The Official Blog of the Allen Memorial Art Museum

In Man, Spirit, Mask, one of the works on view in the AMAM show Religion, Ritual and Performance in Modern and Contemporary Art, artist Willie Cole presents one of his many pieces based on the shape of irons. In his work, he imprints iron scorchings onto a variety of media. For Cole, the iron represents more than a household object. As he said during an interview, “I like to tap into what I call the spirit of the object: the irons were about heat, so the element in the iron was fire, so I wanted them to suggest fire. That is how the scorches came about.”

Willie Cole - Man, Spirit, Mask
Cole’s work plays off of this idea – that objects are imbued with their own spirit. Hence, in Man, Spirit, Mask, the central panel of the triptych shows the iron scorching, the spirit of the piece. In effect, the act of creation takes on a ritualistic dimension for Cole. Especially with this work, the scale and emblematic shape gives the iron scorching a sort of identity separate from the other two panels.

The reference to African masks in the piece also work into Cole’s identification as an African-American artist. As Cole once explained, “When the Africans came to the U.S. they lost a lot of their cultural icons but the spirits of those icons are hidden in other things. […] I’m working to release the spirit through use or suggestion.” In this sense, the iron scorching also works as a spiritual release. But is the scorching the spirit of the man, or a separate entity?

Image:
Willie Cole (American, b. 1955)
Man, Spirit, and Mask
Etching, woodcut, embossing, and hand-coloring
Ruth Roush Fund for Contemporary Art, 2000.5A-C