Renée Stout (1958- ), Her Request Brought Back Memories from “The Washington Portfolio”, 1994 |

Computer generated digital Iris print, 26 × 40 5/8 in. (66 × 103.2 cm) |
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Museum Purchase) |

2018.15.1208.8 

 

This digital print riffs on seventeenth-century Dutch trompe l’oeil (“trick the eye”) still life paintings and, in particular, “letter racks.” The letter rack was a pictorial assemblage of personal and utilitarian items such as letters, quills, and pocketbooks set against realistic wooden backdrops. These hyper-realistic paintings functioned as portraits of real or imagined individuals, but also as visual and cognitive exercises for viewers. In both subject and style, Renée Stout’s Her Request Brought Back Memories is a contemporary reimagination of this motif. She assembles a collection of objects that do not reference one particular individual, but rather Black identity as a concept. For example, the unidentified photograph connotes family, and the open diary addresses African spiritual practices. By digitally layering real and painted objects, Stout defines Blackness in ethnic terms, but also raises questions about the racial politics of perception.