
David Hammons
American Sculptor, Printmaker, Performance, and Installation Artist
Movements and Styles: Conceptual Art, Performance Art
Born: 1943 - Springfield, Illinois

Table of contents
> Summary> Key Ideas
> Artworks
> Biography & Legacy
Influences and Connections
Resources
"I would like to be a myth, be on the invisible side of things. The shadow. When you are always seen people get used to that and you aren't a mystery anymore. I've seen it happen many times."
Summary of David Hammons
David Hammons seeks to actively critique the nature of the art world and its absurd elitism by eschewing traditional modes of artmaking, dissemination, and display. Despite being an influential and highly sought after artist, he has, throughout his career, refused to play by "the rules" - refusing interviews and requests for exhibitions, selling work himself rather than through a gallery. This iconoclastic approach, taken in part from his interest in Dadaism and Marcel Duchamp, has allowed Hammons to create work in various mediums that is as powerful as it is subversive. Hammons is best known for his work with nontraditional materials and discarded objects that reference and comment on urban African-American experience. Often referring in his work to the legacy of racism and the damaging stereotypes imposed on African-American culture, Hammons seeks to demystify and reclaim the objects and the language that gave rise to these narratives. In so doing, he imbues these "symbols" with a new and transformative power.
Key Ideas

Hammons' installation How Ya Like Me Now (1988) gave the African-American civil right leader Reverend Jesse Jackson white features, and thereby famously criticized the established political norms. Such provocations were hugely important for Hammons, and his biography includes a number of such powerful statements.
Important Art by David Hammons The below artworks are the most important by David Hammons - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist. | |
![]() Artwork Images | Pray for America (1969)Artwork description & Analysis: Pray for America is one of Hammons' early "body prints" created while he was living in Los Angeles. Performative in nature, to make the prints Hammons coated himself in cooking fat or margarine then rolled around on the canvas, imprinting his face and body. He then sprinkled pigment over the grease to reveal a ghostly outline against a plain white background. These X-ray-like images were then juxtaposed with politically charged symbols, like the American flag, which were silkscreened onto the canvas or paper after the body images were fixed. For his body prints Hammons experimented with the use of unusual or "poor" materials, working in a similar vein to artists affiliated with Arte Povera. The performative aspect of the body prints and the use of everyday materials is also reminiscent of Neo-Dada, particularly Yves Klein's Anthropométries series or Robert Rauschenberg's large-scale cameraless photographs made in collaboration with his then-wife Susan Weir, however, in their use of the body, Hammons' prints also reflect the rise of Body Art in Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Screenprint and pigment on paper - Museum of Modern Art, New York |
![]() Artwork Images | Spade in Chains (1973)Artwork description & Analysis: By the 1970s, Hammons had moved to New York, and began to shift his focus to popular symbols and language. This shift also involved a transition from primarily two-dimensional works that could be framed and sold, to three-dimensional objects and performance. While his past work referenced the power of symbols (like the American flag), in this period Hammons began to more overtly interrogate symbols and signs used in everyday culture and parlance. This exploration of symbols occurred, as art historian Kellie Jones has noted, in terms of "both [of] its connotations and physicality." Metal spade with metal chains |
![]() Artwork Images | Higher Goals (1986-7)Artwork description & Analysis: In the 1980s, Hammons' work became grander in scale and more public; often including large installations, sculpture, and street performances or actions. Working in the context of the urban and social landscape, Higher Goals continued Hammons' exploration of racially charged symbols, but brought the work into the urban environment. Temporary Installation using telephone poles, metal and bottle caps - Brooklyn and Harlem, Courtesy of Public Art Fund |
More David Hammons Artwork and Analysis:
Influences and Connections


Artists
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Influences on Artist


Artists
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Content compiled and written by Eve MacNeill
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Karen Barber
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Eve MacNeill
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Karen Barber
Available from:
First published on 14 Nov 2019. Updated and modified regularly.
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