Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, let me tell you about Henry Taylor, born in 1958, this American painter who transcends with disconcerting audacity the boundaries between figurative art and social engagement. While our contemporary art world is often prisoner to its own conventions, Taylor emerges, shaking our certainties with the power of a Miles Davis who would have traded his trumpet for paintbrushes.
The first thing that strikes you in Taylor’s work is this singular way he approaches the representation of humanity in all its complexity. His portraits are not simple reproductions of faces, but windows opened onto the soul of contemporary America. Take “The Times Thay Aint A Changing, Fast Enough!” (2017), this monumental work that captures the assassination of Philando Castile by the police. Taylor doesn’t simply document a tragic news item, he plunges us into the bowels of an American society that struggles to face itself. The composition, with its tight framing on the car’s cockpit and this white hand holding a weapon that emerges like a threatening specter, irresistibly evokes Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”, but in a nightmarish version where liberty itself is taken hostage.
This painting is a perfect example of the first theme that runs through Taylor’s work: the Hegelian dialectic between master and slave, reinterpreted through the prism of contemporary African American experience. The tension between oppressor and oppressed isn’t simply suggested, it’s inscribed in the very flesh of the painting. The energetic, almost violent brushstrokes, the colors that seem to bleed on the canvas, everything participates in creating a work that transcends its documentary function to become a true cry of protest.
When Taylor paints his subjects, whether they are homeless people from Skid Row or celebrities like the Obamas, he treats them with the same dignity, the same pictorial urgency. His technique, apparently raw and spontaneous, hides a deep sophistication that echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings on eternal return. Like the German philosopher who saw in repetition not a simple replay but an opportunity for transformation, Taylor transforms each portrait into an act of resistance against historical erasure. This approach is particularly evident in his series of portraits of anonymous people, where each subject is treated with the same meticulous attention as a historical figure.
Take for example his treatment of patients at Camarillo psychiatric hospital, where he worked as a nurse for ten years. These portraits, made between 1984 and 1995, reveal a deep understanding of the human condition that goes well beyond simple clinical observation. Taylor captures not only the physical appearance of his subjects but also their psychological essence, their fundamental humanity. This approach recalls Michel Foucault’s reflections on the relationship between power and knowledge in the institutional context, but Taylor adds a deeply empathetic dimension that transcends theoretical analysis.
In “Hammons meets a hyena on holiday” (2016), Taylor pushes this reflection even further. By placing David Hammons, legendary figure of contemporary African American art, in front of the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, with a laughing hyena at his side, he creates a dizzying temporal and spatial collision. This work isn’t just a simple homage to Hammons and his famous performance of selling snowballs on a New York sidewalk. It’s a deep meditation on the very nature of cultural identity, which echoes philosopher Paul Ricœur’s theories on narrative identity.
For Ricœur, our identity is constructed through the stories we tell about ourselves and those that others tell about us. Taylor seems perfectly aware of this narrative dimension of identity. His portraits are never simple representations, but complex visual narratives that integrate the personal and collective history of his subjects. This approach is particularly evident in his portraits of artists and historical figures, where he often creates audacious temporal juxtapositions that question our linear understanding of history.
The second theme that emerges from Taylor’s work is his unique way of approaching temporality in painting. His canvases function as visual testimonies where different temporal strata overlap and intertwine. Take “Cicely and Miles Visit the Obamas” (2017), where he imagines an impossible meeting between Cicely Tyson, Miles Davis, and the Obama couple at the White House. This work directly echoes Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history and his notion of dialectical image. For Benjamin, certain images have the power to explode historical continuity by creating unexpected connections between different epochs.
Taylor uses this power of the dialectical image to create temporal bridges that transcend linear chronology. In this particular work, he doesn’t simply juxtapose different historical periods, he creates a new space-time where past and present dialogue in a dynamic way. The simultaneous presence of these emblematic figures from different generations forces us to reflect on African American cultural heritage and its transmission through time.
His pictorial technique itself participates in this temporal disruption. The rapid and apparently spontaneous brushstrokes, the vibrant colors that seem to palpitate on the canvas, the areas deliberately left unfinished, all of this creates a visual tension that keeps the viewer in a constant state of alertness. It’s as if Taylor were telling us that history is never really finished, that it continues to rewrite itself before our eyes.
This approach to temporality also manifests in his way of treating pictorial space. His compositions are never static, but always in movement, creating spatial dynamics that reflect the social and political tensions of our time. In “Warning Shots Not Required” (2017), for example, the space of the canvas becomes a field of forces where different historical and social tensions clash.
The muscular body of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, co-founder of the Crips, occupies space ambiguously, both imposing and vulnerable. The monumental letters of the title, which seem to float like threatening specters, create a visual tension that echoes the systemic violence they denounce. This use of space as social metaphor brings us back to Henri Lefebvre’s theories on the social production of space.
For Lefebvre, space isn’t a neutral container but a social production that reflects and influences power relations. Taylor seems perfectly aware of this political dimension of space, which he uses as a tool to reveal the underlying power dynamics of American society. His spatial compositions are never arbitrary, but always charged with social and political meanings.
This political consciousness also manifests in his way of treating the materiality of painting. The texture of his canvases, the impasto, the drips, the areas where raw canvas remains visible, everything participates in creating a pictorial language that refuses the illusion of technical perfection in favor of a deeper truth. This approach recalls Theodor Adorno’s reflections on the relationship between form and content in modern art.
For Adorno, artistic form isn’t simply a vehicle for content, but it is itself a carrier of social meaning. In Taylor’s case, his apparently raw and direct pictorial technique becomes a form of resistance against academic conventions that have historically excluded certain voices and experiences from the artistic canon.
In his more recent works, Taylor pushes this formal exploration even further by integrating sculptural elements and installations. His “afro trees”, these arborescent sculptures topped with black synthetic hair, create fascinating bridges between nature and culture, between personal and collective history. These works echo Édouard Glissant’s reflections on relation and creolization, suggesting that identity isn’t a single root but a rhizome that unfolds in multiple directions.
The way Taylor integrates textual elements in his works is particularly interesting. The words that appear in his paintings aren’t simple captions or comments, but full-fledged visual elements that participate in the construction of meaning. This use of text recalls the practices of conceptual artists from the 1960s and 1970s, but Taylor adds an emotional and political dimension that transcends the purely intellectual approach of conceptualism.
In “The Times Thay Aint A Changing, Fast Enough!”, the title itself becomes a pictorial element that dialogues with the image in complex ways. The unconventional spelling (“Thay” instead of “They”) isn’t an error but a deliberate choice that echoes African American vernacular, thus transforming a Bob Dylan quote into a biting commentary on the persistence of systemic racism in American society.
What makes Taylor’s work so powerful is that it maintains a precarious balance between political engagement and formal exploration. He never sacrifices one for the other, creating a unique synthesis that makes him one of the most important artists of his generation. His painting isn’t a simple chronicle of our time, but an audacious attempt to reinvent pictorial language to speak about the urgencies of our time.
Taylor’s influence on the contemporary art scene is already considerable. His way of treating the portrait as a space for dialogue between the individual and the collective, the personal and the political, has opened new paths for a younger generation of artists. His work demonstrates that it’s possible to create politically engaged art without sacrificing formal and conceptual complexity.
As we contemplate the entirety of his work, it becomes evident that Taylor has created much more than a simple corpus of artworks. He has developed a new visual grammar to speak about human experience in all its complexity. His paintings are acts of resistance against collective amnesia, powerful affirmations of human dignity in the face of adversity, deep explorations of what it means to be human in an increasingly dehumanizing world.
Henry Taylor’s art reminds us that painting, far from being an obsolete medium, remains a powerful tool for exploring and understanding our contemporary reality. In a world saturated with ephemeral digital images, his canvases force us to stop, to really look, to confront uncomfortable but necessary truths. His work is a testament to art’s capacity to transcend social and cultural barriers to touch something deeply universal in human experience.
Through his striking portraits, his audacious compositions, and his unwavering social engagement, Taylor shows us that art can be both politically engaged and aesthetically innovative, personally intimate and socially relevant. His work will remain as one of the most eloquent testimonies of our time, a constant reminder that art still has the power to change our way of seeing the world and ourselves.
