A similar spirit of understanding as patriotism animates the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’s show “Titus Kaphar and Junius Brutus Stearns: Pictures More Famous Than the Truth,” which is part of Virginia’s state commemoration of the semiquincentennial. It juxtaposes the 19th-century artist Junius Brutus Stearns’s paintings of George Washington—not portraits, but imagined scenes of the president’s life that circulated widely in their time and remain canonical enough to appear in those Story of America videos—with six works by the contemporary painter and sculptor Titus Kaphar. Both artists show Washington as a slaveholder, a choice that’s noteworthy in Stearns’s work and central to Kaphar’s.
Kaphar’s wife’s family is directly related to Washington, and his works in the show approach the Founding Father with the seriousness and respect one might give an older relative. Kaphar seems less interested in criticizing Washington than in bringing two often-fragmented narratives about him together—that is, in inviting viewers to see him both as a once-in-a-nation’s-lifetime hero and as a flawed human being who enslaved many others. As Kaphar unites these ideas, he also combines wildly varied artistic techniques. The show includes two of his sculptures, and paintings that are done not only in conventional oil on linen but also in uncommon materials such as torn fabric and sculpted tar. This mixing of media does not divert attention from Kaphar’s abundant traditional skill. In fact, his oil painting is so gorgeous, and his canvases so strikingly colorful, that they eclipse all of Stearns’s work.
I wasn’t surprised that Stearns couldn’t compete with Kaphar. Mark Thistlethwaite, an art historian who has written about Stearns extensively, described him to me as a “very competent painter,” someone who’s remembered largely because he was good at creating clear, accessible images. Still, it’s fun to see contemporary works outshine older ones. It also creates an excellent model for honoring America’s 250th; because Kaphar’s art is so exciting, the show celebrates his work—and therefore the present—at least as much as it engages with the past. This slight elevation of new over old is its own vision of progress, one in which serious contemplation of art history leads to visually stunning and, at least in Rothian terms, meaningfully patriotic art.