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Hammons, David

David Hammons was born in Springfield, Illinois and thinks of himself as someone from the wrong side of the tracks. His work originates in the urban context of New York City and is inspired by his African American roots. With Chasing the Blue Train, he focuses on the powerful metaphor of the railroads that have transformed the landscape and society of the US since the nineteenth century. The work is dense with art historical and cultural references, concatenating in associative improvisations: John Coltrane’s albums may come immediately to mind, but Hammons also alludes to the notorious A line of the Subway connecting Brooklyn to Harlem (Hoet 1999). The piano wings are a reference to Thelonious Monk, but also evoke the beautiful curves of a woman. Hammons’s references reach back to the thousands of African Americans who rode trains across the country to work in coal mines, as well as to those who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. MM