The Brooklyn Rail

I. 

I find myself drawn to artworks, artists, and practices that are not easily classified by a single genre or style. They often feel like treasures because as I learn about their layers, I am able to thread ideas and materials into metaphorical maps and tapestries of my own. The most interesting artists, to me, are those who explore a set of ideas through a variety of methods and means. They ask a question and conjure an answer before asking another question to evoke more magic, another response.

Pope.L (June 28, 1955–December 23, 2023) was a multidisciplinary artist and educator who produced work that troubled various assumptions about the human condition. His interest in theater and language became an additional tool for pointing out the absurdity, injustice, and fallibility of our systems that define race, gender, or community. Whether through painting, drawing, performance, intervention, video, or installation, his work always provoked surprise, as it reveals something new about the curious ways humans regard and negotiate relationships, and the ways in which we try to make sense of the world. I return to Pope.L’s works not just for their hilarity and ability to arouse discomfort or to wrench my heart in their searing social commentary; they also compel me toward joy.

 

II.

In the 1970s, Pope.L began making and creating, influenced by the teachings of Mabou Mines, Fluxus artists like Geoffrey Hendricks, and his professors from Pratt Institute, Montclair State University, the Whitney Independent Study Program, and Rutgers University, where he earned his MFA in 1981. Early performances occurred ad hoc on the street, but eventually he was included in programs at legendary venues around the city such as Just Above Midtown, MoMA, the New Museum, Anthology Film Archives, and Franklin Furnace, among others. Although he lived and worked in places beyond the Mid-Atlantic throughout his life and career—years spent on the faculty at Bates College in Maine and in the department of visual arts at the University of Chicago, for example—living in and around the New York City area was foundational. It is an incredible thing to be surrounded by such a vibrant mix of people, cultures, traditions, and experiences. It’s like he was born into the perfect laboratory for thinking about the questions and observations that would preoccupy much of his oeuvre in his lifetime.

Pope.L mined familiar experiences as well—including issues of substance use and homelessness in his family—to create work that, while personal, was relatable to us all. Nearly everyone has walked past or given money to someone asking for change on the street. We all play a part in the power dynamics that make racism, gender, and socio-economic inequities persist. Pope.L had an uncanny knack for bringing us into conscious awareness of the systems that motor the world.

 

III.

I have only seen Selling Mayonnaise $100 a Dollop (1991) through documentation, and it makes me giggle every time; it is absolutely absurd.

Pope.L sits on his haunches alongside a building over the course of a few very hot and humid days in July. He is a curious sight—an unambiguously Black man with two jars and plastic spoons set before him. “Warm mayo?” he asks the passerby. “One hundred dollars a dollop,” he adds. As New Yorkers, these people had likely heard and seen nearly every wacky thing to be seen and heard by then, but something about this man makes them stop, focus their gaze closer than a one-thousand–yard stare, and perhaps even break their purposeful stride. Was it his sonorous baritone voice and neutral (rather than Newark) accent that caught their attention? Was it his outfit of head-to-toe black clothing on one of summer’s dog days?

 

IV.

On certain stretches of Chicago streets, usually busy thoroughfares on the city’s south side, you can buy bottles of cold water, without leaving your car, while you wait for the traffic light to change. Young entrepreneurs carry their wares between cars, quickly making exchanges of dollar bills for sixteen ounces of relief in the intensity of the summer sun. (Some of them might even have various flavors of quarter water, if that’s your thing.)

Pope.L probably encountered such a scene while he resided there. I think he might have bought one or two.

To make mayonnaise, you need only three ingredients: oil, acid (usually vinegar or lemon juice), and eggs. (Some people include mustard in their recipes since it acts as a stabilizer that helps extend the life of the condiment.) During long exposures to temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, mayonnaise can curdle or split like scrambled eggs, grow bacteria and mold, or oxidize.

 

V.

No one accepted his offer.

 

VI.

I have long likened art to the “who” and “what” we are when no one else is looking—not quite our shadows, but more akin to the embodiment of our most vulnerable truths. I can imagine that bearing witness to Selling Mayonnaise might have forced people to rethink their assumptions about their fellow New Yorkers. This man wasn’t crawling along a city street holding a potted plant aloft, but something about him crouched against a building selling warm mayo sparked a similar moment of noticing. Could someone see a family member in him? A neighbor? A friend? Did this action prompt the push-tug-pull feeling that occurs when we move beyond the assumed social notions of our race, ethnicity, or class, but we don’t want to leave everyone (or everything) behind?

When we talk about race in the United States, we are elusive; our words are vague, our meaning imprecise. We frequently speak in color, relying on shared assumptions about power and values. We frequently speak in color, yet we rarely name the color white.

When we talk about Pope.L’s art, we often speak of how he used our shared assumptions about each other to turn them on their heads. His work makes us laugh, makes us cringe and recoil, and it makes us think.

I will forever be grateful for the ideas he returned to, the questions he asked and the propositions he offered in response.