Family Ties

Through her portraits of the Washington family men—Denzel, John David and Malcolm—responsible for the screen adaptation of The Piano Lesson, artist Tschabalala Self celebrates both real and fictionalized Black America

 

By Rochelle Steiner
Artwork by Tschabalala Self

New York-based visual artist Tschabalala Self was commissioned to create portraits of the powerhouse men in the Washington family—father Denzel and sons John David and Malcolm—behind the screen adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Malcolm directs and John David stars, while Denzel and daughter Katia co-produce. With an ensemble cast that includes mother Pauletta and another daughter, Olivia, the Washingtons have adapted August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title. Malcolm also serves as a writer and is joined in this role by Wilson’s son Virgil, adding another set of family ties to the production.

 In Self’s hands, images of the Washingtons are intertwined with the film’s characters, such that the real and fictional commingle as references that exemplify Black America. On the occasion of this commission, Self described her process: “I blended the Washingtons themselves with various characters I associate them with.” In doing so, she embraced slippage in their roles—not only into their fictional ones in The Piano Lesson but also into their public personae as portrayed through their celebrated creative work.

The Piano Lesson centers on a Black American family in the 1930s and the outsized part an heirloom piano plays in their lives—past, present and future. Carved with figures depicting ancestors, the instrument draws the relatives together as much as it drives them apart. John David’s character is keen to sell it to purchase the land where his ancestors had been enslaved, but this object holds a psychic grasp over the members of this on-screen family and their household. Its lessons are about lore and bloodlines as much as they are about music. 

Throughout her career, Self has drawn from people and their actual and imagined relationships to depict her larger-than-life figures and their surroundings. The multigenerational Harlem neighborhood where she grew up, including her family members, their domestic spaces and the urban environment—as well as her studio while a student at the Yale School of Art and her current space in upstate New York—also serve as sparks of inspiration for her work. For the past decade, her art has been shown widely and internationally, most recently in an exhibition entitled Dream Girl at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles to coincide with this year’s Frieze Los Angeles.   

Her recent Home Body series (2021–2022) nods to the power of objects within the home. Like the piano in Wilson’s play, the domestic objects she depicts have lives of their own. “I enjoy using materials of the world because I believe, much like the piano in the play, such objects are charged with spiritual and psychological energy,” Self said.
A lamp goes beyond its intended function to offer a sense of transcendence. Likewise, chairs, vases with flowers and other objects are in dialogue with her characteristically exuberant figures.

In addition to looking at the world around her, Self also turns to art history, including the work of art at the heart of The Piano Lesson. She noted, “It is one of my favorite August Wilson plays and speaks to me so deeply because of its relationship to the home and inheritance. The Romare Bearden work from which the play is named is a beautiful rendering of a Black American home. When looking at the play’s origin within the context of American slavery, the significance of home for the characters in the play and the figures depicted in
Bearden’s piece becomes all the more poignant when you realize the legacy of separation, loss and displacement inflicted on their ancestors.” 

The play, and ultimately the film, were inspired by African American artist Bearden’s 1984 lithograph, The Piano Lesson (Homage to Mary Lou). Set in a Southern parlor with colorful walls and furnishings, the work depicts a teacher standing with her student at the piano, practicing a piece of sheet music. Bearden created multiple versions of this print, some with more emphasis on the characters and others with more focus on the scene—as if forecasting what was to come in its future dramatic and cinematic forms. In further lineage, Bearden had looked to paintings titled The Piano Lesson (1916) and The Music Lesson (1917) by French artist Henri Matisse, who depicted his son surrounded by musical references, images of family members and reproductions of his own paintings in those earlier works. Self’s interest in Bearden is not only in his subject matter but also in his collagist approach to artmaking. She similarly deploys angular planes and bold swaths of color and utilizes images torn and cut from a range of pop culture sources in her portraits, domestic scenes and urban studies. By stitching together recycled materials—including brightly colored textiles and densely patterned fabrics for clothing and backgrounds—the thread lines indicate the contours of bodies and the outlines of physical spaces. Scale shifts are common, as she notes: “In my practice, scale oscillates from the minuscule to the monumental. The stitch element in my work is very small, yet the figures are often very large. Large paintings and figures are meant to provoke a visceral feeling from the viewer.” 

I enjoy using materials of the world because I believe, much like the piano in the play, such objects are charged with spiritual and psychological energy.”
—Tschabalala Self

And yet, despite a long trajectory of art history throughlines,
Self’s portraits of the Washingtons—and the iconic piano—are from a point of view all her own. Her unique creative and feminist perspective has been developed throughout her career. “I do not generally paint many standalone male characters. I am primarily concerned with the female figure and narrative within my work. I appreciate the strong female protagonist in The Piano Lesson and identified with her greatly,” she said. Here, Self refers to Berniece, the central female role in Wilson’s work, who preserves the family legacy and ultimately binds generations together. 

Self typically composes characters, whom she refers to as heroes, based on people she encounters in her day-to-day life. Here, however, she turns her attentive eye to the Washingtons—navigating their relational dynamics and infusing aspects of the film’s presentation—depicting them as cultural icons and heroes of cinema.