Author: William Edmondson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578061815
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
A showcase of works by the Tennessee artist called the greatest folk carver of the twentieth century

Author: Josef Helfenstein
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
"'Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse' is the first large-scale exhibition focusing on the works of two major figures in American and African American art history: Bill Traylor (1854-1949), a draftsman, and William Edmondson (1874-1951), a sculptor. Although Traylor and Edmondson are typically defined as "folk" or "outsider" artists whose works reflect the roots of African American culture, their work was discovered and first discussed in the broader context of modernism. Born a slave in 1854, Bill Traylor worked as a cotton laborer throughout much of his life. At the age of 85, while living on the streets in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, he picked up a pencil and began to draw. When he died ten years later, he had created more than 1,500 works of art that simultaneously pulse with the musical energy of the blues and reflect on the economic depression and race relations in Alabama during the 1930s and 1940s. William Edmondson was born into poverty in 1874, and in the early 1930s he began to gather discarded stones carving them into simple, but powerful tombstones. He died in 1951 leaving behind a body of work full of strongly abstract forms and divine inspiration. Paradoxically, Edmondson and Traylor were among the first African Americans to gain recognition from the official art world. In 1937 Edmondson was the first black artist to be exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Traylor's work was shown both in Montgomery and in New York in the 1940s. After World War II and the deaths of both artists (1949 and 1951), shifting priorities in institutional culture, politics, and taste, but especially the dominance of Greenbergian aesthetic dogmatism, removed artists like Traylor and Edmondson from a (by now much narrower) view of modern art. As a result, the work of both artists fell into oblivion for several decades. However, the civil rights movement and black cultural movements in the 1960s paved the way for a reevaluation and rediscovery. ... 'Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse' is the first exhibition, however, in which their work and careers will be discussed outside of the reductive framework of "self-taught" art -- namely, within the broader context of American and European culture of the first half of the twentieth century. The aesthetic language of the work of both Edmondson and Traylor, its simplicity, freshness, and independence -- in other words, its radical modernity -- made it so attractive for young artists, photographers, and curators who were part of the modernist movement in America in the 1930s. This exhibition and publication are part of a broader tendency to revisit the history of modernism in the United States and especially those exponents who have been excluded from the canon of modern art for several decades. It is time to discuss and recognize the role and place of Bill Traylor and William Edmondson and their work outside the ghetto of "outsider" and "self-taught" art. This exhibition and publication offer a vehicle to better understand the aesthetic language of this work and the larger framework of cultural and social impulses to which it is related. But most importantly, the exhibition positions Traylor and Edmondson within the aesthetic discourse and institutional framework of modern art, which since World War II has increasingly become a synonym for mainstream, established art."--

Author: James Buchanan Ballard
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476629706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
William Edmondson "Grumble" Jones (b. 1824) stands among the most notable Southwest Virginians to fight in the Civil War. The Washington County native graduated from Emory & Henry College and West Point. As a lieutenant in the "Old Army" between service in Oregon and Texas, he watched helplessly as his wife drowned during the wreck of the steamship Independence. He resigned his commission in 1857. Resuming his military career as a Confederate officer, he mentored the legendary John Singleton Mosby. His many battles included a clash with George Armstrong Custer near Gettysburg. An internal dispute with his commanding general, J.E.B. Stuart, resulted in Jones's court-martial conviction in 1863. Following a series of campaigns in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, he returned to the Shenandoah Valley and died in battle in 1864, leaving a mixed legacy.

Author: Carol Crown
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578066599
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fascinating examination of the Bible's influence on seventy-three self-taught artists and 122 works of art

Author: Lynne Cooke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226522272
Category : Art and society
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
Some 250 works explore three distinct periods in American history when mainstream and outlier artists intersected, ushering in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. The exhibition aligns work by such diverse artists as Charles Sheeler, Christina Ramberg, and Matt Mullican with both historic folk art and works by self-taught artists ranging from Horace Pippin to Janet Sobel and Joseph Yoakum. It also examines a recent influx of radically expressive work made on the margins that redefined the boundaries of the mainstream art world, while challenging the very categories of "outsider" and "self-taught." Historicizing the shifting identity and role of this distinctly American version of modernism's "other," the exhibition probes assumptions about creativity, artistic practice, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture. The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art.--Provided by publisher.

Author: Katherine Jentleson
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303423
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
After World War I, artists without formal training “crashed the gates” of major museums in the United States, diversifying the art world across lines of race, ethnicity, class, ability, and gender. At the center of this fundamental reevaluation of who could be an artist in America were John Kane, Horace Pippin, and Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses. The stories of these three artists not only intertwine with the major critical debates of their period but also prefigure the call for inclusion in representations of American art today. In Gatecrashers, Katherine Jentleson offers a valuable corrective to the history of twentieth-century art by expanding narratives of interwar American modernism and providing an origin story for contemporary fascination with self-taught artists.

Author: James Romaine
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN: 9780271077741
Category : African American art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays exploring prominent African American artists' engagement with Christian themes. Essays examine the ways in which an artist's engagement with religious symbols can be an expression of concerns related to racial, political, and socio-economic identity.

Author: Cara Zimmerman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300191752
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, March 3-June 9, 2013"--T.p. verso.

Author: William Edmondson
Publisher: [Pittsburgh] : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book Here

Book Description

Author: Celeste-Marie Bernier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present