How to See Like Hammons

Abstract

Abstract “HAS ANYONE ELSE SEEN THESE.” Scribed on a wall in pencil, this fragment served as crude wall text for a vitrine in David Hammons's 2019 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles. The vitrine, filled with memorabilia, photocopies, and rare primary documents, was but one of many locations where Hammons displayed Hammons. To ask “Has anyone else seen these?” is to slyly pose a question that already has an answer: yes, or maybe, or no. Any answer to that question proves Hammons's point: that he himself is the subject who sees and the object to see. This methodological maneuver is part and parcel of Hammons's decades-long practice and serves to enact a Black aesthetic determination already sleeved in its own method. This article works to unpack how Hammons throws into methodological disarray the question of art's histories by his relentless invocation of Black aesthetic practices that deform, if not refuse, their own making.