A Shout-Out to Gordon

IK Shout -Out to GORDON M ost people will remember Gordon Parks for his many achievements in various fields. I will miss Gordon's wry sense of "Blues humor." Underneath his suave, sophisticated sense of personal style was a "race m an" in the old school sense—a man who was fully aware of the traps of racism that lay in his path as he forged ahead. He also knew that much of the African American tribe would be judged by his actions, and so he sought to achieve a level of excellence in all that he did. At the same time, he was motivated to create personal art—that is, expressions of art that came from his individual sense of beauty. Finally, Gordon Parks managed to marry an African American sensibility with the commercial demands of the mainstream. I hope that we as a people have moved past that juncture, but without Gordon's presence, that achievement would still be a challenge and not an historic accomplishment. The following excerpt comes from one of the many interviews with Gordon for the documentary Half-P ast Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon P arks that I produced for HBO. St. Clair B ourne F ilmmaker St. Clair B ourne: S ince you didn't have a lot of art in your early life, when did the desire to actually make something or create art start for you? Gordon Parks: I can't remember having been inclined to be an artist or anything of that sort. [LAUGHS ] Yeah, I do remember—we had an old upright piano I used to plunk on, you know, and at 6 years old my father didn't like the idea that a boy played the piano for some reason or another. He would rather have me been in the fields, feeding the horses, the chickens, and the cows and doing things of that sort. The only time I really was allowed to play when my mother was around, and she insisted that if I wanted to play, that I play! And my mother was the boss! When S arah P arks says something, that's the way it was! F or me, for my brothers 1 0 ' N k a Jo u r n al of Co n t e m p o r a r y A f r i can Ar t G o r d o n Pa r k s, New York, New York. Harlem Newsboy. Library of Congress, Prints & Ph ot og r ap h s Division, LC- DIG- fsa- 8d28520. Spring/ Summer 2008 l \ l k a * 1 1 Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter, 1942, gelat in silver print. Court esy Gor d on Parks Collect ion (Library of Congress), LC- DIG- ppm sca- 05823. 1 2 - N k a Journal of Contemporary African Art sisters and [LAUGHS] for my father! Okay, Sarah that's what you want, that's the way it was! I do remember having an experience once in my father's cornfield. June bugs were buzzing and I remember that moment. It struck me that it was symphonic music. And I often think of that today. Because I had never heard a symphony orchestra and never dreamt of even writing a symphony or a piano concerto or anything of that sort. The poetry that I heard was not certainly by Langston Hughes or Pablo Neruda. It was on Christmas and Valentine cards and birthday cards, so I wasn't exposed to much literature, and in the high schools they didn't—in Fort Scott, at least, they didn't expose you to literature, and I think that I would have been absolutely shocked to have seen a black writer or composer during my studies at high school. SCB: So where did the art come from? GP: Today I look back and wonder about where it all came from myself. Very often I've been referred to as a Renaissance Man. Well, I don't really buy that. I think that what I've accomplished I accomplished through trial and error, and one thing led to another. It was...