Kevin's Thoughts On "The Dutchman"

When I first saw this painting at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, I stopped. I lingered for a long time trying to understand what exact goal was behind this painting, which appeared to me at the first glance like a semi-skilled college student randomly dividing a canvas into a million sections with wavy lines, and coloring them in an extremely complex way. It is “The Dutchman,” by a Nigerian artist, Moyo Okediji. Its disconnected colors, curvy lines, swirled shapes, and complexity generated a sense of chaos and confusion. This painting, as I later realized, depicted a tale of the horrified and disorganized reality of the slaves on the Middle Passage “journey,” and demonstrated the social conflicts between them and the slave traders. Okediji attempted to remind the viewers of the suffering from the slavery and to reconnect African Americans to their heritage.

The painting was hard to make sense of at a distance. The reason was that its intense variety of colors, curves, and shapes prevented my eyes to focus on any particular part of the image. The dominating color throughout the painting seemed blue. Other colors included yellow, black, orange, purple, brown, etc. The colors were disconnected and they overlapped each other. Curved lines were everywhere, dissecting the image into various shapes and thus breaking the overral unity of the painting. A total chaos was how I described it. I feel dizzied by its complexity. So, I moved back and forth, from the left to the right, trying to view the painting from different angles and distance in attempt to fully grasp what the artist had depicted. I moved closer, squinting my eyes, and seemed to adjust my gazes to the right focal points as outlines of many people emerged. With the help of the placard, I realized that it was about the Dutch slave trade. A ship was labeled “DUTCH” in the upper right hand corner, and the slave traders made identifiable by their skin colors, stood with callous facial expressions. I also saw several slaves: in the middle of the painting, a slave was being held upside-down. Next to it to the left, a drowning slave, thrown into the deep Atlantic ocean full of sharks, was sticking his hand out of the water. These scenes clearly demonstrated the suffering of the slaves. As the description stated, it was a “voyage through death.”

Beyond depicting the surface scene of slave trade, Okediji managed to employ several techniques to force the viewers to actively perceive and helped them achieve emotional and physical connections with the slaves. The slave trade was one of the darkest period in human history. It was associated with torture, disease and hunger. However, Okediji used bright colors for most of the painting. It was not a message of optimism or hope or whatever good things that came along with bright color. The contrast and brightness of the colors simply created a strong visual impact and attracted the viewers’ attention at first glance. However, viewers could find it hard to quickly understand the painting because of its complexity. In order to sense the tragic and chaotic details, the viewers had to explore the painting with further examination. When closely looked at, the figures of people were not clearly defined. They are distorted, teared into several blocks. The wavy lines made it hard for the viewer to grasp the whole body of any figures. Each object seemed to be separated from the other. Within each of themselves, they are divided into numerous sections of different colors, creating a sense of movement. For example, the slave who was help upside down had black legs, blue body, brown arms and red hands. This break of unity symbolized the slaves’ disturbing, anxious and chaotic mentality. The curved lines also mimicked waves, thus they created wave -like motions and symbolized instability.

The sparkling colors created distractions. It made it impossible for viewers to focus on one figure for a long time. Okediji forced the viewers to move their eyes all over the painting through the wavy lines, making it hard for them to distinguish separate parts of the painting. In this process, viewers would experience confusion and chaos, which were exactly what the slaves had gone through. Although I could not quite clearly identify each figure or object, everywhere I looked in the painting, I could catch glimpses of disturbing signs: tortured body, drowning men, crying woman and shocked faces. Okediji wanted the viewers to feel the pain, chaos and disorganization that his ancestors were going through. And viewers did not need to comprehensively understand each part of the painting to sense these sufferings that the slaves on the middle passage journey had to endure. The colors are also significant in another way. The massive blue not only depicted the Atlantic Ocean, it also symbolized African Americans’ blues music. Okediji wanted to reconnect the African Americans to their cultures and heritage. The active engagement from the viewers could lead them into thinking. People would reflect back to this dark history and establish the emotional and physical connections with the slaves.

Okediji was telling a story in this painting. It was a documentary of the suffering of the slaves in the Middle Passage. As an artist of African heritage, Mayoto Okediji felt his ancestors’ pain as a result of slavery. It was this realization that inspired him. Being an art insensitive person myself, I stared at this image in Ackland Art Museum for nearly an hour to finally see through it. It dazzled me. It’s worth it.