Roxane Gay and Christ's Entry into Journalism

Published: Oct. 28, 2019, 10:45 p.m.

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Art critic Alastair Sooke, in the company of some of the leading creatives of our age, takes us on a deep dive into the stunning works in the Museum of Modern Art\'s collection, whilst exploring what it really means \\u201cto see\\u201d art.

Leading cultural figures in the series include Grammy- and Emmy-award-winning Hollywood actor and comedian Steve Martin, one of the founders of minimalism \\u2013 composer Steve Reich and stand-up comedian Margaret Cho. Each episode introduces us to an important art work in the collection, but asks how our own perspective affects our appreciation of the piece.

So, how does a jazz pianist see Mondrian\\u2019s Broadway Boogie Woogie? How does one of the first black women to write for Marvel comics see the difficult truths in Kara Walker\\u2019s sweeping image of African-American history? What does a top fashion designer decode from the clothes painted by an artist in Harlem in the 1930s?

This week we begin with American writer and commentator Roxane Gay, author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist. She chooses a work by Kara Walker, best known for creating black-and-white silhouette works that invoke themes of African American racial identity. Roxane has selected Walker\'s massive 11-by-18-foot collage \\u201cChrist\\u2019s Entry into Journalism\\u201d from 2017. Riffing off \\u201cChrist\\u2019s Entry into Jerusalem,\\u201d the piece is covered with ink drawings depicting figures real and imagined, past and present, from James Brown to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Donald Trump.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

Main Image: Kara Walker, Christ\'s Entry into Journalism, 2017. Ink and pencil on paper, cut-and-pasted on painted paper, 140 1/2 \\xd7 196" (356.9 \\xd7 497.8 cm). Acquired through the generosity of Agnes Gund, the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Carol and Morton Rapp, Marnie Pillsbury, the Contemporary Drawing and Print Associates, and Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 198.2018. \\xa9 2019 Kara Walker

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