/p>\n
The history of the West relentlessly paints our heroes, in war as in art, with brush-yielding conquerors and colorful accounts of great Italian masters and imperious popes locked in epic battles over the exigencies of image.\u00a0 The names are both singular and familiar\u2014Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Tintoretto.\u00a0 Their stories recycle as legend.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Hubert Massey – \u201cLaocoon and Sons\u201d Atheneum Hotel<\/p><\/div>\n
Michelangelo was a sculptor, not a painter.\u00a0 At least, that\u2019s what he thought.<\/span> But<\/span> Pope Julius II, known as<\/span> the \u201cWarrior Pope\u201d or \u201cFearsome Pope\u201d depending on which survivor you asked, gave the reluctant yet talented artist a deal he could not refuse, though he initially did, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A compromise was reached only after the powerful pontiff sweetened the<\/span> papal pot by<\/span> agreeing to let Michelangelo paint the chapel the way he, not the Pope, envisioned.\u00a0 From that point on, the relationship was seldom sweet.\u00a0 The dictatorial Julius criticized Michelangelo\u2019s slow pace while the artist did the same over the Vatican\u2019s late payments. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>This continued for four years, until 1512, when the 37-year-old artist completed his 5,000 feet in diameter, 300-figure series of nine pictures depicting God\u2019s Creation of the World, God\u2019s Relationship with Mankind, and Mankind\u2019s Fall from God\u2019s Grace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Twenty-four years later, Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel under the patronage of Pope Paul III to cover its altar wall with\u00a0<\/span>The Last Judgment<\/span><\/i>, depicting the second coming of Christ amidst the ascension of the saved to paradise, and the<\/span> dragging of the damned to hell.\u00a0 Again, he was criticized, this time by<\/span> Papal Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, who vocally deemed the nudity-laden fresco lewd and outrageous.\u00a0 Michelangelo\u2019s response was legendary, forever cementing the disgruntled church official\u2019s image in the massive painting by making Minos, judge of the underworld, resemble Cesena, replete with the ears of a donkey and a snake biting his genitals.\u00a0 Upon Cesena\u2019s subsequent complaints to the Pope, the unsympathetic pontiff reportedly pointed out that his authority did not extend to hell.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Hubert Massey at Atheneum Hotel in Detroit painting \u201cLaocoon and Sons\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n
Unfortunately, given the emergence and proliferation of oil painting, the glory days of the fresco did not extend past the<\/span> mid-16th century.\u00a0 The ancient process largely fell<\/span> out of favor for three centuries before briefly reemerging in the Mexican mural renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>This period was dominated by the works of popular painter, Diego Rivera, and included such Mexican muralists as Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Aurora Reyes Flores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
While the mural renaissance would lose steam by mid-century, the ancient practice would continue as subsequent Mexican artists employed the fresco to express themselves artistically and politically.\u00a0 The impact of Rivera, a former sign painter who spent significant time in Michigan and adorned the Detroit Institute of Arts with his world-famous industrial murals, would far exceed his lifespan.\u00a0 Lucienne Bloch and Stephen Pope Dimitroff, two longtime assistants and close friends of Rivera and his famous wife, painter Frida Kahlo, furthered the form, producing 50 murals across the United States for schools, hospitals, businesses, and religious institutions.\u00a0 Dimitroff died in 1996 and Bloch followed in 1999, but not before the two, who\u2019d married in Flint six decades prior, returned to Detroit in 1995 to counsel 12 select artists on the ancient process of fresco, one being a Flint native, former sign painter, emerging muralist, and limitless dreamer named Hubert Massey.<\/span><\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s time we present a new narrative, or, at least, a more inclusive account, set not in the symmetrical, column-clad cathedrals or spiraling rotundas of Florence and Vatican City, but in the resilient postindustrial presentations of Detroit, one steeped in an urban ethos, less in lore, nonetheless conveying a rich tradition rooted in ancient limestone.\u00a0 It begins 70 miles north in the industrial and quintessentially 20<\/span>th<\/span> century American city of Flint in the mid-70s where a multitalented Black kid draws cartoons,<\/span> comic books, and dreams of creating artwork like Norman Rockwell while making a name for himself on the gridiron.<\/span>\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>I was kind of an anomaly because I played football,\u201d acknowledges Massey, noting he received scholarship offers in football, track, and art, the latter paving the Grand Valley State University junior\u2019s way to a semester at the<\/span> University of London\u2019s Slade Institute of Fine Arts.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cThe school was over 130-something years old at the time, and I went there for painting, and learned a little bit about art history,\u201d recounts Massey, who was \u201cjust down the street from the British Museum.\u00a0 I used to go in there to look at the artwork and see some of the sculptures\u201d and it was a \u201cbig awakening for me because I\u2019m from Flint.\u00a0 So at the age of 21, being exposed to all that and seeing that these artists were extremely successful was well beyond the clich\u00e9 of the \u2018starving artist\u2019 in the United States.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Iconic<\/span> Flemish Baroque artist, Peter Paul Rubens, had a \u201chome in the south of France with a drawbridge,\u201d recalls Massey, adding \u201cthat was his <\/span>summer<\/span><\/i> home.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
The impact of the semester abroad was indelible.\u00a0 Returning to Grand Valley State, Massey was faced with a choice.<\/span>\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>I was a pro prospect in football after my sophomore year in college and they were asking if I was going to try out for the pros.\u00a0 And I said, \u2018No, I think I\u2019m gonna do art.\u201d Applying the same discipline he\u2019d applied to his stellar athletic career, Massey proceeded \u201cto learn as much as I possibly could about the mediums, and how certain combinations of materials create art.\u201d He eventually moved to Detroit to paint signs, a well-established practice given the city\u2019s early 20<\/span>th<\/span> century adoption of paved roads.<\/span>\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>All the billboards up until the early nineties were hand painted,\u201d clarifies Massey, who painted high resolution images using only oil paint and a brush through the 1980s and into the early 90s.\u00a0 \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any aerosol cans or spray guns or anything like that.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It was hand paint and, come to find out, Diego Rivera was a sign painter as well, so that\u2019s what attracted me even more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
While spending 12 years as a pictorial painter at Gannett Outdoor Sign Company, and studying art restoration and conservation, Massey furthered his own craft and made his mark on the state of Michigan.\u00a0 In 1992, he produced the 30-foot high Hellenic mural still gracing the lobby of the Atheneum Hotel in Detroit.\u00a0 Painted in oil, \u201cLaocoon and Sons\u201d remains a popular attraction for those visiting the city\u2019s historic Greektown region.\u00a0 In 1995, the same year he studied under Bloch and Dimitroff, Massey depicted the \u201cHistory of Detroit\u201d in a granite petrograph carving housed at the entrance of the city\u2019s IRS Building.\u00a0 In 1997,<\/span> he designed the terrazzo floor of the Rotunda Room of the Charles H. Wright Museum<\/span> of African American History.\u00a0 The floor, 72 feet in diameter, hosts \u201dGenealogy,\u201d a poignant depiction of the struggles of Africans and African Americans throughout history.\u00a0 Massey\u2019s works now<\/span> appear in or on landmarks throughout the Detroit metropolitan area as well as in<\/span> Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and his hometown of Flint.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Hubert Massey – Terrazzo floor, Rotunda Room of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cMassey\u2019s impressive lunette frescoes have graced the DAC\u2019s first floor dining space for over 20 years and have become a cornerstone in our fine arts collection,\u201d says Michael Crane, artist and curator at the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC).<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>In 2001,<\/span> Massey painted the club\u2019s 18-foot high frescoes, becoming the first African American commissioned to create a mural for the DAC.\u00a0 Crane characterizes Massey as \u201can exceptional artistic talent\u201d and \u201cleading contemporary practitioner of traditional fresco painting\u201d who keeps his process \u201cas pure as possible\u201d in emulating such forbearers as Rivera.\u00a0 \u201cCompositionally, Massey utilizes the frescoes lunette form to its fullest potential.\u00a0 He incorporates visual elements important to the DAC, such as the clubhouse fa\u00e7ade and the four athletes, set up in a triangular manner, and places them within Detroit architectural landmarks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Crane is far from alone in his high regard.\u00a0 Numerous awards and honors have accompanied Massey\u2019s work and community engagement, among them a 2010 Alain Locke award by the Detroit Institute of Arts\u2019 Friends of African Americans<\/span> auxiliary.\u00a0 In 2011, he won a<\/span> Kresge Fine Arts Fellowship for his track record of artistic achievement and his impact on communities within metropolitan Detroit.\u00a0 In 2012,<\/span> his alma mater, Grand Valley State,<\/span> recognized his work with<\/span> an honorary doctorate of fine arts.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In 2014, Massey was commissioned by the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority to create the first large-scale mural completed for the Cobo (now TCF) Center since 1987.\u00a0 Assisted by disabled students and Detroit area youth, Massey completed the 30 by 30-foot fresco celebrating the city and its people, \u201cDetroit: Crossroad of Innovation,\u201d in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cHubert Massey is a master storyteller sharing stories of the community, cultural heritage, and history of the region in his work,\u201d<\/span> says TCF Center curator, Maureen Devine.\u00a0 Devine clarifies that the focus of the art collection at the center is to share stories of Detroit, the region, and the state.\u00a0 \u201cIt was fascinating to watch the progress throughout the process,\u201d she recalls, of what became a four-year project.\u00a0 \u201cWe consider this fresco one of our great accomplishments.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Massey\u2019s accomplishments continue.\u00a0 Two months ago,<\/span> on Juneteenth, the renowned artist led a team of 30 local students<\/span> and young trauma survivors from the advocacy group, Detroit Heals, in designing a \u201cPower to the People\u201d mural on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Massey was chosen by the students to lead the project given his work with community youth, his experience, and his superior artwork.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The bold message, which covers a major city block, replaces the \u2018o\u2019 in \u201cPower\u201d with a giant fist.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Ultimately, for Massey, the magic is in the math. The key, for him, is in the effective division of what others would deem large amounts of blank or empty space.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for me to control a large space, say a 30 by 30-foot mural, where do you start?\u201d prods Massey.\u00a0 \u201cDo you start in the middle?\u00a0 Do you start to the left?\u00a0 So I have to think of segmenting and breaking up space.\u201d\u00a0 He invokes a popular film where a NASA mathematician uses an ancient technique to calculate how to get a rocket to the moon.<\/span> \u00a0\u201cThe same process she was using, I use.\u00a0 It\u2019s called the Golden Ratio, which is 1.618.\u201d\u00a0 Embedded in the colossal monuments of ancient Egypt and employed by the likes of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, the technique enables Massey to accurately segment any canvas, wall, or floor he adorns. \u201cI\u2019m dealing with visual space and visual emptiness that allows me to build a structure or armature so I can create my compositions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Passionately, he continues.\u00a0 \u201cI am constantly thinking about what\u2019s the best dynamic symmetry I can get so I can invite the viewer in to see the artwork, to be inside the artwork and move around and see all these wonderful things as opposed to just having something that\u2019s at eye level, something that\u2019s just one dimensional.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Consistently, Massey dreams in endless dimensions, beyond space and time, simultaneously in point and wave, ever approaching the infinite.\u00a0 He strives to see the unseeable and reach through the very walls he so masterfully engages.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see a wall, I don’t see the wall physically,\u201d explains Massey, noting you could touch the wall, but \u201cI see a wall that\u2019s infinity, where my hand goes into infinity through that wall because there\u2019s no wall there for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s just space. And that\u2019s what I deal with, from front to infinity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no physical barrier there for me,\u201d reiterates Massey.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s only to the infinite.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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