Exhibition Guide

Visual Description

[Narrator] “The Bathers” is an almost square oil painting on canvas from 2015. It is 74 inches by 72 inches. 

[Amy Sherald] The painting has two female figures in it that are standing in bathing suits and holding hands. The figure on the right has her hand on her hip, head slightly tilted down. The figure on the left has one hand and the hand of her friend and the other hand hanging down by her side. Her left foot is slightly lifted up. The figure on the left has on a one-piece bathing suit that looks like an orange sherbet ice cream. It’s a peachy orange color. It’s tied behind her neck. She has a white ribbon tied around a short kinky fro. The girl on the right has on a yellow bathing suit that in my mind I equate with lemonade. The top is one big bow that covers her from left to right. The bottom is a high-waisted bikini. Both of these bathing suits are vintage and I purchased them from a vintage store. The girl on the right has on a vintage purple swim cap with two large flowers on the side and the strap goes over her ears and under her chin. 

[Narrator] The figures’ colorful retro bathing suits contrast with their skin tones, which are represented in greyscale. The women’s hands are firmly clasped together with interlaced fingers. Though they appear to be firmly standing on both feet, they each lean noticeably on the leg closest to one another with heads slightly tilted inward. Their expressions are relaxed and warm but not effusive. The intimacy of their bond is apparent yet enigmatic. Bathers have long been a subject of Western art, gaining particular popularity in nineteenth and early twentieth century European painting. While historical depictions of bathers have often been white subjects, Sherald places Black women at the forefront of this painting. 

 

Artwork Label

These two young women hold hands as they confidently eye the viewer. Their relationship to one another is ambiguous; they could be sisters, lovers, or friends. Bathers have served as popular subjects in Western art for hundreds of years, particularly for the late 19th- and early 20th-century European artists who often depicted white subjects relaxing near rivers and pools. Sherald’s vision instead situates Black women as independent and in possession of their own experiences of leisure, joy, and ease.