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Henry Taylor once said, I want to be all over the place.
Every gallery has pictures that will take your breath away with their omnivorous ambition.
Hes done Barack and Michelle Obama, too, though you barely recognize them at home on a couch.
Hes done self-portraits, murals, depictions of extreme violence committed against Black people.
I want to feel free when Im on that fucking canvas, he has said.
Taylor is about the freest artist now working.
The story of how he arrived at this position of supreme autonomy is an unlikely one.
Born in Ventura, California, he was the youngest of eight children.
His mother cleaned other peoples homes.
His father was a painter for the U.S. government.
One of his older brothers was shot at 22 and died seven years later.
I think about that a lot, he has said.
One brother became a minister, another started a Black Panther chapter in Ventura County.
As a kid hed just watch and listen.
Taylor graduated from CalArts in his late-thirties and didnt have gallery representation until his mid-forties.
It culminates with a giant image of Whitney Houston with wings.
He is alone in the car, bleeding out, a corpse lying in what has become his tomb.
Throughout his work, bravura and heroism are mingled with the humiliation of death and defeat.
He raises a tiny delicate hand in a blessing, a gesture of kingly greatness.
It is a point-blank shot at the era of Great White Males.
It could dominate a cathedral.
In the background is a walled-in courtyard: a penitentiary.
Perhaps she is offering a sacrifice to those incarcerated within.
