(soft bluesy piano music)
- [Narrator 1] We've just walked into one of the galleries
at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,
and one of the largest paintings
in what is already a sizable gallery
is Amy Sherald's "Precious Jewels by the Sea".
- [Narrator 2] There is a grouping of four figures,
two young men, on their shoulders are two young women,
posing as if you're standing near,
taking their picture on the beach.
- [Narrator 1] What first grabbed my attention
was the colors that remind me of summer.
We're seeing these gorgeous azurite blues and turquoises
and this almost cherry red and these bright yellows
and greens and everything is so saturated and lush.
It calls to mind what we think of as the colors of summer.
- [Narrator 2] This is an incredibly sunny, sun-struck day,
but it doesn't feel like it's too hot.
The figures look really comfortable.
Their feet are nestled softly in the sand.
There are beautiful touches of white
to give a sense of a breeze.
A sailboat is passing by.
And these colors are so vibrant that they also remind you
of this title, "The Precious Jewels by the Sea".
They have the sense of jewel tones,
emerald, amethyst, garnet, topaz, even opal
for the woman on the left
who's wearing a more pastel striped bathing suit.
- [Narrator 1] There's also these intimate details.
I am looking for instance, at the center of the composition,
the young woman's fingertips
are just grazing the young man's,
and it's this beautiful, intimate gesture,
just as his left arm is barely grazing her thigh.
- [Narrator 2] There's a classical monumentality to this.
- [Narrator 1] And I think that idea of monumentality
also makes me think of how sculptural they are.
They're very still.
It's as if they're expressing no real effort
and they're very calmly looking out at us
and this really is a painting about seeing and being seen.
- [Narrator 2] I think that sense of scale
and the statuesque nature of the figures
is very appropriate to Sherald's ambition
for works like this, for figures like this
to be in museums.
In the context of Crystal Bridges,
with our sweeping roof line of more than 20 feet,
this painting fills the space effortlessly.
You look at these figures and you think
about the lasting nature of who they are,
what they represent in the museum.
Sherald has written about the importance of the Black figure
in the museum space, in her art, and in art history,
and working at the scale to be able to fill the size
of galleries, of museums around this nation
and the world is important.
This is not a home, it's an institutional building
with power and drama in its architecture
with paintings like hers to match.
- [Narrator 1] Amy Sherald is perhaps most famous today
for painting the official portrait
of First Lady Michelle Obama, but she has a number
of paintings that she has reflected on
as offering this critique to the cannon of American art.
This idea of coming into a museum
and seeing black individuals on this monumental scale
here at the beach, going about their summer day,
is a really powerful idea.
- [Narrator 2] Sherald's interest in creating new kinds
of art histories, even correctives to art histories,
in which Black figures like this have not been canonized
to the same extent in the histories of American art
speak to her knowledge of American history
and her knowledge of art history broadly.
She talks about the fact that she wants to quote,
"Make images of things that we normally don't get to see
in spaces like museums,
like Black people going to the beach."
And she connects that to memories of her own mother,
who didn't know how to swim,
and who quote, "Didn't like going
to segregated Black beaches."
- [Narrator 1] This makes me think
of how she paints these figures using a gray scale
and here she has, instead of mixing black and white paint,
she mixes black and yellow.
- [Narrator 2] The gradations of the gray
and the charcoal and the brown next to the expanse
of the soft light blue is arresting.
She said of this painting that it's quote,
"Really just about creating American narratives
about American people while critiquing it at the same time.
This painting, and all of them,
are about expressions of freedom."
(soft bluesy piano music)