Robert Colescott
Three Graces at the Bathers Pool: Venus is Still Venus
1984
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Robert Colescott
Three Graces at the Bathers Pool: Venus is Still Venus
1984
Physical Qualities
Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 114 1/16 in. (228.6 x 289.7 cm.)
Credit Line
Contemporary Art Endowment Fund
Object Number
1989.39
Drawing on the genre of the ancient Greek myth of Zeus’ three daughters, or “graces,” Colescott renders a nude, blonde, blue-eyed Venus that seems to tower over three smaller, dark-skinned bathers in the same pool. Colescott casts his Black graces as preoccupied with Venus. His painting stages a contemporary conversation about colorism and white supremacy through satire.
Taking a humorous but incisive view on history and culture, Colescott zeroes in on whiteness as a standard of beauty, and its ripple effects on the politics of representation. “Art is, in one sense, expressive of standards by which a society judges beauty, personal beauty. Black people being judged and judging themselves by a white standard based on classical Greek tradition is one of the contemporary issues I’m getting at.”—Robert Colescott, 1988
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 1989; Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York
San Jose Museum of Art, "Robert Colescott: A Retrospective, 1975-1986," April 5-May 31, 1987; circulated to Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, September 11-November 7, 1987; The Baltimore Museum of Art, January 12-February 28, 1988; Portland Art Museum (Ore.), March 18-May 8, 1988; Akron Art Museum, June 18-August 14, 1988; Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, September 10-November 5, 1988; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, December 3, 1988-January 28, 1989; The New Museum, New York, February 25-April 22, 1989; Seattle Art Museum, May 20-July 15, 1989 (exhibited as "At the Bathers Pool (Venus is Still Venus)")
Helen Molesworth, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, "This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s;" February 11 - June 3 2012; The Walker Art Center June 2 - September 9, 2012; and the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Octber 2 2012 - January 3 2013, exh. cat. pp. 53, 68-69, ill. pp. 70-71.
Helen Molesworth, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, "This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s;" February 11 - June 3 2012; The Walker Art Center June 2 - September 9, 2012; and the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Octber 2 2012 - January 3 2013, exh. cat. pp. 53, 68-69, ill. pp. 70-71.
Lowery S. Sims and Mitchell D. Kahan, "Robert Colescott: A Retrospective, 1975-1986," San Jose: San Jose Museum of Art, 1987, p. 8 and 31, fig. 27, p. 22, (published as "At the Bathers Pool (Venus is Still Venus)").
Leslie Berger, “Body Image,” “New York Times,” July 18, 2000, Science Times section, D7, ill.
Inscribed: VERSO: signed and dated on stretcher corner brace, LLQ, "THREE GRACES/AT THE BATHERS POOL:/VENUS iS STiLL/VENUS./©/Robert Colescott/JULY 1985"; inscribed on tacking margin, at center of BE, "VENUS iS STiLL VENUS".
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