Angelitos Negroes Op. 1300 by me (Elijah Isaiah Johnson/ArtbyAtlas)
The first entry in this conceptual series!
“... Painter you stay the course
-Pintor que sigues el rumbo
Of so many old painters
-De tantos pintores viejos
Although the virgin is white
-Aunque la virgen sea blanca
Paint me little black angels
-PÃntame angelitos negros
that also go to heaven...
-Que tambien se van al cielo”
Hey guys! I’m very proud to present, during Black History Month especially, an ongoing conceptual series: Angelitos Negros, Based on the idea posed by Spanish-Cuban singer/musician Antonio Abad Lugo Machin, on the neglect of Black/dark-skinned angels in religious iconography. Discovering Eartha Kitt’s haunting rendition of this classic recording in the wild on the internet was a bit like being a black boy discovering Racism (with the hard, capital ‘R’) for the first time. At first there’s the shock, then the realization that it’s everywhere, and then the confusion which morphs as we age but never truly goes away. I thought back on all my favorite paintings and found Machin was right.
What I did know is the art(ists) weren’t to blame as they were a product of their times, from the early 1300s to the 1800s and beyond. It was a time when whiteness was simply default. Everything else was not even given enough thought to be an afterthought. Through social conditioning—as racism itself inherently is—these painters, surrounded by the vastly Eurocentric, homogenous communities of Europe and Northern America, fell into the trap Antonio Machin so genuinely inquired about: neglecting The Other.
But I sincerely believe when you see a void that needs to be filled—and in a very exact way—you fill it. So if their artworks were a product of their times, so should mine be. It had to be righteous, regal, relevant and most importantly—above all else—unapologetically black.
There’s of course room for subliminal messaging, but the artwork itself is the message. That not only are these real historical figures and their iconography based on living, breathing black and brown figures in time, but they also lived in extremely and aggressively ethically diverse surroundings. There will be wide noses, textured hair, traditional robes, big hips, big lips and even the cattle will be black as hell in spirit.
But this genre actually only makes sense this way when I think of it. Is Black not magical—fantastical even? We are a people who love, create, protect, uplift and redefine the realities around us every single day in a world has little to no belief in us. Is that not Angelic? Antonio Machin believed so, and I agree with him. And so this series is dedicated to the love of my people, the words of Machin, the voice of Kitt and the knowledge that little black angels also go to heaven. 👑