The Anansean World of Robert Colescott: An Interview with Umar Rashid by Phillip Edward Spradley - Los Angeles

Robert Colescott, Untitled, 1970. Acrylic on canvas. 79 x 98 1/8 x 1 5/8 inches (200.7 x 249.2 x 4.1 centimeters) Photo: Evan Walsh © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York

By PHILLIP EDWARD SPRADLEY May 7, 2025

Phillip Edward Spradley: What first drew you to Robert Colescott’s work, and how has your relationship with it evolved—either over time or specifically through organizing this exhibition?

Umar Rashid: Well, initially—and this was totally by chance—I first encountered Robert Colescott’s work while I was doing a show called What is the Color When Black is Burned? at the University of Arizona in Tucson. While I was there, working on the show and doing the rounds—meeting with chancellors, deans, shaking hands, kissing babies—I was introduced more directly to Colescott’s work. I already knew about George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware and a few of his other iconic paintings, but that was pretty much it. I knew of him, but I wasn’t deeply familiar with his full practice. People would tell me, “You’d love Robert Colescott. His work reminds me of yours.” So, there was always this sense of affinity.

When Tim Blum approached me about organizing this exhibition, I was like, “Wow, the guy who did the George Washington Carver piece. Let’s do it.” I already loved that work.

Then they sent me selections from the Estate available for the show, and I was blown away. It was work from across his entire career. I had thought of him mostly as someone who did historical satire, but it turned out to be so much more. That’s when my affinity deepened. I realized how expansive his practice really was.

I had only seen one dimension of his work, and through this process I got to understand the rest. It really opened a different way of seeing him—not just as a satirist, but as an artist with a wide-ranging, multi-dimensional voice.

A lot of times in the art world, people are treated like one-trick ponies. Like, nobody used to know Picasso painted ballerinas—they just thought “Cubism.” But that was just one moment in a much broader career. It’s the same with Colescott. Seeing the breadth of his work made me feel more seen in my own practice.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

Colescott had a very complex and often conversational approach to race and identity. When you were in the selection process were there any surprising discoveries along the way?

I didn’t realize—until I was really deep in it—just how hypersexualized some of Colescott’s work is. Even with George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware, which I already knew, I should’ve picked up on that aspect earlier. But once I started looking at the broader body of work, it became really clear and honestly, I got a little nervous. I thought, “Am I going to get canceled for this?” Because nowadays, people are quick to say, “You can’t do that anymore.”

And it’s not just about conservative backlash—I’m talking about the conversations happening on the left. The left, in trying to correct for historical imbalance, often ends up setting its own boundaries about what’s acceptable, especially around identity and representation. On one hand, there’s a real eagerness to celebrate an African American artist like Colescott, someone who made deeply significant work and didn’t get his full due during his lifetime. But on the other hand, there’s this discomfort with how messy and provocative that work can be.

As an artist, I’m all for freedom of expression—but I’m also not setting out to offend. So, for me, the challenge became: how do I tell Colescott’s story honestly, with all of its strengths and contradictions? How do I introduce him to audiences who already know the work, but also to those who don’t—without flattening him, or sanitizing him, or losing the edge that makes the work so important in the first place?

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

As an artist who also explores race, power, and historical narrative, how did your own experiences and perspective shape the way you navigated Colescott’s biting satire and unflinching takes?

When I go to museums and look at work, I usually give it a cursory glance. What I take in first is the subject matter and what I can immediately see, then composition, color, etc. That’s what I love about artwork. Coming from a film and photography background, I’m always checking: what kind of mood does this evoke? What’s the color palette like? Is it chaotic? Is it balanced?

I found that most of Colescott’s works are actually very balanced. So I didn’t have a problem with them at first. But then, on second glance, you start looking at all the details and you’re like, “Fuck,” you know? That literally happened. It’s a shock. But then again, that’s just the initial hit.

As a curator, I think some people just throw things on the wall and go. But for me, I believe in relationships. When I do anything, I’m focused on the relationship—to the work, to the artist, to the viewer, to the space. It’s like a magician’s trick: a little sleight of hand here, a few choices there. But it all matters.

Colescott’s work is really raw in terms of sexuality and race. But after doing more research into his life and learning that he initially didn’t even identify as Black—and then later, after the Civil Rights Movement, came more into terms with his ethnicity—that changed things for me. As another Black person, I could understand, by proxy, what he must’ve had to navigate.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

The selection of works do span from the pre–Civil Rights era through the early 2000s. Was there a moment when you noticed a switch had been flipped and things started to take a turn or to move in a certain direction?

I noticed the illustration aspect was always there. That part always kind of shone through. I think what changed was that leap in the seventies where you start to see all these just arrays of color. It's the bold and aggressive lines, which is totally different from the Fernand Léger-era of figuration that he did. You start to see this kind of explosion, but the drawings pretty much remain the same. 

I would imagine that the drawings are more like concrete evidence and the paintings are the fever dream because they really explode, but the same information is codified in the drawings, and it is replicated in a feverishly dreamy way in the painting.

He was just amazing. A wizard, trickster, magician, whatever, just incredible in the way that he was able to go from this to that. I know a lot of people have drafting practices. I myself have one, but it was just really amazing to see how different they are.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

Beyond the narrative, there's a physicality to the work. You're looking at form, you're looking at color, brushwork, surface treatment, the way he uses graphite. You engaged closely with these works, did they reveal anything to you about his process?

Colescott was an abstract technician. He knew what he wanted to do, and it's all evident in the drawings. But the drawings usually focus on singular aspects of a grander work or a grander narrative.

I think what happened is, he did so many of those drawings, and he had all these ideas. He had already formulated what he was going to do in his mind. When you look at the big works, they’re full of information—just chock full of information. I do believe that in creating these things, he already knew what he was going to do. So it was elegant, but it’s very technical. Almost like the way, I would say, Henry Taylor works—the work is very deliberate because the story is already within him.

That is a rarity that I find in artists, because a lot of abstract artists just go for the feeling, the emotion.

He was very well-traveled, and so there’s another kind of knowledge that comes in, because he talks about everything from the human condition to the condition of African Americans, to sex, to race, to antiquity. He uses a lot of things from antiquity—like Olympia, and references to old masters. When he was in Egypt and when he was in Europe for a while, there are a lot of Greek references. There’s a lot of references to ancient Greek gods.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

Colescott’s work reflects the America of his time—often during some of its most polarizing and turbulent chapters. In organizing this exhibition, how do you see his work in conversation with the current state of the union?

Unfortunately, the conditions for African Americans in this country haven’t really improved much since that first ill-fated trip to these shores in 1619—or even earlier, if you look at the Spanish expeditions to Mexico and, later, the southwestern United States. A lot hasn’t changed. 

Yes, there have been integrations. We can drink from the same water fountains now, and enjoy a hot dog at a ball game. 

But fundamentally, there's still this fear of Black identity. I don't like it, but it makes sense in a way. But it doesn't make sense in a lot of different ways. Fear is what holds a lot of people back. Fear manifests itself as xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, whatever phobia that people have of someone else doing something. It's an unnatural fear of reprisal for what occurred in the past. 

So instead of taking a Colescott approach and just laughing in the face of it, people tend to react to it.

As a very light-skinned black man, Colescott was able to walk into places that I couldn’t walk into—even now, let alone back then. So he had a leg up, exposing all this nonsense for what it is. Unfortunately, the art world and access to art in general has always been gatekept in such a way that it usually negates the proletariat.

I do believe that [Colescott] did his best to bridge a lot of different gaps in the system. I just hope more people see this show and others like it and take the time to really study his work.

Right now, with the censoring and, again, religious fundamentalism—and you don’t even have to single out any one religion—religious fundamentalism, especially in this day and age, is an obstacle to actually healing this divide. It’s being used as a crutch or a shield to avoid seeing what we desperately need to be focusing on right now as the human race.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott curated by Umar Rashid, Installation views, 2025. BLUM Los Angeles © The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of The Trust and BLUM Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York Photo: Josh Schaedel

How do you see Colescott’s legacy evolving in the current art landscape?

What I think will happen now is that there'll be a post-Colescott generation of artists who will take what he's done, and take those tools, and subsequently either continue along his path or veer away from it, trying to bring the work into a different realm where it helps people finally get the picture. I don't know if that's possible. I mean, I don't know. I just think it will just continue. The work feels timeless when you look at it. When you look at it, you can’t tell when it was made.

What is something you learned about yourself in organizing this exhibition?

I became less afraid to do some of the things that I want to do and to practice absolute candor, regardless of the political or social climate.

It made me want to be more honest with myself, and to have more fun.  To be more forgiving of myself. Not to fall into the trap of trying to keep up with the Joneses and just be like everybody else so you can secure a seat at the table. 

I'm not saying I’m going to make my work more controversial than it already is—I could always go there, but I don't absolutely feel that it is necessary. I do think that seeing how Colescott navigated it, I have a way. I have a newfound appreciation for candor, and a newfound appreciation for integrity.

Not that I lacked integrity before. Again, I just wanted to make that clear, but it's just... Wow.

But I see a lot of people who absolutely lack integrity, and woe be unto them.

I enjoyed it, and I'm glad that I worked on it, and I'm very proud of what I've done. And, yeah, so let's just see what's next.

The Anansean World of Robert Colescott

Curated by Umar Rashid

April 5—May 17, 2025

BLUM, Los Angeles

2727 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034