Stephon Mowatt

Art 1020 Criticism

Prof. Landry

December 12, 2017

Final Assignment

Robert Lugo’s exhibit, New Life: A Table for Everyone, shows some of his exquisite

pottery and print work. His works includes memorials of famous and inspirational black figures,

such as the porcelain plate he made with an etching of Harriet Tubman, or the porcelain, China

paint, and luster vase he entitled Obama and Me. For his prints (and all of his displayed work,

really), it was very interesting to see how he used white backgrounds with bright foreground

colors to highlight certain details. Upon closer inspection of his works, you can see different

intricate details he put into them, such as the digital print he made called New Slave, which is a

full-body self portrait of himself wearing what looks like a dashiki, which, along with his body,

has many different designs that look like they’re telling a story within the work itself.

Looking at Lygia Pape’s work sort gave me a helping hand when it came to analyzing

Lugo’s. The two have somewhat similar backgrounds. Both of their works are/were (Pape is no

longer with us) inspired by what goes/went on around them in their lives. Pape’s works were

critical of the Brazilian dictatorship and often required the audience to either intellectually or

physically participate. Lugo’s works would not necessarily be considered to require that much

participation, but it does require the audience to, as aforementioned, pay close attention to the

small details in the works. His revolves around showing his “ghetto past,” and reference hip-hop,

rap, graffiti and black history. While not completely similar, you can see how their works can be

compared.

This is Lugo’s New Slave. As I said before, there are very intricate details. When you

compare it to this Magnetized Space (2011) by Lygia Pape, there are several similarities that can

be drawn. The entire pieces themselves are composed of smaller works. Lugo’s body parts have

blue scenery, and his shirt/dashiki has (what can assumed

to be) a black man with a police officer pointing a gun to

his back. Above that is a mythological creature with a

chain connecting to its chest. Although Pape’s piece may

seem like just a bunch of

squares, they’re really more complex than that. Each background

square has a color on the side, and none of them have the same

pattern of smaller squares. The individual parts, for both artists, are

what make the whole thing more interesting.

On the contrary, Pape does more work with installations than Lugo

does. One of her more visually appealing, in my opinion,

installations is Ttéia 1, C, where she nailed thread from the ceiling

to tiles on the floor, and added dramatic lighting so that the viewer

walks around to see the logic behind the magic. You’re given the

opportunity to question more with her works, as you can think

about how exactly she managed to install some of these pieces, and why she had them in that

specific arrangement. You cannot really do that with Lugo’s prints and pottery, as they’re really

only able to be placed in so many positions. This earthenware panda (Lugo’s Panda: Eats Shoots

and Leaves, 2015) was positioned to face away from the door when you walked in, but that is

more of a question of whether Lugo wanted it that way or if that was just how the gallery curator

put set it up.

Robert Lugo seems to use the collage esthetic in

his works. He takes his upbringing that included harsh

rap, growing up in the ghetto, racial conflict, and being

first generation Puerto Rican-American, which all sounds

like it would produce something rough and rigid, but

combines it

with the delicate process of creating pottery to create

a new way of viewing both. As Lugo explains, “I

have a dream where I can change the world by

making pots, showing others how to make pots, and

by bringing those very vessels to a meal – a meal where everyone is valued. My work creates a

place where hate is put up against love and finally loses.”1 He wants to be able to make beauty

out of his experiences, and calls upon incredibly different parts of his life to do so.

1 https://contemporaryartgalleries.uconn.edu/2017/09/26/roberto-lugo-new-life-a-table-for-everyone/