''They Could Still Serve'' is a 2001 painting by
Ellen Gallagher
Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...
. It is in the collection of the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MoMA) in
New York, New York
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on New York Harbor, one of the world's largest natural harb ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. ''They Could Still Serve'' represents Gallagher's biggest focused body of work: large scale pieces that explore racial stereotypes of African Americans, specifically those seen in
minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
s.
Description
Penmanship
Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different writing implement, implements. The various generic a ...
paper is glued on a canvas with tiny
googly eyeballs drawn throughout the piece, primarily on the lines of the penmanship paper.
History
This painting was acquired in 2001 by using funds from
Emily and Jerry Spiegel and Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro Funds and gift of Agnes Gund.
''They Could Still Serve'' has been exhibited in numerous group shows as MoMA. In 2007, it was included in ''Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making'' because of the cartoonish style of the eyeballs. In 2008, the piece was in ''Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now'' and in 2010-2011's ''On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century''.
Insight about the work
The name, ''They Could Still Serve'', comes from an etching in ''The Disasters of War'' series by Francisco de Goya.
References
Further reading
*Varnedoe, Kirk. ''Modern Contemporary''. New York: The Museum of Modern Art (2004).
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2001 paintings
Paintings by Ellen Gallagher