Reginald O’Neal’s best-known body of work is his Jazz Figurines Series. Paintings and a sculpture from that series are on view in Hayes Hall at Artis-Naples.
“The fact that it has a musical connection made it feel really appropriate for our unique institutional context here,” said Baker Museum Chief Curator Courtney McNeil.
The series originated from a random stop at a souvenir shop on a visit to New Orleans in 2022.
“He saw these little figurines of black jazz musicians and was really struck by the cartoonish proportions, the strange caricatured expressions on their faces, the uniforms that they wore that evoked ideas of domestic servitude, and basically the idea that the maker of these figurines had taken black artistic talent and turned it into a commodity, literally, that you could hold in your hand and kind of diminished it in that way,” McNeil said.
Having grown up in Miami’s historically Black Overtown neighborhood, where Chitlin' Circuit performers were welcomed while being denied access to white entertainment venues and hotels during the Jim Crow era, O’Neal found the figurines especially offensive.
“So, he decided to take these figurines and reclaim that by painting them in this monumental form and by abstracting them,” McNeil explained. “And so, he has painted these in different forms with slightly different backgrounds, but the focus is never on the background. The focus is on the almost jarring artificiality of the expressions and proportions of these figurines.”
“Jarring” is also an apt description of the single sculpture, which has been strategically placed in an alcove outside The Jazz Figurines exhibition.
“The space is very small and so you have this instant discomfort with being overwhelmed by this larger-than-life caricatured figure in this small space,” McNeil said. “It makes it a very intense installation.”
MORE INFORMATION:
Florida Contemporary overview
The Baker Museum’s Florida Contemporary exhibition presents a select group of notable visual artists with diverse artistic interests and backgrounds who hail from various locations throughout Florida.
The artists selected for the 13th edition of the exhibition are Mally Khorasantchi (Naples), Boy Kong (Orlando), Jillian Mayer (Miami) and Reginald O’Neal (Miami). They have utilized a variety of media to comment on perspective and constructed realities, sometimes playful and at other times solemn.
About the Jazz Figurines Series
O’Neal first exhibited the Jazz Figurines series at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2022.
The Florida Contemporary show is the series’ first comprehensive museum exhibition.
It was made possible by the various collectors who purchased individual paintings from O’Neal.
“This means that this is probably the last time this body of work will be shown in one cohesive exhibition,” McNeil pointed out.
Overtown influence
O’Neal is a third-generation resident of Overtown, a historically Black neighborhood in Miami with a rich musical history.
“During segregation, it provided enthusiastic audiences and welcoming accommodations for world-class Black musicians who were barred from staying in hotels in the Miami neighborhoods where they performed,” states the Baker Museum website. “After their concerts, musicians such as Count Basie, Nina Simone and Ray Charles were known to travel across the Miami Beach causeway to perform after-hours shows in Overtown.”
Count Basie, Nina Simone and Ray Charles performed during the 1930s, ‘40s and '50s in a network of tight, crowded nightclubs, dance halls, juke joints and theaters in African American neighborhoods in the Midwest and Southeast known collectively as the Chitlin’ Circuit.
The Chitlin’ Circuit was born of necessity. This was the era of segregation, and entertainers of color were denied access to white establishments and languished in an industry controlled by white theater owners and booking agents. So, they performed in clubs, juke joints and theaters in African American neighborhoods such as Overtown.
The Chitlin’ Circuit took its name from cast-off pork parts – hog intestines that were boiled and then fried. But there was nothing cast-off about the music that patrons heard on Chitlin’ Circuit stops.
Chitlin’ Circuit venues became the incubators of some of this country’s greatest blues, jazz and rock-and-roll musicians. In addition to Count Basie, Nina Simone and Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King, Lionel Hampton, Otis Redding, Lucky Milliner, Duke Ellington and his orchestra, James Brown, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Tina Turner, Sam Cooke, the Isley Brothers and even Jimi Hendrix all got their start, honed their performance skills and developed their unique sounds and flamboyant personas on the Chitlin’ Circuit. And as the rhythm sections of the bands that toured with these and other musicians began insinuating gospel backbeat into their performances, the circuit eventually, inexorably, gave birth to a brand-new genre - soul.
With its year-round good weather, Florida had three dozen Chitlin’ Circuit locations, including the palatial Two Spot in Jacksonville, the Cotton Club in Gainesville (which became the Blue Note in the 1950s) and Club Eaton some six miles north of Orlando. Including Harlem Square, Miami had 10 Chitlin’ Circuit performance venues and African American entertainers made a continual pilgrimage between Miami, St. Pete, Orlando and Jacksonville in their hardscrabble effort to make a living and pay their bills.
Beginning in 1938, Fort Myers had its own Chitlin’ Circuit venue, McCollum Hall in Dunbar.
“The Chitlin’ Circuit was African Americans making something beautiful out of something ugly, whether it’s making cuisine out of hog intestines or making world-class entertainment despite being excluded from all of the world-class venues, all of the fancy white clubs and all the first-rate white theaters,” writes Preston Lauderbach in his 2012 book, "The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll." The pay was low (“Sometimes you play for the chitlins, that’s what you would get,” Bobby Rush, the Grammy-winning self-described King of the Chitlin’ Circuit said in an interview one time), the schedule grueling (entertainers often performed two or more shows a night, 51 weekends a year, with James Brown once playing 37 shows in 11 days), the travel fraught with danger, but with verve and tenacity, musicians could eke out a living while creating a name and following for their music. For those who made it, the Chitlin’ Circuit was a badge of honor, a proverbial rite of passage.
While most Chitlin’ Circuit venues have now shuttered and disappeared, some, like the Apollo Theater in New York City, Royal Peacock in Atlanta, Dreamland Ballroom in Little Rock and, yes, McCollum Hall in Fort Myers, have survived to this day.
It was this context that prompted O’Neal to associate the jazz figurines he found in New Orleans with the commodification and exploitation of Blackness across art, music, spirituality and knowledge.
“These small trinkets – often dismissed as sentimental or kitsch – are unsettling presences, transformed into complex meditations on history, memory and representation.”
“By incorporating [the miniature figurines] into paintings, he's reclaiming his ownership of the images,” said McNeil.
“The Saxophonist”
“A fun fact about this sculpture,” said McNeil as a walking tour of the exhibition drew to a close, “is that it was last exhibited at the historic Hampton House in Miami, which was the setting for ‘One Night in Miami,’ which was a Green Book hotel. Seeing it installed in that historic context was really meaningful.”
The Hampton House was once known as the “Social Center of the South.” During the era of segregation, the Hampton House welcomed many of the nation’s most prominent Black leaders, artists and entertainers.
“One Night in Miami” is a fictional account of one incredible night where icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown gathered together in the Hampton House to discuss their roles in the Civil Rights Movement and cultural upheaval of the '60s.The 2020 film earned three nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for Leslie Odom, Jr., Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song ("Speak Now"). Regina King also earned nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and the Critics' Choice Award for Best Director.
The reference to the Green Book is to “The Negro Motorist Green Book” first authored by Victor Hugo Green in 1936. The directory became part of the travel kit of every musician and entourage traveling the Chitlin’ Circuit. Securing sleeping accommodations was just as important as booking performances. Racism was real, sometimes deadly. Being Black in the South in an unfamiliar area could prove to be dangerous, even dire.
“Because of segregation, there were sundown towns that people weren’t allowed in after sundown,” explains muralist Erik Schlake. “There were places that refused to serve them food, refused to sell them gas, and so if you were going to go on a road trip, you needed this book to tell you where you were going to be able to get services along the way.”
The Green Book’s popularity among Chitlin’ Circuit musicians was more than coincidental. Although a postal worker by day, Victor Green managed his brother-in-law, Robert Duke, who toured as a musician and experienced firsthand the threats and violence experienced by African Americans who sought goods and services at white establishments. It was Duke’s stories of this mistreatment and abuse that inspired him to create his travel guide, for which he used guides published for Jewish travelers who often faced discrimination from non-Jewish whites.
But it wasn’t just Chitlin’ Circuit musicians who needed the information that Green compiled. The Green Book became indispensable for any Black traveler driving across the country in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. And it wasn’t just the names and locations of Black-friendly hotels, restaurants, gas stations, garages and public restrooms that was so vital. As importantly, the Green Book alerted travelers to towns and county roads in which police harassed Black motorists (although not the names and locations of sunset towns because their prevalence was not widely known at the time).
Compared to the 1920s and ‘30s, the quarter of a century following the end of World War II saw a dramatic increase in the number of Black motorists. This was time of the Second Great Migration during which millions of African Americans fled the poverty and violence of the South for better paying jobs and perceived opportunities in the North and Midwest. Many returned periodically to visit the friends and relatives they’d left behind, and most traveled by the automobiles they were suddenly able to afford – and which allowed them to avoid “the indignities and confrontations of bus and train travel,” according to George Petras and Janet Loehrke in “A look inside the Green Book, which guided Black travelers through a segregated and hostile America,” USA Today (2-19-2021).
Later editions included advice on train, bus and airplane travel, as well as vacationing in other countries.
Green died in 1960 and following his death the guide was renamed “The Travelers’ Green Book.”
More about the artist
The gripping oil paintings of Reginald O’Neal (b. 1992) depict narrative scenes influenced by his experience growing up in Overtown, a historically Black neighborhood in Miami. Reflecting on the complexities of the Black experience in his own community, O’Neal bases his works on original photographs and stories, both personal and collective. His work, characterized by a subdued color palette and a somber atmosphere, often addresses themes such as violence, marginalization and loss.
O’Neal’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, and is held in the permanent collections of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Rubell Museum (Miami and Washington, D.C.), NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Oolite Arts (Miami), Jorge Pérez’s El Espacio 23 (Miami), the Hort Family Collection (New York City), the Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas), Marquez Art Projects (Miami), the Mimi Dusselier & Bernard Soens Foundation (Brussels, Belgium), and the Jasteka Foundation (Jeffersonville, Indiana).
O’Neal received the South Florida Cultural Consortium award in 2019; was nominated for the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art in 2023; and has participated in residencies in Spain, Japan, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Bed-Stuy Residency. He has held solo exhibitions at galleries and museums including Spinello Projects, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and the Rubell Museum in Miami.
His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Orlando Museum of Art, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, The Bass, ICA Miami, EL Espacio 23, the Rubell Museum in Washington, D.C., and Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (St. Augustine); he has participated in Art Basel Miami Beach (2022, 2023).
O’Neal lives in Miami and is represented by Spinello Projects.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
