Government Cheese, 2003, encapsulates Henry Taylor’s reputation as a master of “character studies spliced with social commentary.”ⁱ A captivating portrait of the artist’s brother, the work is an early and vital touchstone in Taylor’s oeuvre. When visiting Taylor’s studio in 2005, gallerist Kathryn Brennan was so struck by Government Cheese, that she felt compelled to offer him his first gallery show on the spot.ⁱⁱ Two years later, Government Cheese was hung prominently in Taylor’s first museum solo exhibition, Sis and Bra, The Studio Museum, Harlem, 2007, where it was the first painting visitors encountered in the galleries. Taylor signed the work at the end of the exhibition, including a drawing on the back of the canvas that supplements the personal and political message of the painting. Government Cheese is both cutting and kind, a heartfelt expression of Taylor’s love for the Black community, and a critique of the social systems that limit its potential.

 

Taylor paints his brother shirtless in Government Cheese, standing at a dressing table, in the pose of his mugshot. The composition is cropped close like a photograph, and the subject’s frontal pose is distinct, and emotionally intense—features Taylor retains from the tension of his source image. His brother’s gaze is direct and unfazed; there is a defiant shadow to his raised chin and closed mouth. However, instead of a mugshot placard of identifying numbers, Taylor’s brother holds a block of government cheese.

 

“Government cheese” is a processed cheese product that has been subsidized by the American government since World War II. By the beginning of the Reagan administration, the government had a stockpile of over 500 million pounds of cheese—enough to give two pounds of cheese to every American.ⁱⁱⁱ A portion of this surplus was distributed to low-income and elderly citizens via the welfare system in 1981; with its bricklike form, poor nutritional profile, and distinct orange color, government cheese became an iconic symbol of the American welfare system and its shortcomings.

 

By replacing his brother’s mugshot placard with a block of government cheese, Taylor draws an equivalence between the welfare and carceral systems, the failings of which both disproportionately affect African American communities. “Every successful Black person has 18 members of his family living in the projects,” Taylor has said, “and we all know someone who’s in the system.”^iv The supplementary drawing on the verso of the work emphasizes the work’s political message: it features a line drawing of a man with a flat top hairstyle, with the words “he been eating cheese 2 long” written across his face. Taylor adds the words “been threw a lot” under a drawing of an arrow through a tube. Taken together, these inscriptions clarify the pictorial message of the recto. The figure in Government Cheese has “been threw” both the carceral and welfare systems; he has endured systemic racism and oppression for far “2 long.” 

“He’s the Manet of our generation.”
—Kathryn Brennan

 With Government Cheese, Taylor’s political stance is as assured as his paint handling, and it is this synthesis of style and substance that gives the work its affective power. The work is a virtuosic display of Taylor’s sympathetic style of portraiture, which gives dignity and respect to all his painted subjects—from the patients of a psychiatric hospital, where he worked for ten years, to the unhoused people living near his studio, to iconic Black figures like Jay-Z, Jackie Robinson, and Barack and Michelle Obama. This “collapsing effect” is very important to the artist, per Bennett Simpson, as proof that “he doesn’t think about people in different ways.”^v His unflinching yet kind eye recalls that of Édouard Manet, the quintessential “painter of modern life” in 19^th century France, known for his technically daring works that pushed the limits of respectable subject matter. 

 

The painted surface of Government Cheese is stunningly rendered; the background of sage green, subtly variegated and cross-hatched, stands in an understated contrast with the brick red undertones of the subject’s skin, and a trace of green along the right eyelid pulls attention to his gaze. This sensitivity to color, and the painting of Black skin, evokes the chromatic sensibility of Taylor’s friend, Noah Davis. The background is painted right to the body, emphasizing the curve of his shoulders and elbows, with a flattened formalism and hard contour.

 

Taylor paints a disaffected still life in the foreground, which both registers the subject’s personal items, and trades in stereotypes of Black men’s vices: there is a forty-ounce bottle of Schlitz Malt Liquor, a prescription pill bottle, a comb, and a jar--maybe containing hair gel. The still life affirms how the subject of Government Cheese expands beyond the specific representation of Taylor’s brother, to represent an archetype of Black masculinity, and the wider systems that shape American Blackness.

“[Taylor is] a champion and caretaker of Black experience, suffusing his work with recognition and social commentary alike. In this role, his paintings communicate a deep sense of responsibility—to memory and community, to excellence and contingency.”
—Bennett Simpson, curator of Henry Taylor: B Side 

The ambitious visual program of Government Cheese aligns with Taylor’s artistic practice at large; the artist has spent decades at work, “always feverishly painting, always intently looking—whether it’s eyeballing a subject from behind a canvas, [or] gazing out the window of his car for some trash he might turn into a new sculpture.”^vi The brown paper collaged onto Government Cheese provides both a touch of realism (government cheese is distributed in non-branded, brown paper packaging), and a reference to the sculptural aspect of Taylor’s practice, which combines found objects with signifiers of Black culture. 

 

Regardless of institutional recognition, Taylor has maintained a wholehearted commitment to his craft and principles since his earliest days, as evident in Government Cheese. He is a shining example of the cumulative nature of artistic genius, the power of persistence, consistency, and unshakeable self-belief.

 

 

ⁱ Michael Slenske, “Henry Taylor, L.A.’s Favorite Painter, Flips the Retrospective,” Los Angeles Magazine, Apr. 17, 2023, online.

ⁱⁱ Michael Slenske, “Henry Taylor, L.A.’s Favorite Painter, Flips the Retrospective,” Los Angeles Magazine, Apr. 17, 2023, online.

ⁱⁱⁱ  Erin Blakemore, “How the US Ended Up with Warehouses Full of ‘Government Cheese,’” The History Channel, Jul. 26, 2018, online.

^iv  Charles Gaines, “Interview with Henry Taylor,” Blum & Poe, accessed October 24, 2023, online.

^v  Bennett Simpson, quoted in Slenske, ibid.

^vi Slenske, ibid.