Watching Tides Rise

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Watching Tides Rise

Artist Titus Kaphar (American, born 1976)

Date2012

Dimensions78 × 6 1/2 × 109 in. (198.1 × 16.5 × 276.9 cm)

MediumOil and tar on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineThe 2019 TMA Board of Directors recognizes this work in honor of Director Brian Kennedy and his efforts to both develop strengths and expand directions in the permanent collection. Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

2018.25

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 36

DescriptionTitus In the center of the composition is a large six-sailed ship in full sail, and the wind propels the vessel towards the viewer and away from the golden setting sun. The canvas is folded aside.

Label TextTitus Kaphar’s art challenges the canon of art history and who it represents. Kaphar begins his works by either copying or recreating a painting in the style of 18th- and 19th-century American and European masters. He then stages interventions directly on the canvas by tarring, slashing, silhouetting, whitewashing, or erasing parts of his paintings to introduce new and hidden narratives, exposing the racial exclusions and inequities in our constructed stories of the past. In this epic seascape in the tradition of early 19th-century American marine painting, the wind propels a large six-sailed ship toward the viewer. The painterly illusion, however, is literally folding in on itself. The canvas has been removed from the stretcher in the upper left corner, exposing the blank wall. Furthermore, Kaphar has coated the lower portion of his painting in tar, an evocative material he has used in a variety of ways in his works, including to conceal and to emphasize. These interventions disrupt the illusion both in Kaphar’s seascape, and in the telling of history itself.