The Value and Power of Art V

A monthly glimpse at the works in the current exhibition Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth. On view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNCG through April 8, 2023.

Radcliffe Bailey, “Third Ward,” 2013. Wood door with gold leaf, carved wood lock, two iron pins, nail, bottle caps, and wood base; 89×33×10 in. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Radcliffe Bailey, photo courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Themes of journey, memory and music propel Radcliffe Bailey’s poetic installations and sculptures. Working frequently with layers of found elements, here he brings together a gilded door, a lock and chains of bottlecaps in an enigmatic meditation on the value of recalling and connecting seemingly disparate histories.

A narrow, five-panel door serves as the sculpture’s primary form. Resonant with notions of coming and going, the door was reclaimed from a neighborhood of compact homes in Houston, Texas. Specifically, it came from one of the homes that has been transformed into the arts and community platform Project Row Houses, which is located in the city’s Third Ward. A predominantly African American community, Third Ward is anchored by Emancipation Park, a plot of land purchased by former slaves in 1872. From that time through the mid-1950s, the district was economically vibrant; music lovers from across the region flocked to its blues-filled nightclubs and dance halls. However, following World War II, freeway development and suburban flight left the neighborhood a shell of its former self. Though it became what some have called the “cradle” of the city’s civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, its financial challenges are ongoing.

Bailey has covered the front of his reclaimed door in sheaves of gold leaf whose warm glow evokes the richness of the Third Ward’s cultural history. Scratches and dirt on the wood surface show through the gilding and are clearly visible on the ungilded back side of the door collectively suggesting an earnest commitment to protecting one’s home and all that it holds.

The artist has also installed an oversized, hand-carved wooden bolt lock from Mali, which links this remnant of an African-American row house directly to Africa. The connection is apt, as scholars have traced the architectural origins of the row house to West Africa and noted its diasporic migration from there to Haiti to the Southern United States via the slave trade.

With these references in mind, one might also read the luminous gilded surface as honorific, transforming the assemblage into a sort of monument to a particular African American community and to the larger history of the African diaspora. Instead of layering the gold leaf densely to obliterate the marks and scratches on the door, Bailey invites the viewer to enjoy the gleam but not forget the scars that are part of its history.

Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth is on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNCG through April 8.