Change Your Luck

1988

Robert Colescott American, 1925 - 2009

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About the Artwork

Using folklore and totems drawn from the traditions of the African diaspora, Europe, and America, Robert Colescott examines the vexing power of luck. A rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover can bring luck. Luck is needed to win at dice or cards. Voodoo dolls offer protection and control the fate of others. In some traditional African tales, blacksmiths possess supernatural powers, but in the American South, blacksmiths of African descent often labored hard for little reward. This smith forging a horseshoe--an enduring symbol of luck in Western cultures--has mottled skin. Is he black or white? Colescott interlayers his meanings with ambiguous irony; the inter-racial couple in the upper right may illustrate an idiomatic reading of the phrase "Change Your Luck." The futility of it all is captured in the despairing expression of the man on the right.
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)

Title Change Your Luck

Artwork Date 1988

Artist Robert Colescott

Life Dates 1925 - 2009

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. American

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. ----------

Medium Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions Unframed: 84 × 72 inches (213.4 × 182.9 cm) Framed: 84 3/4 × 72 3/4 × 2 5/8 inches (215.3 × 184.8 × 6.7 cm)

Classification Paintings

Department African American Art

Credit Museum Purchase, Friends of African and African American Art

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 2002.126

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Provenance

2002-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

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Exhibition History

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Published References

Bulletin of the DIA 89, no. 1/4 (2015): p. 18 (ill.).

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Credit Line for Reproduction

Courtesy of the Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York

Robert Colescott, Change Your Luck, 1988, acrylic on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum Purchase, Friends of African and African American Art, 2002.126.