Label TextWillie Cole’s blackboard is an acrostic poem. Reading across it, one finds sentences like “American Malaise Eases Right Into Chronic Apathy” and “A Melting Post Empire Rejects Immigrants Coming Ashore.” These dystopian lessons are mined from the news cycle: Cole wrote down words from television news pundits and The New York Times beginning with the letters A, M, E, R, I, C, and A. Cole’s use of the blackboard as medium is loaded with associations, from the embattled classrooms of the era of school segregation to the blackboard paintings of artists like Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Joseph Beuys.
(Yinshi Lerman-Tan, 2020)