Bricks and Bones

Bricks and Bones, Collage.

Harris, still a young man, has entered the collage with astonishing clarity of form. The diverse pieces of reflected reality and unreality he thinks and pastes together creates new images, replenishing our knowledge of the known, or making us aware of the unknown. There is a clarity and cleanness to his craftsmanship which heighten the ideational projection the image sprays at us. At times, visual images actually seem to "say" out loud what maybe we knew or need to know. Yet, he has put together with, already, an impressive display of knowledge about the medium he is using. There are no sloppy or half put together "slapdashes" which we must sympathetically take to the hoop with our political sympathies. Harris is a fine "auteur" (as the film magazines say, meaning, author, creator.) And with this, the content, which, for me, is always principle, emerges bright and striking.

He tells us about the peoples' struggles, world wide, against oppression and exploitation. Our lives under racism and the twisted rule of capital. At times, the images he thrusts at us are sharp enough to make us wince with understanding and recognition. Harris' work is fundamentally about consciousness raising, and this is what art does. Mao says, "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is Art!" Harris' work speaks to us truthfully, force-fully, and with great skill. You need to check it out!

Amiri Baraka


 

Some examples of Theodore A. Harris' collages: (click to enlarge)

Amando Diallo Eulogir for Ames Byrd, Jr. Seize the time
FleshFlames

 

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