Strong Men Keep Comin'
Interview with Kadir Nelson

MALIK GAINES

The strong men keep a-comin on
The strong men git stronger...
                         —Sterling Brown

Malik Gaines : I'm completely impressed by the NAACP Image Award that you just received in recognition of your illustrations for Will Smith's children's book, Just the Two of Vs. What was that experience like?
Kadir Nelson : Well, it was exciting and nerve-racking at the same time, partly because I wasn't one of the celebrities there. No one was like, "wow, there goes Kadir Nelson." But it was exciting; you could do a little bit of star watching.
      MC : Did you go up onstage to accept the award?
      KN : Yeah, I went up and accepted the award, but they cut me out of that part [of the broadcast].
      MC : Well, congratulations. This was not your first star encounter: you've worked on production drawings for Steven Spielberg's film Amistad, you've worked on books with Debbie Alien and others. What is it like, as an artist, to be thrust into this adjunct-celebrity position? ;
      KN : It's exciting. It's not one of those things you really expect to happen, but when it does, it just makes the experience that much more incredible.
MG : Are you still impressed by stars?
      KN : It really depends on who it is.
MG : Celebrity aside, let's talk about you and your work. What can you point to in your history that has brought you to where you are?
      KN : Having a supportive mother. She always gave me plenty of material to work with. All she really needed to give me was a thick pack of blank paper. And my uncle, Michael Morris, was an artist and an art teacher. When I was about 11 he took me under his wing for the summer; we spent the summer drawing and he taught me a lot. He gave me my foundation.
MG : You were an Illustration major at the Pratt Institute and you finished in 1996, the same year I finished college. What was that education like?
      KN : Pratt was incredible. My art had been pretty realistic, it was pretty tight and heavily rendered. Pratt loosened me up, both my personality and my artwork, which was exactly what I needed. Before I went to school, I only looked at three different artists: one being my uncle, the other Ernie Barnes, and the other was Boris Vallejo, who does fantastic, science-fiction work, like Conan the Barbarian, really muscle-bound men and women. His style is really slick. Ernie Barnes does these elongated figures. And my uncle would do a ton of different things like science fiction and really heartfelt, historical stuff. All of that merged into one for me.
MG : In looking at your work, I've noticed that you sometimes use realistic imagery, sometimes the subjects are hyper-real, sometimes surreal. Are these style shifts characteristic of your influences?
      KN : Probably, there were plenty of instructors at Pratt who helped me determine what kind of artist I wanted to be, specifically one instructor, his name was Dave Passalaqua. He always emphasized being versatile and not being stuck in one style, and that really attracted me because I don't want to do the same thing over and over. If you are bored, then the person looking at the work is going to be bored also.
      MC : Among your influences, you've mentioned Ernie Barnes, you also have cited N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell. What did you learn from these artists?
      KN : Ernie Barnes was, besides my uncle, the first African-American artist whose style I really liked and emulated. I think a lot people in my generation gravitated toward his work because it had a lot of emotion, it was just fun to look at. You would look at it and smile. N.C. Wyeth and Rockwell, both of those guys were incredible painters. Wyeth used a lot of color and texture, and Rockwell, he was just a hell of painter. He was a very good draftsman. I'm not so drawn to the expressions on the faces. I think they can be a little bit over the top, but I really like how he expressed some of his ideas. The Four Freedoms were just incredible. His compositions are very well thought out and nothing is unintentional.
      MC : Like some of your influences, your illustration and painting skills seem to have both commercial and fine art applications. How do you negotiate the distinction between these two areas? Is one truly different from the other?
      KN : With commercial art, I try to stay away from putting a Coke can in somebody's hand or a cigarette in someone's mouth. It has come up that I've had to put the logo in the actual piece, though that is pretty rare. I've only done that a couple of times and I try to do it in a way that is not so heavy-handed. As far as walking that line between fine art and commercial art, I think good art is good art, period. If you are doing good art, people are going to respond to it.
      MC : What is good art? What kind of criteria do you use to make that determination in your own work?
      KN : If it gets the point across that I'm trying to make clear, then I've been successful. But it's not just getting the point across, it's a matter of how you did it. Say you are trying to express a certain feeling or express a certain emotion. If it's done in a way that pleases you and you are able to keep your integrity as an artist, I think that you have pretty much been successful with that piece.
      MC: This notion of "getting a point across" is something I always encounter as both an art writer and a teacher. Some people paint, for example, as an articulation of a particular set of theories or ideologies or as a recontextualization of certain art historical models, while others paint because they are driven to put color on a canvas. Most, I think, fall somewhere in the middle. Where do you find yourself in this dichotomy of concept and expression, which, in a very reductive way, could be talked about as thinking versus feeling?
      KN: Honestly, I try to do them both. Every time I sit down at the canvas, I want the piece to have some type of meaning. I don't just want to put paint on a canvas or just paint a pretty picture. It doesn't have to have any social relevance, but it has to communicate some kind of expression or provide some kind of hope or something that is meaningful. Otherwise, it's just like talking and saying nothing.
      MC: Does your intended meaning ever take on a political position?
      KN: I don't ever have plans where I think: I really want to shake things up politically. If there is something that really means something to me, and I want to try to do something about it in my own small way, then I will try and put it on canvas. If there is something I feel needs to be said and I can say it, then I will. But I don't go out of my way to do it.
      MC: We have such a complex history of racist representation in American popular media, and it seems that part of your program is to counter this deleterious history, which is still ongoing, with wholly affirmative representations of black people.
      KN: Definitely, I want to give African-American people some sense of nobility and integrity. I don't want any negative images of African-American people, we see that enough. If anyone is going to paint African-American people in a positive light, then I am going to do it. Who else is going to do it besides us?
      MC: I think back to when The Cosby Show first aired on television, we were both kids then. Bill Cosby was saying that he'd had enough of the images of African Americans on television and that he wanted to portray a happy, healthy, bourgeoisie family. He got a lot of criticism from within African-American communities, many of whom were suggesting that this isn't what our real experience is in this country. Have you
ever received that sort of criticism?
      KN: No. The only criticism I ever get, and I don't       KNow if it is a criticism, is when they say: "Where are the women? We want some more women represented." And I agree with them. I just have to do a piece that would be in line with what my feelings are about women. Honestly, all the jobs I've gotten have been basically about men, a lot of sports or music or historical stuff, and I haven't really found that series, or that image, that I want to do yet. I used to paint women a lot actually. I was a teen and a lot of it was very sexual; I don't want that to be the only way that women are represented in my work.
      MC: Do you see yourself as operating as part of any particular movement or tradition?
      KN: As an artist, you pretty much work in a vacuum and you are not aware of much going on outside of the studio. I'm not a part of any clique or group or what have you. Honestly, I don't see any artists doing things along the same lines as me that are my age. I can't really think of anyone else out there that I would pair myself with, which is good. I am anxious to see who else is in the Black Romantic show and to see how their work relates to mine.
      MC: Let me ask you about this painting Africa. It presents a silhouette in front of a vast and open sky. First of all, Africa is a continent. There is no land in this picture.
      KN: It was one of those pieces that you see pretty much in its entirety in your imagination, it just kind of hit me and I scribbled it down, and it just became that. I gave it that title because that is the feeling I get when I think of the word "Africa." Basically, it's just a man looking up into a vast sky. This bird flying overhead represents his spirit. He could be on a slave ship, could be on a canoe, on land, it doesn't really matter.
      MC: That's a very nice painting. What about the painting called Right Wing? I think of a conservative republican, but it’s a basketball image.
      KN: Yeah, it's not even related to that at all. I thought about that afterwards and realized people will just have to think that, but that's not what it's about. Basically there was a poster of Michael Jordan. He had his arms spread, it was called Wings. He's jumping really high, people thought he was flying. Right Wing was just a take on that—this guys right wing holding the ball.
      MC: Was that for a specific project?
      KN: That was for Nike, for a t-shirt; but they didn't use it.
      MC: There are several other works featuring basketball: Next Five, Big Men, and The Rucker. Were these for Nike also?
      KN: Next Five was for Men's Journal and The Rucker was for Vibe. Big Men was for the Nike project.
      MC: Did these people ask you specifically for sports?
      KN: They wanted basketball. The funny thing is that they didn't use the finished pieces; they just used the sketches, which is weird, but that's just the way it went.
      MC: I guess they will get a second life in this show.
      KN: Yeah and that's great.
      MC: Is basketball something you would be drawn to normally, or were you just meeting the product requirements?
      KN: Yeah, I play basketball. A lot of the work I've done has been basketball related. I don't really go after jobs that I would have to do a basketball painting for, it just kind of ended up that way.
      MC : The style is somewhat realistic, but the figures appear idealized and unnaturally strong.
      KN : I like to try to show the strength of people's spirits. Basically, that's what it's all about for me. I like to show people who are strong.
      MC : What are you working on now?
      KN : One thing is an album cover for Swizz Beatz, this producer who has this whole Ruff Ryders camp. The big thing I'm working on and really excited about is a book about the Negro baseball leagues. I'm writing it and doing the art for it.
      MC : How is the writing coming?
      KN : Slowly, very slowly. I haven't really been writing much; now and then I've been writing in my journal. I've been doing a lot of research and reading. When I'm finished with all my research, or finished enough, then I will sit down and fill in the gaps.
      MC : Is there a specific focus to the book?
      KN : It's written in a first-hand perspective. It explains different events or experiences, like when they were traveling on the road, or when they faced segregation, or describing owners or certain players who stood out above others, sort of 'this is the way it was for us.' It's really exciting, a lot of really interesting material to work with.
      MC : You've used a lot of sports and music imagery in your work. These are areas that African Americans are stereotypically involved in, but at the same time areas in which African Americans have been some of the most important innovators. Do you ever worry about the use of traditional, stereotypical contexts for your black subjects?
      KN : It really doesn't matter to me. It's funny you asked that because Spike Lee called me several months ago, I don't       KNow how long ago, it might have been a year ago. He wanted me to do a movie poster for Bamboozled. He wanted it to be realistically painted instead of photographed, but he ended up using photographs. I was like, "Man, that was as stereotypical as you can get." But that was the point of the movie. As far as my other work, I don't really worry about further amplifying that whole stereotype of black folks in music and sports. I don't worry about people looking at my work and thinking he only does this or that, because I don't only do this or that.
      MC : Are you going to go to New York to see the show?
      KN : Oh, I wouldn't miss it.