NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith (review)

To call NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith an exhibition catalogue overlooks its value as an important publication that explores key ideas relating to spiritualism in art, the construction of identity, and pluralism in culture. Each of the authors included in this book take on the decidedly “audacious” task of discussing the ephemeral and (often) experiential aspects of African, European and Native American derived spiritualism as represented in visual art and culture.

NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith accompanies the exhibition of the same name that was curated by Franklin Sirmans, the former Menil curator of modern and contemporary art and co-organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and PS.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. The exhibition was held at the Menil from June 27 to September 21, 2008, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York from October 19, 2008 to January 26, 2009, and the Miami Art Museum from February 20 to May 24, 2009. The thirty-three artists whose works were featured in this exhibition are of various ages, ethnicities, genders and faiths. They include Janine Antoni, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rebecca Belmore, Sanford Biggers, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, William Cardova, and Adrian Piper. The 143 page publication was edited by Sirmans and published by the Menil Foundation, Inc. It features written contributions from Jen Budney, Arthur C. Danto, Julia P. Herzberg, Greg Tate, Robert Farris Thompson, and Quincy Troupe who, like the artists, also come from various backgrounds, genders and faiths. NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith also contains thirty-three color plates of each of the artists’ works as well as biographies of the artists and writers.

Sirmans was inspired by the poet and essayist Ishmael Reed’s works “The NeoHoodoo Manifesto” and “The NeoHoodoo Aesthetic,” which were featured in his first collection of poetry, Conjure (1972). NeoHooDoo is a term originally coined by Reed, who was also one of the leading figures of the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s. It references the fusion of primarily West African, but also European and Native American spiritual practices by African Americans. It also describes the ability to utilize a “variety of materials, modes of expression and allusions from many different cultures, both popular and traditional”. NeoHooDoo was actualized in his seminal work Mumbo Jumbo, which is satirical depiction of a struggle between the Western European ethics, African derived spiritualism and black and white race relations. Mumbo Jumbo is set in both New Orleans and Harlem during the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance. The work centers around Jes Grew, a mysterious “anti-plague” that forces its victims to dance uncontrollably. Jes Grew resembles the African “impulse,” or the influence in music and art, and is supported by the NeoHooDoo faction while the Wall Flower order and Knights Templar attempt to stop the plague from infecting more people.

Rather than reproducing Reed’s literary works to serve as primary texts in the catalogue, each essay examines different aspects of African, European, and Native American influenced spiritualism in contemporary art. Robert Farris Thompson’s 1999 essay “Communique from Afro-Atlantis” and Arthur C. Danto’s “Spirit and the Perception of Art” both reference the art historically while Greg Tate’s essay “Hoo Doo is What We Do” determines the twenty-first century as that of the age of the black image and states that contemporary black visual art embodies the essential ideas behind NeoHooDoo. The inclusion of Quincy Troupe’s poem “An Art of Lost Faith” further illustrates that inspiration can be divine.

Among Mumbo Jumbo’s most notable characters is a group of art historians that have formed a secret society called Mu’tafikah. They raid the centers for Art Detention, which have looted works of art from indigenous groups of people around the world, and try to return the works of art to their original owners. Biff Musclewhite, who is the Curator of the Center for Art Detention and their chief opponent, eventually succeeds in assassinating...