*When you click on the link, the piece is the second image from the top of the page.
This piece is likely dealing with Paul Beatty’s classic book The Sellout, in which fatherhood is a major theme. The book focuses on a man who is accused of trying to bring back slavery and segregation to his home and town.Â
“Fatherhood as Described by Paul Beatty” features branded red oak flooring, black soap, wax, copies of Bill Cosby’s book, Fatherhood, branding irons (which were also used to create some of the markings on the wood), oyster shells filled with shea butter, space rock, gold paint, and a photograph.
The article in which the piece is shown, written by Lucy Hunter, takes a fascinating approach to this concept of Black fatherhood through art. While I have primarily been looking at being a dad through the lens of art, Hunter compares art and parenthood directly.
To end, here are Hunter’s thoughts on the connection between art and fatherhood:
“The rigors of an artistic practice, its daily grind and focus, and labor, cleave closer to the anti-glamour of spit-up and dirty diapers than to any fantasy of divine creative exceptionalism.”
