The Shellof Vitus

  Vitus Shell: Picturing the Black Experience BY JOHN R. KEMP / May-June 2018 / Louisiana Living Magazine The poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht said, “Art is not a mirror to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” To Vitus Shell of Monroe, art is indeed a hammer. It is a means to shape reality for the outside world to see the African American experience through strong, compelling and often unsettling images of black contemporary life in America. His paintings focus public attention on a long dormant subject that has become as relevant today as it was in the troubled 1960s. Three themes drive that message — irony, activism and his notion of black coolness. “My large scale paintings are geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful image deconstruction, sampling and remixing identity, civil rights and contemporary black culture,” Shell says. “In my work, I strive to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations by explo