Unseen scenes Within Our Gates shows, but doesn’t tell BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

There are two art shows on display at Rhode Island College’s Bannister Gallery right now. They are both Within Our Gates: Human Sacrifice In the American Landscape, by artist Keith Morris Washington.

That is to say, these seven paintings are two separate experiences: visual and political. Whether the two dimensions work congruently or come across as artificially yoked together is interesting to think about.

Washington’s acrylic and oil on canvas paintings, as large as four feet high by more than 10 feet wide, are certainly lush creations we immerse ourselves in. The one titled James Sanders: Road Side Field; Bolton, Mississippi (2001) is that size, and on first look it appears to be as peaceful and bucolic as a Thomas Cole valley overlook. Foreground foliage in both upper corners bracket what looks to be a graceful weeping willow in the middle distance. A dirt road narrows toward the distance, interrupted by a line of trees. The only sign of human presence is a small house and a white pick-up truck partially obscured by brush. What a pleasant sight.

But if the person named in the title ever enjoyed that view, it wasn’t when he last saw it. Next to the painting is the opening of a newspaper report. "BOLTON, Miss, July 16 — Accused of writing an ‘indecent and insulting’ letter to a young Hinds County white girl, James Sanders, a 25-year-old Negro, was riddled with bullets late today by a mob of armed citizens."

Each of these works depicts the site of a lynching or other hate crime in the South, accompanied by such a newspaper account.

Washington, on the faculty of the Massachusetts College of Art, indicates in his artist statement that juxtaposing the idealized American landscape with overlooked social history should be sufficient to power his works. He writes: "The 19th century landscape paintings of those artists collectively known as the ‘Hudson River School and the Luminists’ significantly influenced America’s image of itself as a vast open resource, a grand and noble Republic. This representation of the chivalrous Republic persists today. Within Our Gates is a continuation in the tradition of American Landscape painting which reveals a discreet aspect of the ‘less than noble Republic.’ "

The trouble, for me, with this visually satisfying show is that the paintings don’t reveal, the wall text does. However appalling the lynching information is, it remains parenthetical, tacked on. And as far as sociopolitical significance goes, it is this supplementary information rather than the paintings that, briefly, individualize the victims. As far as these dead men and their survivors are concerned, where they were killed is incidental, trivial.

To Washington’s significant and perhaps chagrined credit, he is indeed a luminous painter. His eye roams toward abstraction in the dense foliage of these paintings, as Matisse sometimes was distracted by a backdrop wall-hanging in which he kept finding more decorative detail. Willie Minnifield: Swamp; Yazoo City, Mississippi (2002) is aswirl with shades of gestural green undulations — like a close-up of the willow tree above. It refocuses from pure abstraction into representation only through some background areas of sky blue and cloud white, indicating that we are looking at reflections of treetops.

All of these paintings contain several rectilinear segments, overlapping layers that shift the image or change the light quality, bringing time into the picture. Cordie Creek: Junction of Route 50 & 50A; Near Columbia, Tennessee (1999) lifts a bold colored rectangle from a nearly monochromatic low-key background, as the artist’s energetic brushstrokes celebrate the trees at the center. In Raynard Johnson: Pecan Tree; Parent’s Front Lawn; Kokomo, Mississippi (2002), Washington introduces different strokes: thin, long horizontal swaths that parallel the length of the canvas. One could be forgiven for assuming that the artist had forgotten about everything but the physical satisfaction of putting brush to canvas.

That the setting of a lynching is beautiful isn’t ironic, it’s a commonplace. Yes, there were fluffy white clouds above the smokestacks of Auschwitz. Washington takes issue with 19th-century painters not looking past the beautiful to the historical reality of America, and with modern viewers for ignoring the evils in our social landscape. If he had found a way to incorporate that concern onto canvas, he might have presented here more than ravishingly beautiful images that require footnotes to fully see.

Within Our Gates:Human SacrificeIn the American Landscape

At Rhode Island College’s Bannister Gallery, 600 Mount Pleasant Avenue, Providence, through April 23.

There will be a panel discussion with the artist on Thursday, April 8 at 6 p.m. at Forman Theatre in RIC’s Nazarian Center. The topic is "Perspectives on Lynching: Political and Cultural Contexts." RIC faculty participants will be Daniel M. Scott, Richard Lobban, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Robert Cvornyek, and the show’s curator, Robert Dilworth. Call (401) 456-9765.