The U of R’s Rush Rhees library currently is home to two exhibits featuring
the artwork of – and in-depth looks at the lives of – two inspiring African
Americans. Trust librarians, ever-amazing at researching and making sense of
the world, to go above and beyond the usual scope of an art show.

In the main lobby of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, several
display cases organize and lead us through the life of the Rochesterian Steven
Wynder “Rocky” Simmons. Viewers learn that involvement in a
segregated sports world brought him to Rochester,
and here he became passionately involved in the community. He served as a
leader in Rochester’s 7th Ward and
in 1964, became the first African American to hold the position of Monroe
County Family Court Attendant. While serving, Simmons recognized the value of
youth outreach. A newspaper article on display calls him the “one-man
entertainment bureau for kids,” and as such, he organized sports teams,
talent shows, and beauty pageants to keep youths involved in healthy,
self-esteem-building activities.

Simmons’ photography provides a window into African-American life in Rochester
in the 1950’s and 60’s. Here again, his passion for the community is apparent.
He provided picture advertisements for new businesses and young, talented
musicians, in which the gleam of youthful exuberance is immortalized in black
and white. Whether visually documenting marriages or the daily life of kitchen
workers, Simmons smartly stepped back to include the details of his subjects’
contexts, providing nuances that might otherwise be lost to the larger waves in
history’s turbulent seas. These crucial insignificances of
the mundane link the viewer to his subjects on a personal level. It’s
unsurprising that such a socially active artist possessed the sensitivity to
create such an achievement.

The library also hosts a collection of Herbert Gentry
paintings, along with several works by his contemporaries, and an abundance of
material illuminating his life and influences. Raised in Harlem
by his single mother – a Zeigfeld dancer who held informal art salons with
friends Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Louis Armstrong – Gentry was
practically born to be an artist. But he found America’s
segregated society to be stifling, and after his service in WWII, he moved to
the more accommodating Europe.

As a student, Gentry found that in Paris
he could live as a free man, if not one embraced by the white-owned galleries.
Undeterred by racially based rejection, he opened “Chez Honey,” his
own gallery-by-day, club-by-night establishment, and introduced modern jazz to
European culture. The club hosted Duke Ellington and Lena Horne, and acted as a
cultural hot spot, fostering the kind of magical chemistry that happens between
creative minds. Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, and Orson
Welles were regular fixtures.

The previously restricted galleries soon opened to Gentry, and by 1954 he
was making his living solely by his art. Abstract Expressionism was a logical
turn for Gentry, who worked closely with jazz greats, and at times penned the
music to be played at his club. In a perceptive piece written specifically for
this exhibition, author Clarence Major notes the important link between jazz’s
emphasis on improvisation and the quick, capture-the-moment way in which the
painters worked. Major also philosophizes on the psychological result of war on
the human mind, and declares that the “results of the juxtaposition of
anxiety and playfulness [in the art] are a pleasing and sophisticated
irony,” an aspect also found in the “bitter-sweetness” of jazz.

This anxious optimism is most apparent in two of Gentry’s
paintings included in the show. “Man’s and Animal’s Earth” captures
complex emotions with rapid, impulsive brush work and the blending of bright,
restless color with faded, haunting tones. Animal and human features seem to
emerge from and recede into an imposing forest shot through with beams of
sunlight. Ironically, Gentry’s work explores the theme of alienation through
overcrowded space, hinting at the failings of seeming “togetherness.”
In “Speech,” the massive surface holds the features of a listening
crowd, with craning necks and expressions ranging from bored to curious – but
each face is relatively closed off from the rest. The caustic red of the
painting provides the buzz of a crowd in a sort of backward synesthesia. This
work refuses to be overlooked; it shouts from across the room.

The tension of collective space/inner isolation is repeated in much of
Gentry’s work, with layered faces often sharing features with each other, though
still maintaining a private, desolate thought-world. The show’s title work,
“Facing Other Ways – E,” is a drawing consisting of hasty
Expressionist lines, but with the distorted, confused, and distraught
expressions found in many Cubist pieces.

Simmons and Gentry worked around the social forces that threatened the
fullness of their lives. Neither man was daunted by
limitations based on his race, and both did much to pick away at social
barriers. This valuable exhibits offer a rare opportunity to enjoy artwork, and
also learn about the socio-cultural context in which the artists lived and
created.

Facing Other Ways: Herbert Gentry & African American Abstraction

Through March 31

Celebrating Rochester’s Rocky
Simmons: The Life & Photographs of an African American Activist

Through April 30

Rare Books & Special Collections, Rush Rhees Library, University
of Rochester

Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm, Wed 9am to 8pm, Sat11am to 3pm, 585-275-4477, www.library.rochester.edu

This article appears in Feb 13-13, 2008.