| Light of the Spirit: Portraits of Southern Outsider Artists Contributor(s): Goekjian, Karekin (Author), Peacock, Robert (Author), Kuspit, Donald (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 1578060257 ISBN-13: 9781578060252 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi OUR PRICE: $64.35 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 1998 Annotation: This spectacular volume features photographs and biographies of twenty-one acclaimed self-taught artists from four states in the American South. From Georgia: Howard Finster, Dilmus Hall, Peter Loose, R. A. Miller, Harold Rittenberry, Jr., Rev. John D. Ruth, and Willie Tarver. From Alabama: Thornton Dial, Sr., Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, W. C. Rice, Jimmy Lee Suddeth, and Mose Tolliver. From North Carolina: Benny Carter, James Harold Jennings, Clyde Jones, and Vollis Simpson. From Mississippi: Burgess Dulaney, A. J. Mohammed, Sulton Rogers, and Earl Simmons. Additional works by the artists are pictured individually. All these artists go with what comes natural. Each is shown here in a portrait with examples of his work. Most create and paint three-dimensional objects of wood, metal, found materials, clay, or cement-whirligigs, animals, religious subjects, portrait sculptures. Many, especially Finster, Ruth, Rice, Hall, and Simpson, also decorate their houses and yards with their art and create fantastical sculpture gardens. Dulaney makes clay animals inspired by the television show Wild Kingdom. Jennings has created a roadside environment of windmills, small houses, and signs filled with images of animals, humans, the sun, the moon, and stars. Jones shapes fanciful critters and human forms out of logs and tree stumps. Rittenberry's metal sculptures arise out of discarded vacuum cleaners, automobile parts, garden tools, and other found objects. Suddeth, one of the few included here who is solely a painter, works on plywood with a mixture of paint, mud, charcoal from the fireplace, and sugar, which he calls "sweetwater". Goekjian's extraordinarily vivid portraits of them in theirspecial environments are natural too, for he uses moonlight and artificial light. In a sense he paints with light. Each portrait, a work of art in itself, produces a surreal effect that parts the curtain on a special world and achieves a rare empathy with the subject matter. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | Popular Culture - Art | Criticism & Theory - Art | History - Modern (late 19th Century To 1945) |
| Dewey: 709.75 |
| LCCN: 98006663 |
| Series: Folk Art and Artists (Hardcover) |
| Physical Information: 0.78" H x 10.34" W x 10.33" (2.14 lbs) 118 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Gathering twenty-one widely known Southern artists from four Southern states, photographer Karekin Goekjian has captured the vital human connections between the creator and the object. Working with moonlight, twilight, or a touch of flash, Goekjian photographs each artist and his art in the settings where that creative work occurs--the yards, worksheds, and woods of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. "Goekjian's photographic art has an intensity that holds its own with self-taught art," says art critic and writer Donald Kuspit. "His photographs have the same aura of direct yet enigmatic statement, conveying the same sense of urgent abstraction and moral emergency." From Alabama, Goekjian photographed Thornton Dial, Sr., Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, W. C. Rice, Jimmy Lee Suddeth, and Mose Tolliver. From Georgia, Howard Finster, Dilmus Hall, Peter Loose, R. A. Miller, Harold Rittenberry, Jr., Reverend John D. Ruth, and Willie Tarver are included. Mississippi artists included are Burgess Dulaney, A. J. Mohammed, Sulton Rogers and Earl Simmons. And North Carolinians photographed are Benny Carter, James Harold Jennings, Clyde Jones, and Vollis Simpson. Goekjian's extraordinarily vivid portraits of them in their special environments seem as natural as the clay, metal, wood, and paint these artists use. In a sense Goekjian paints with light. Each portrait produces a surreal effect that parts the curtain on the individual artist's special world and achieves a rare empathy with the subject matter. Drawing on the raw, earthy spirit that infuses these paintings and sculptures, Goekjian creates photos that are works of art in themselves. Goekjian, a native of Beirut, Lebanon, and a resident of Athens, Georgia, is a photographer whose work has been widely exhibited and is in permanent collections of major international museums. Robert Peacock, who wrote the artists' biographies and edited this book, has also written Paradise Garden: A Trip through Howard Finster's Visionary World and Sleep: Bedtime Reading. He lives in New York City. Gerard C. Wertkin is the Director of the Museum of Folk Art, New York City, and a professor at New York University. OUTSIDER ARTISTS IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "Why do I make art? I don't know why I do art. For fifteen years of my life I wouldn't give you two cents for all the art on earth. I didn't even finger paint when I was in school." BENNY CARTER, north carolina "I PAINT with my brush, 'cause that's why I got it and that brush don't wear out. When I die, the brush dies." JIMMY LEE SUDDETH, alabama "Howard Finster is a second Noah, to reach the world before it is too late. I am having more success in a way than Noah had. The first Noah preached to the world; he didn't get a one of them saved. This is what I am all about here trying to get peace in the world a thousand more years, to live here." HOWARD FINSTER, georgia "I always liked to play with mud. I guess I never growed up." BURGESS DULANEY, mississippi "I love to paint because my paintings are beautiful. The president told me so." MOSE TOLLIVER, alabama |
