Creative connections: Gibbes celebrates black artists

The Gadsden Arts Center and Didier Inc.

“The Baptist” by Alyne Harris (American, b. 1943), acrylic on canvas

In art as in ritual, what may appear to be a "primitive" cultural signpost often is deceptive. Looking beneath the superficial representation may unearth a more sophisticated intent.

"The Creative Spirit: Vernacular Art From the Gadsden Arts Center Permanent Collection," one of two new exhibitions opening Friday at the Gibbes Museum of Art, features paintings, drawings and sculpture by some of the most accomplished self-taught artists of the American South. Organized by the Gadsden Arts Center in Quincy, Fla., the touring show will be on view in the Main Gallery.

In a related vein is "In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre-Civil War New Orleans," co-organized by Worcester Art Museum and the Historic New Orleans Collection. Showcased in the Gibbes' Rotunda Galleries, it is billed as the first retrospective of the brief but significant career of portraitist Julien Hudson, regarded as one of the earliest documented free artists of color working in the 19th century.

Rural genesis

Much of the work collected for "The Creative Spirit" dates from the 1960s to the present, representing artists of African-American descent who have lived in rural areas of the deep South.

Pam Wall, curator of exhibitions at the Gibbes, defines this "vernacular" art as the work of "someone who is not only self-taught but who worked outside the established art community. The artist may have grown up in rural communities with limited access to museums" or mentoring.

The linchpin of the collection is the work of Thornton Dial, widely known for his symbolic renderings of the tiger to suggest the African-American man's struggle for freedom, as well as for resurrecting found materials. Dial gathers such items as old carpet, rope, fencing and clothes to construct art, employing paint to finish the piece. For much of his career, however, Dial was unaware that he was making art; he was simply acting on a creative impulse, says Wall.

Dial's work also addresses the themes of relationships between men and women and struggles in the modern world. The Indianapolis Museum of Art is touring "Hard Truths," Dial's first career retrospective exhibition.

"He was one of the earliest vernacular artists to gain widespread attention and to become known to the larger art world," Wall says.

Also presented in the exhibition are works by Lonnie Holley, Joe Light, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver and Purvis Young, self-taught artists who embody similar experiences, such as growing up in poverty with limited education and exposure to the outside world, and having strong religious and family influences. "The Creative Spirit" thus reveals "the communal and therapeutic function" of art in the lives of the creators.

"I think the two exhibits will make an interesting comparison," says Wall, "because Julien Hudson had academic training and was also doing commercial art to make a living, while the vernacular artists as a group were doing it for themselves and those around them."

Big Easy and abroad

"In Search of Julien Hudson" examines the influence of free people of color in New Orleans during the 19th century, with five pieces in the exhibition produced by Hudson, the first native Louisiana artist and the second-earliest known portraitist of African heritage to have worked in the United States. Hudson, his mentors, contemporaries and competitors are considered.

"The reason we brought this show to Charleston has to do with the many connections between artists -- portrait artists in particular -- in New Orleans and here," says Sara Arnold, curator of collections. "Hudson was one of the first documented free artists of color in New Orleans. The Gibbes already has a stellar permanent collection of such works, and he fits in well with the period that our permanent collection represents."

Hudson was the child of a property-owning free woman of color and an English merchant.

Generally speaking, free people of color were individuals of African and sometimes Afro-European descent who had either been born into freedom or won their liberty, creating a "complicated" middle ground between whites and slaves. From the early 18th century to the close of the Civil War, these people flourished in such American cities as New Orleans, Baltimore and Charleston, but New Orleans harbored the nation's largest population.

Hudson, who died in 1844 at 33 under mysterious circumstances, trained in both New Orleans under European artists based there and later in Paris. All that survives of his legacy are the five paintings by his hand and two attributed to him by "stylistic affinity."

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Historic New Orleans Collection has released "In Search of Julien Hudson," featuring more than 60 full-color reproductions of paintings, sculptures and drawings by the artist and his contemporaries.

Curator-led tours are scheduled with Wall at 1 p.m. Aug. 12 and Sept. 9 (free with museum admission) and with Arnold at 1 p.m. Aug. 26 and Sept. 23.

"The complimentary nature of these two exhibitions underscores our desire to present new and interesting juxtapositions to our community," says Angela D. Mack, Gibbes executive director. "Both exhibitions document the power of the creative spirit in the face of adversity,"