The Rules of the Game
- Sophie Disch
- Dec 30, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 6
Smells Like Team Spirit by Charlotta Janssen | Curtiss Jacobs Gallery
On the second day of the Art Committee’s venture through New York’s city art scene, we headed to Harlem, Upper Manhattan. Harlem is the origin place of an influential movement of African American art, literature, music, and theatre: the Harlem Renaissance. The artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance – which lasted from the Great War to World War II – aimed to take control over representation of their own people instead of accepting stereotypical depictions by white people. Today, Harlem is still known for its flourishing art scene, with impressive galleries and museums (Wolfe). One of which is the Curtiss Jacobs Gallery at the intersection of Adam Clayton power Jr Boulevard and 124th street west. The gallery, founded in 2009 by Curtiss Jacobs, showcases a variety of 21st century artworks from emerging, mid-career, and established artists mostly influenced by the African diaspora ("About" Curtiss Jacobs).
About the Artist
During our trip, the gallery showed the solo exhibition “Smells Like Team Spirit” by Charlotta Janssen. Charlotta Janssen was born in Maine to German parents, grew up in Iran, later fleeing to Germany during the Revolution where she studied painting at the University of Arts in Berlin. Janssen has exhibited her work in Milan, Shanghai, Paris, Miami Beach, Tokyo, Shelter Island and New York ("About" Charlotta Janssen). Today, you can often find her at the Hudson Milliner Art Salon in Hudson, New York where she co-owns the gallery with fashion lifestyle and portraiture photographer Shannon Greer.
Smells Like Team Spirit
Upon entering the space, Janssen’s signature teal, iron oxide (rust), black, and white color style immediately enrapture in intricate life-size paintings lining the walls of the gallery. “Smells Like Team Spirit” is a series of paintings, created through oxidation and collages, capturing sports team that Janssen’s calls “islands of humanity on a backdrop of economic highs and lows, world wars, backward and forward thinking" (Janssen). From basketball to baseball and American football, each painting captures the movement and still life of American sports (Janssen).
The characters depicted in Janssen’s paintings range from NFL player and coach Fritz Pollard to Eri Yoshida, first female baseball player in Japan’s men’s league, and Iron Horse Lou Gehrig who played for 2130 games at first base for the Yankees (Janssen). What the multitude of characters in Janssen’s paintings have in common, is that they are part of a forgotten history. These are not the men echoed in history books, sports commentary, and museums. In the painting Fritz Pollard: Player, Coach & So Much More 1916, Janssen immortalizes the highest paid player at the founding of the NFL in 1920. Justifiably, Janssen describes him as “unstoppable" (Janssen). Fritz Pollard was an extraordinaire. He coached several pro football teams including the Lincoln University team, he was the first African American head coach in the NFL, played for several teams, worked as a talent agent, tax consultant, film and music producers, and founded the New York Independent News which was the first African American-owned tabloid in New York City. At the end of the 1926 season, Pollard along with all nine African American players in the NFL at that time, were removed from the league never to play again ("Fritz Pollard").
In her painting, Janssen depicts Pollard resolutely facing the spectator. Pollard with his back drawn, standing straight takes up a third of the image. Clad in football gear, the sportsman’s demeanour demands authority. Nonetheless, the interplay of teal, rust, white, and black soften his face with a hint of a smile in his eyes. Standing on a football field, Janssen dares and invites, Pollard to be looked at while carving his space into the canvas and history. Over his left shoulder newspaper clippings are evidences of history instructing the spectator to view the painting through a lens of a marginalized history.
Janssen’s exhibition challenges the definition of sport legends. According to the artist “each layer…turns a monologue into a cacophony of dialogues” (Janssen). What defines a legend is whether they fit the archetype of the contemporary American public. Where does it leave those that did not fit the standard of preconceived notions of legends – typically white, male, and American? Masters of the game that defy these norms slip through the cracks of recognition. This series is not about the winnings and losings, or the champions remembered, but rather of those that defied and redefined the rules of the game.
Narratives by Charlotta Janssen
What I have always found remarkable about Janssen’s work is her ability to affect perspectives on history through painting. In her acclaimed series “Freedom Riders & Bus Boycotters” Janssen creates powerful images of defiance of the bus boycotters and freedom riders from their mugshots. “We Didn’t Come Here To Be Pretty” captures defiance, anger, and resilience itself. It is a story told often in various histories and contexts but unfortunately even more relevant today. Janssen’s paintings follow a style that foregrounds three rules to create dynamic narratives against a background of cultural and historical context: “depth of field, shadow and light, and its fight with gravity" (Janssen). She achieves her powerful depictions by painting humans in teal to direct the focus of the narratives. Collaging and oxidizing harmonize by “letting go” (Janssen) and memorializing “sound bites of the time” (Janssen).
Another series, “Not Done Yet (The Unfinished Series)”, I think perfectly captures Janssen’s work and mission. In my opinion, it can be applied to any and all her exhibits, as with each visitor that discovers hidden and forgotten histories through her art, her work changes. The purpose of her art is to inspire ongoing reflection and question dominant narratives. In this way her work becomes a collaborative process, completed not in the gallery but with the spectator as they exit the space.
Discover more works by Charlotta Janssen http://charlottajanssen.com/ | The Hudson Milliner Art Salon
Explore the Curtiss Jacobs Gallery https://www.curtissjacobs.gallery/ | Instagram: curtissjacobsgallery_harlem
Sophie Disch is a third-year Rotman Commerce and Cinema Studies student. She is French-German and grew up in Paris and Southern Germany. Sophie became involved in the arts while attending an arts-focused high school in New York and enjoys making short films and working with pencils, oil pastels and acrylics. She joined the Hart House Art Committee in the Fall of 2022, where she has co-curated 3 exhibitions thus far, to share her passion for art and promote art on campus.
Sources
“About.” Charlotta Janssen, charlottajanssen.com/about. Accessed 29 Dec. 2024.
“About.” Curtiss Jacobs Gallery, www.curtissjacobs.gallery/about-1. Accessed 29 Dec. 2024.
“Artist Pays Tribute to Freedom Riders.” Oprah.Com, Oprah.com, www.oprah.com/oprahshow/artist-pays-tribute-to-freedom-riders-video. Accessed 29 Dec. 2024.
“Fritz Pollard.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Nov. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Pollard.
Janssen, Charlotta, and Shannon Greer. “Smells Like Team Spirit.” Hudson Milliner Art Salon, www.hudsonmillinerartsalon.com/smellsliketeamspirit. Accessed 29 Dec. 2024.
Shannon Greer Photography: https://www.shannongreer.com/
Wolfe, Shira. “Art Movement: Harlem Renaissance Art.” Artland Magazine, 23 Nov. 2023, magazine.artland.com/art-movement-harlem-renaissance/.
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