Pope.L’s Pleasing Refusal to Be Interpreted

A new exhibition at the Drawing Center, “Certainly an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L,” shows how the artist extended his practice of principled unreason—or what his grandmother once described lovingly as his tendency for “foolishness” and “devilment”—into objects of two and three dimensions. There are many ways for an artist to double as a social critic; Pope.L’s preferred mode was absurd jokes with elusive punch lines. Across more than fifty years of art-making, before his death, in 2023, he worked in familiar forms—drawing, painting, sculpture, video—but also made ample use of peanut butter, mayonnaise, hot dogs, ice cream, Spam, and Pop-Tarts. He studied with the Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks at Rutgers, and because of that lineage he’s often placed in the traditions of conceptual and performance art. But, if you look at the actual data on offer at the Drawing Center, you’ll see that Pope.L’s graphic work has a deep filiation with the art brut of Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet, who in nineteen-forties France collected graffiti, the work of children, and the art of psychiatric patients, wanted an art that was crude and “raw,” untarnished by culture. The less skilled or tutored the style appeared, the better.

“Harriet Tubman Spins the Universe” (1998-2017).Art work by Pope.L / Courtesy Estate of Pope.L / Mitchell-Innes & Nash; Photograph by James Prinz

In Pope.L’s “Harriet Tubman Spins the Universe” (1998-2017), he puts the abolitionist on a plank of Sheetrock in the middle of a swirl of peanut butter. The piece feels like an update of Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus,” if it were spun in a gyroscope and sprayed with acrylic paint. Tubman is all but indecipherable, roughly limned with white paint and covered by red, black, and yellow smudges and drips. The personal filaments of meaning for Pope.L here include the peanut butter itself—a cheap, calorie-dense food that was a staple of his upbringing—and the organizing force of Black women in his life, particularly his grandmother, Desma Lancaster. She is said to have shown quilts at the Studio Museum in Harlem in the nineteen-sixties, and was the first person to open Pope.L’s mind to art.