Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea
About this video
Two curators at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art look at Amy Sherald's Precious Jewels by the Sea, a monumental painting of four young Black people posing on a sunny beach. They discuss its jewel-like summer colors, its still, sculptural figures, Sherald's ambition to place Black figures at museum scale, and her signature grayscale skin tones, all as a critique and expansion of American art history.
You'll be able to
- describe how color, scale and pose shape the feeling of the painting.
- explain why Sherald wants Black figures shown at monumental scale in museums.
- explain how the painting both creates and critiques American narratives.
Key words
- Monumentality
- A sense of grandeur and permanence, as if a work were a monument.
- Saturated
- Describes colors that are strong, pure and intense.
- Canon
- The group of artworks and artists traditionally treated as the most important in a history.
- Grayscale
- A range of tones from light to dark without other colors; Sherald paints skin this way.
Transcript
(soft bluesy piano music) - [Narrator 1] We've just walked into one of the galleries at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and one of the largest paintings in what is already a sizable gallery is Amy Sherald's "Precious Jewels by the Sea".
- [Narrator 2] There is a grouping of four figures, two young men, on their shoulders are two young women, posing as if you're standing near, taking their picture on the beach.
- [Narrator 1] What first grabbed my attention was the colors that remind me of summer. We're seeing these gorgeous azurite blues and turquoises and this almost cherry red and these bright yellows and greens and everything is so saturated and lush. It calls to mind what we think of as the colors of summer.
- [Narrator 2] This is an incredibly sunny, sun-struck day, but it doesn't feel like it's too hot. The figures look really comfortable. Their feet are nestled softly in the sand. There are beautiful touches of white to give a sense of a breeze. A sailboat is passing by.
And these colors are so vibrant that they also remind you of this title, "The Precious Jewels by the Sea". They have the sense of jewel tones, emerald, amethyst, garnet, topaz, even opal for the woman on the left who's wearing a more pastel striped bathing suit.
- [Narrator 1] There's also these intimate details. I am looking for instance, at the center of the composition, the young woman's fingertips are just grazing the young man's, and it's this beautiful, intimate gesture, just as his left arm is barely grazing her thigh.
- [Narrator 2] There's a classical monumentality to this.
- [Narrator 1] And I think that idea of monumentality also makes me think of how sculptural they are. They're very still. It's as if they're expressing no real effort and they're very calmly looking out at us and this really is a painting about seeing and being seen.
- [Narrator 2] I think that sense of scale and the statuesque nature of the figures is very appropriate to Sherald's ambition for works like this, for figures like this to be in museums. In the context of Crystal Bridges, with our sweeping roof line of more than 20 feet, this painting fills the space effortlessly.
You look at these figures and you think about the lasting nature of who they are, what they represent in the museum. Sherald has written about the importance of the Black figure in the museum space, in her art, and in art history, and working at the scale to be able to fill the size of galleries, of museums around this nation and the world is important.
This is not a home, it's an institutional building with power and drama in its architecture with paintings like hers to match.
- [Narrator 1] Amy Sherald is perhaps most famous today for painting the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, but she has a number of paintings that she has reflected on as offering this critique to the cannon of American art. This idea of coming into a museum and seeing black individuals on this monumental scale here at the beach, going about their summer day, is a really powerful idea.
- [Narrator 2] Sherald's interest in creating new kinds of art histories, even correctives to art histories, in which Black figures like this have not been canonized to the same extent in the histories of American art speak to her knowledge of American history and her knowledge of art history broadly.
She talks about the fact that she wants to quote, "Make images of things that we normally don't get to see in spaces like museums, like Black people going to the beach." And she connects that to memories of her own mother, who didn't know how to swim, and who quote, "Didn't like going to segregated Black beaches."
- [Narrator 1] This makes me think of how she paints these figures using a gray scale and here she has, instead of mixing black and white paint, she mixes black and yellow.
- [Narrator 2] The gradations of the gray and the charcoal and the brown next to the expanse of the soft light blue is arresting. She said of this painting that it's quote, "Really just about creating American narratives about American people while critiquing it at the same time.
This painting, and all of them, are about expressions of freedom." (soft bluesy piano music)
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