A chronicle of race, rage, ritual

For hundreds of years, Christian values and literal interpretations of the Bible were breathtakingly twisted to justify trade in human flesh. Ships named for Jesus and dedicated to God’s glory carried tens of millions of Africans to slave markets in the New World. A fine new exhibition bluntly evokes that horrific detour in the long struggle to fulfill America’s promise of human liberty.

“The Most Mutinous Leapt Overboard,” an installation by Riua Akinshegun, employs drums, baskets and scores of homemade dolls to ritualize our memory of Africans taken into slavery. It also recalls the corrosive effect subjugation has had not just on American history but on African history as well.

The work is by one of 50 artists in the first of a yearlong, three-part, reverse-chronological survey of African American artists who worked in Los Angeles between the Great Depression and now. Along with works by other artists, the installation is at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, but the sizable show also occupies two venues at Cal State L.A. -- the Luckman Gallery and the University Gallery.

This first part is called “Fade (1990-2003).” The title derives from a fashionable urban haircut, asserting a cosmopolitan milieu. It also suggests a punning cinematic term: Fade to black. The title cleverly identifies the keen allegiance of guest curator Malik Gaines to the dual impact of popular culture and Conceptual art in his thinking about recent L.A. art history.

More to the point, however, “Fade” deftly chronicles a subtle but profound shift. The past dozen years or so saw an established idea fade from prominence.

Remember black art? “Fade” doesn’t chronicle black art; it charts the work of black artists instead. Black art, a movement that began in the 1960s, meant to codify the essence of a form. But categorizing a fixed identity has been abandoned. Post-black art -- like post-feminist, post-Latin American and queer (or post-gay) art -- often addresses the artist’s social experience, but it ranges far and wide.

Akinshegun’s purgative rituals with dolls evolved from rural folk art. When you’ve been shut out of the mainstream art world, folk art offers a viable, potent custom on which to build. Based in performance, the installation resonates against a very different piece, a large, powerful mural by Pat Ward Williams called “What You Lookn At,” in which the artist uses the urban folk tradition of graffiti art to anchor her image.

The title of Williams’ mural is sprayed in blood-red paint over a huge black and white dot-screen print -- 8 feet tall and 16 feet wide. It shows five black men seated before a wall. The public scale of the mural is ratcheted way down with family snapshots and media images fixed to its surface, along with snippets of documentary text.

The little collage elements pull you in close, while the mural’s enormous size pushes you back. Williams skillfully orchestrates an agitated push-pull, unlike anything Hans Hofmann ever imagined.

“Your perception of me doesn’t affect me on an abstract level,” declares one small text, before adding the kicker: “It poses a real DANGER.”

Reading this text over the dot screen of a photo enlargement, you get buzzed with an optical jolt. Despite assumptions, “what you look at” is never entirely clear.

Nearby, a visually quiet yet slyly effective 12-foot flag by Jaime Macias hangs from the ceiling. In design it replicates the stars and bars but without any red in the stripes or blue in the field of stars. The all-white flag, pointedly titled “Patriot Act,” represents the dominance of one segment of America in dealing with perceptions of threat. It also insists that, in the face of any enemy of liberty, white privilege equals surrender.

“Void of Silence: Father/Brother/Son,” a photograph by Kori Newkirk employed on the show’s poster, is a simple but surprisingly supple image. An African American hand with fingers crossed is set against a speckled-silver ground. The fingers press against one another in an eloquent caress, while dirt under the nails codifies work. The magnified fingerprint at the center is an easy symbol of identity -- of individual uniqueness, passed down within a shared genetic code -- while the crossed fingers suggest a mix of hope and luck.

Edgar Arcineaux uses graphite and gesso on frosted vellum to draw a pair of gentle portraits of a young Michael Jackson, long before plastic surgery remade his facial features. The Jackson Five-era publicity photograph on which the drawings are based is taped behind the translucent vellum, where it hovers in visual space like a ghost disappearing into whiteness. “In Loving Memory” is a poignant eulogy to something more commonly regarded with sarcasm or irritation.

A second compelling work related to Jackson -- an expertly crafted video, “Untitled (an audience),” by Rodney McMillian -- takes us to a raucous concert in a mammoth stadium. Quick-cuts focus on a seemingly infinite range of people, all having their metaphoric audience with the King of Pop. The multitude screams, wails with joy, sings along, cheers, dances, swoons, shouts and otherwise carries on -- often to a level of hysteria approaching the ecstasy of St. Theresa.

The video is thrilling -- appropriately, given this particular pop star. Jackson never appears in the tape, but the songs and voice on the chopped-up soundtrack are instantly recognizable, even in a fragmentary state.

Yet the sight of such unhinged delirium is also unexpectedly scary -- and finally moving. Because Jackson is invisible here, you project yourself imaginatively into his black-patent shoes -- eventually recoiling at the psychic toll such overwhelming, isolating adulation must take. It is uncommon for an avalanche of joy to seem so tragic.

There are many other well-known works and gifted artists one would expect to see here, among them Gary Simmons, LaMonte Westmoreland, Todd Gray, Mark Bradford, Marvin Hardin, John Outterbridge and the Saars (Betye, Allison and Lezley). And there is plain, workmanlike material, too, including documentary photographs of black cowboys by Guy J. Maxwell and a church arson by Roland Charles.

A show this large is also bound to include some weak or disappointing pieces. Ulysses Jenkins’ bluesy “Bequest,” a video mash-note to a lithesome beauty, is an unfortunate marriage between a music video and a Hallmark greeting card, with way too many flaming sunsets to digest. And the assemblage tradition peters out in wan heads by Joseph Sims and atavistic welded figures by Joseph Beckles.

But, on balance, the show affirms the significance of the dramatic shift it chronicles. And surprises turn up.

I was especially taken with an irresistible Conceptual drawing by Eric Wesley, in which the young artist makes 20 attempts to render a portrait of someone he has never seen but knows only through words. Drawn in a grid, the 20 small portraits are all wildly different -- bald or bearded, noted in pencil as “too dorky,” “too French,” “too young.” Identity emerges as an elusive literary construction.

The portrait drawing is titled “Knight Writer.” I’m not certain, but it might be a minor masterpiece.

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‘Fade (1990-2003)’

Where: Cal State L.A. Luckman Gallery and University Gallery, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles; Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Luckman: Mondays to Thursdays and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.; Craft and Folk Art Museum: Wednesdays to Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Ends: Feb. 29

Contact: (323) 343-6604, (323) 937-4230