The Time Traveler

Excerpt:

There is no such thing as the unknown—only things temporarily hidden. 

—Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek 

It wasn’t until 1998, in Thelma Golden’s seminal exhibition on the artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art, that I became aware of the painter Bob Thompson. I oſten think about that absence as I struggle to imagine a world in which I wasn’t influenced by his art. I am frequently puzzled by the order in which I have been introduced to the work of black practitioners—many of whom, including Glenn Ligon, Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, and Gary Simmons, began their careers years aſter Thompson’s passing. Chronology has long been a vehicle that historians employ in their analyses of the production and impact of artists. The Greeks predated the Romans and inspired their art, Velázquez influenced Francisco Goya, and Picasso was the modernist burden that created Jackson Pollock. When attention turns to the work of black artists, these timelines and dates are oſten disrupted by the failure of many, though not all, Western historians to effectively capture the creative contributions of black artists. Although this is accompanied by many troubling effects, I have come to enjoy the opportunity it has provided me to imagine my own art-historical canon, unaffected by the limitations of chronological constraint. This is a narrative I believe many black artists share, chief among them being Thompson. Thompson is a time traveler. 

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