Bookish Brews Snapshot
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor
Stuck in a deep creative block, Wyeth wanders New York looking for a spark that will help him paint again. Along the way he meets Keating, an ex-priest, and together they spiral into the overwhelming depths of art and faith, helping each other through their temporarily fraught relationships with the world as they once knew it.
🏙️ City Life 😭 Emotional ❤️🩹 Trauma and Healing 🌼 Self Discovery
- Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Review
What does it mean to create art when it feels like the entire world is crumbling around you? Because consciously, I know that when the world is falling apart, it’s even more critical to be make art and to be creative. But understanding how essential art is to movements and especially to our own sanity can so easily add undue pressure to it. It’s like when you know you need to do something, but simply because you need to do it, it becomes an impossible task to achieve. And that’s how the main character, Wyeth, finds himself in a deep artistic block. It’s also possible, though, that that’s what Wyeth told me about my own creative blocks.
Minor Black Figures is about an artist, Wyeth, wandering through New York, looking for something to unblock his creativity. He works at a small business restoring art pieces, he rents out a shared studio with some of his art friends, and somewhere along the way he meets an ex-priest, Keating, who’s struggling with his relationship to his faith. His relationship with Keating surfaces deep discussions on art and faith, drawing parallels between religion and creating, and helping each other through temporarily fraught relationships with their understanding of the world.
Brandon Taylor tackles nearly every insecurity I’ve ever felt as a creative in one single book. The backdrop of Minor Black Figures centers on living and creating art in the aftermath of COVID restrictions and the George Floyd uprisings, clouding Wyeth’s creative head with questions about his art and how it fits into the world. Are Black people allowed to create art that isn’t Black art or if it is Black art by nature of being made by a Black artist? And is it possible to make Black art without commodifying your identity? How do you make sure that you aren’t exploiting yourself and your community?
I think the true answer is that it’s impossible to know how your art is going to be interpreted. Especially when the piece of your existence that sits in the spotlight changes by the day. While we may think we know this, that doesn’t stop the urge to question everything about our creativity and spiral about our contribution to the cultural narrative. After all, knowing that every piece of art that we create becomes a part of the culture, do we really want to contribute to the cultural narrative with something that’s not good? But how are we supposed to make something good when we’re weighed down by too many questions? What does “good art” even mean?
To exist in America as a person of color means the world is always crumbling around you. So if we stop creating art when the world feels like it’s crumbling, then we will never create art. But the thing is, creating something and putting it out into the world is proof that we are alive amidst it all. It’s proof that we were here and that we are always building. Yes, even if the art is bad. Maybe even especially if the art is bad.
