Prototype Issue
Pundin' the Art Scene with CCH Pounder
By Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
(page 1 of 2)A self-described 'international small town girl', acclaimed South American-born actress CCH Pounder, who was raised on a sugar cane estate and now resides in LA, takes timeout to talk to RTLA.
When did your love of art begin?
I actually remember my father used to have a little Nigerian head in his pocket a lot of the times. It was a little ebony carved head. I always admired it. I was a teenager, but I was just struck by the fact that he kept it in his pocket a lot of the time. Every now and again, I’d see it back up on the shelf with the rest of them. There was a row of African animals, all in ebony, and then these two little African heads, and I never quite knew what he used them for but, for me, it was like, “Oh it must be dad’s good luck piece.” It always had an element of mystery for me.
There’s a rumor that you opened a gallery because you need more space; your house is too packed with art.
Ironically enough, I had a gallery in my home when I first started. When I was coming out of boarding school in England, I had a wonderful mentor, she said, “What do you want to do?” And I told her, “Well, I’d like to be an artist, but I really want to act, so I’m not quite sure.” She said, “They’re both very grand mistresses. Choose one and have the other as a plaything, and then, when you’re ready, choose the other and make the first a plaything.” And that’s exactly what I’m sort of heading toward.
So you’re moving towards a career in fine art?
I said that I would get to midlife and I would do this very interesting switch. But the irony of it is that since then, all the way along, I’ve been collecting and looking and sharing art with people, so even though it’s a plaything, it’s a very powerful plaything and I know I’m going to do this switch, and then every now and again perhaps they’ll want some old lady to be on TV. I’ll be carted out and I’ll play some old lady on some TV show or something like that. But that’s kind of the idea, and I can see because even now that I’m trying the transition, having the gallery now, it sucks a lot of your time and it takes a lot of energy and it requires energy to share with artists, so it’s kind of fascinating. But the one thing that did change was my desire to be a painterly artist; that has faded. My interest in other artists and what they’re doing, that’s growing tremendously.
Tell me about some of the art that’s in this living room.
I call my rooms Afro Sheen because there’s lot of Chinese furniture and African art. (Laughs) Afro Sheen. If you just look around, in terms of all the furniture, it’s antique Chinese furniture, and that’s kind of the same basis, I think, of a lot of African art. It goes together very well.
What type of art are you typically drawn to?
I still like figurative art. I have a hard time with abstractions, still. I like the fact that people can draw. I really do. I really am fascinated by the drawn element, and I just don’t mean figures. Anything. But that kind of fantastic interpretation that an artist can convey to me is still of a great fascination. And the fact that, in terms of its color, and when it comes to paint, I can actually have an emotional response to it is still a sort of prime thing in what I need to keep me happy. Art still does it for me.
Any particular kind of art you like to collect?
Well, first of all, I think it’s very obvious that I have a love of African art, just by the extraordinary amount of works that I have here in my house. That curiosity had a lot to do with the fact that I never saw it in any books when I was growing up, that I knew so little about it and yet I am a descendant of these people, and so when I got the opportunity to go to museums and see it and go to art galleries and see it and meet a husband who was also interested in this—and at that time he was procuring it for other museums—it became like, “Oh wow, I’ve got an expert who I can learn off of.” And so there was that. Now my fascination for contemporary art is sort of similar. I love going to see what ideas people have in mind that are current, and I can actually discern the people who have an individual point of view as opposed to, for instance, anime is very popular right now, so there are a slew of artists who have suddenly made the shift over to anime, which doesn’t interest me in particular, but it has a trend as powerful as any other fashion, and I never really thought about that for art. I always thought art was such an individual thing, but an artist has to eat, so therefore, fashion also becomes part of the norm.
How do you define African art?
There is a traditional African art that is amazing, and what I love about it, and what the West still is grappling with is that—and I’m talking about African traditional art instead of Western antiquities—for the West, I think how important it is that the object is old and that it has a date and it has a provenance, while for African art, how important it is that the object was used, had a function, had ceremony, had ritual and, actually, was there for performance, for alleviating pain. It had a job. That completely fascinates me about African art, and the difference that Westerners are finally learning is that the value is in its use, not in the fact that it sits prettily on a wonderful pedestal and is a monument to someone’s greatness. So I like the achievement that African art has provided.
What significance do you think African art has to the African American community?
I must say, the African American community, in terms of the majority, at the moment is like a sixth grader when it comes to their interest in art and in art collecting and in African art in general. When I say sixth grader, I mean that African Americans—and I’m speaking about everybody, not simply art people—the fascination with art is very minimal. Posters perhaps. Something to decorate a wall, something to match your furniture. Once you’ve acquired the basics, then the next thing might be art, right? No. It might be sports tickets. The African American interest in arts, it’s not a teenager yet. So the idea that one can introduce them to art through a trip to Africa, through films of Africa, to see their function, to see what those pieces, traditionally, were used for. I think that’s what pushes the grade up to where you become really interested in the art because it has something to offer you, and you can see a different kind of magnificence in African people through the statuary that they’ve created and the belief system that they’ve got for themselves. I find it very empowering. You suddenly find some kind of innate connection with the art, and it can, in fact, speak to you.
Are there any particular images or iconographies that speak to you in African art?
That is such an interesting question because I have so many things, but I have so many things that repeat. For instance, I have the symbolism of mother and child everywhere in this house, particularly all the way along the stairs. My favorite one is a Lobi piece. It is a wooden statuary. She’s one-legged, with a baby on her back. And there’s just something that’s so terrific in Africa, where all people with infirmities are not behind closed doors. They’re in the street, they’re shopping, they’re rolling on carts, they’re hobbling on sticks. They’re getting their job done. And to see even in artistry, in the art element, that it is seen also. Even with this one-legged woman, fertility is still the ultimate symbol for this race of people. Yeah, I have a lot of the Madonna-and-child imagery.
What’s the difference, in African art, between the older generation and the newer generation?
I don’t think that the older generation ever thought of art as art. First of all, it was function, as I said. Within those people who were the nation of carvers, or the clan of carvers, the society of carvers; within that group, sometimes there’s one person who just makes that figure or that mask so empowering that even the local people, who are not artists per se, say, “This one speaks.” And I think that is the untrained, the unformed artist. It’s just simply innate, and it comes forward. But today the entire world has gone global, and contemporary art is in Africa, and the greatest thing that they are doing, to me, is the extraordinary reusing of things. They are the greatest reclaimers, recyclers, re-put-togetherers I have ever seen, and some of that art is just extraordinary. The things that they see in other things, and it is as basic as a Coca-Cola can recut to become a tin angel. It’s as basic as that, to the gathering of old cogs and wheels and making just extraordinary, huge, monumental figures of reclaimed objects.
Discussion