Peter Joe
This conversation is connected to Peter Joe.
A man, Peter Joe, sits squarely on a bright red bench, his long hands resting on the seat beside his legs, and his bare feet planted firmly on a flat, pale yellow floor. He wears a pale pink shirt beneath blue overalls and a yellow skullcap detailed with a single green stripe. Behind him, the wall is painted light blue with dark, rhythmic vertical stripes, interrupted only by a small, high window framed in purple. The composition is highly flattened; Johnson avoids traditional shading, instead relying on solid, unblended blocks of saturated color to give the figure and his surroundings weight. After returning to the United States from Europe in 1938, Johnson deliberately shed his formal expressionist training to develop this bold, "consciously naive" style. By applying this graphic, reductive aesthetic to everyday individuals, he documented Black American life with a modern, monumental dignity. Oil on paperboard.