Claudette Johnson: Presence review – subtle swipes at the exploitative modern masters

Courtauld Gallery, London
The artist brilliantly questions depictions of non-white figures by such revered painters as Gauguin and Picasso – but there’s a quiet power to her new work that leaves theory behind

In Claudette Johnson’s large drawings of Black women and men, faces and bodies hold you, frozen in poses that seem more significant than words can say, as if each spontaneous expression or gesture were at the same time a studied symbolic act. Reclining Figure, which is around two and a half metres long, depicts a woman lying down, her face supported by her arms, brooding melancholically or perhaps just daydreaming. Her entire body is swathed in white, against patches of blue and red. The drawing insists on the privacy of her selfhood, and defies you to exploit or possess her with your eyes.

You literally cannot. She slips away from the gaze. In case you miss what Johnson is kicking against in this haunting work, Paul Gauguin’s 1897 painting Nevermore, a treasure of the Courtauld collection, hangs just outside her exhibition. Painted in Tahiti, it gives the eye everything that Johnson’s Reclining Figure refuses. Gauguin depicts a young Tahitian woman lying nude, lost in her own thoughts just like Johnson’s subject – but as she ponders, Gauguin relishes her hips and breasts.

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