“Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum,” which opened June 19 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, includes in its vast treasures work by 15 African-American artists in a wide range of styles and media that we expect when we veer into the terrain of the “self-taught” or “outsider” folk artist.
The oldest pieces by black artists in the show date back to the mid-19th century. These were history’s ultimate “outsider” artists in that they were slaves. We know the name of one artist in the show who was a slave because he carved his name – Dave, which was expanded to Dave Drake after emancipation – on the large jug he sculpted. Signing his work was a radical act, as the curators from the American Folk Art Museum point out, because slaves were denied literacy. It’s also remarkable that he dated his work – October 26, 1853 – given that, as Frederick Douglass and other slave autobiographers noted, slaves typically lived outside the conventions of time recorded in calendars.
We’re not so fortunate to know the names of the enslaved artists who made the so-called Whig Rose and Swag Border quilt, though at least a scrap of documentation pointed out that the piece was made by slave artisans, rather a slaveholder, who would more typically get credit for their work. The calm beauty of their quilting belies the oppressed condition of the artists.
The other African-American quilt in the show could be a response to the tradition of slave quilts. Jessie B. Telfair simply titled her piece “Freedom Quilt” (1983), and the pattern is simply the word “FREEDOM” repeated seven times in capital letters, as if she could not get enough of the idea or proclaim it boldly enough.
Freedom runs throughout this body of work – freedom taken with perspective, scale, materials and vision. Sticking with three dimensions, Lonnie Holley and Thornton Dial both created jarring assemblages, working roughly a decade apart. Holley’s “Don’t Go Crossing My Fence” (1994) is a humorous piece that incorporates a mop, garden hose and lamp base, while Dial’s beautifully titled “Birds Got to Have Somewhere to Roost” (2012) makes artistic use of carpet scraps along with metals and wood.
The show includes a number of artists who painted or otherwise made marks on wood and steel. William L. Hawkins painted house imagery onto Masonite with house paint and incorporated collage elements into an untitled piece from 1989. Made only a few years later, “People Celebrating” (1990s) by Purvis Young is a piece where it’s difficult to see where the frame stops and the actual art image starts, as he fashioned frames within frames with castoff wood and then painted stick figures in the indistinct, repetitive fashion of a child.
The free hand of a child may also be seen in two works on metals crafted a few years apart. Mary T. Smith’s untitled human figures painted on metal (1976) look like a child’s wide-eyed impression of African power figures. Sam Doyle painted cartoonish human figures (“Rocking Mary/Mr. Fool,” ca. 1983) on either side of a piece of corrugated roofing tin, with the charming feel of the hand-painted signs that advertise roadside businesses in Africa.
There is, however, no charm in Ronald Lockett’s haunting rusted sheet metal composition “Pregnant Lady” (1996), as the female figure collapsed in the dark rust tones in the center of the piece is a pregnant woman dying of AIDS.
The show also features two works on paper and two works on cardboard by African-American artists. Melvin Way’s “Singlair” from the late-20th century looks like colorful psychedelic doodles on paper, with scattered numerals and letters contributing to a mystical atmosphere. From the same period and in a similar vein, J.B. Murray’s untitled work on paper takes a child’s dream palette of media – crayon, watercolor, ink – to create a colorful burst of letters and what look like the ghosts you can make by smudging water colors on paper with your thumb and dotting on eyes in ink.
The works on cardboard look like the most classic examples of outside art, if that’s not an oxymoron, partly because cardboard is such a typical, homely medium for the self-taught artist. Bill Traylor’s untitled excursion in poster paint and pencil (c. 1941) gives me as much pleasure as anything in this show of treasures. A bird balances on the top hat of a man who flows into a cat from his right hand and into the object on which he is standing with his left hand. Other human figures dangle and fall from the object; other animal figures stretch and stalk.
Sister Gertrude Morgan brings the prophetic vision one expects from African-American folk art in “New Jerusalem” (c. 1970), acrylic and tempera applied to cardboard in dazzling reds and yellows. At the bottom of the piece, holy ghosts leave their graves. The evangelist herself strides up toward the center of the image, preaching from Mathew: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Blessed, too, are the self-taught artists, the outsiders, for they show us the earth and its inhabitants as we have never seen them before.
“Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum” hangs at the Saint Louis Art Museum through September 11. Admission is free for members. For the general public, tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, $6 for children ages 6 to 12, and free for children age 5 and under. Tickets are available in person or through MetroTix.
Alvia J. Wardlaw, professor of art history at Texas Southern University and curator of the University Museum, will deliver the free lecture “African American Expressions in Folk Art” in the museum’s Farrell Auditorium on Saturday, June 25 at 10:30 am.
For more information, call 314-721-0072 or visit slam.org.
