“Analogous Colors”: The painted prophecy that haunts America today
© Titus Kaphar I Analogous Color, Time Magazine, June 15, 2020.
With Analogous Colors, Titus Kaphar delivers one of the most powerful and wrenching images of our time. Created for the cover of TIME magazine’s June 15, 2020 issue, the artwork stands as a visual outcry against racial violence and systemic racism in the United States. The scene—a Black mother cradling her child—is shattered by an absence: the child’s body has been cut away, leaving behind a hollow silhouette that becomes a universal symbol of grief, loss, and injustice. This formal choice, both radical and poetic, transforms the canvas into a silent, aching memorial. The child’s absence is not merely physical—it is a wound that cuts through the flesh of society. The piece was born in response to the killing of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, yet it transcends the singular event to become an icon of collective suffering. TIME’s iconic red border, framing the image with the names of 35 Black men and women killed by police, amplifies the message and anchors it in the reality of American life. To accompany the painting, Kaphar wrote a poem titled I Cannot Sell You This Painting, a text that lays bare the emotional and political charge of the work. In it, the artist expresses his anguish and helplessness in the face of a system that continues to perpetuate violence, even as he wields beauty and protest as tools of resistance.
Kaphar, known for his artistic practice that deconstructs the history of representation, employs a distinctive technique: he cuts, manipulates, layers. His canvases do not merely depict—they excavate, expose, interrogate. Analogous Colors is a quintessential example: color, used with boldness and tension, is not just aesthetic—it is a vehicle of meaning. Form, fractured and reassembled, reflects a reality that is fragmented and painful. Kaphar’s work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, affirming his relevance on the global artistic stage. Yet it is in works like this that his voice becomes most urgent, most necessary. Analogous Colors is not just a work of art—it is a declaration, a testimony, an act of resistance. It is painting that does not soothe, but shakes. And it reminds us that true art does not merely reflect the world—it questions it, challenges it, transforms it.
According to multiple news sources, Donald Trump recently stated, during an extraordinary meeting with military leaders at Quantico, that American cities should be turned into actual “training grounds” to confront what he called a “war from within.” Among the examples cited, Portland and Chicago were described as “dangerous” urban areas, ideal for military drills and National Guard operations. These statements, accompanied by a frontal attack on diversity policies and “overweight” military leadership, outline a troubling vision of the armed forces’ role in managing domestic issues such as immigration, crime, and protests. The declared intent is to strengthen military intervention on national soil, but the tone and scope of these remarks have sparked deep concern among experts and officials, who fear an authoritarian drift and a widening rift between the military and civil society. In this scenario, future TIME covers risk becoming illustrated obituaries in the hues of Analogous Colors, evoking Kaphar’s work as a tragic omen—a canvas that denounces what much of American society seems unwilling to confront.