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| John Wilson photographed in 2001 by Tom Herde. Image via bostonglobe.com. |
Text | Bryan Marquard for BostonGlobe.com
Published
| January 26, 2015
In the
Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., stands a 3-foot-tall bronze bust of the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that is surely the most viewed creation of John
Wilson, an artist who grew up in Roxbury and painted, sculpted, and made prints
out of his home studio in Brookline for decades.
Like much
of his most important work, the bust brings viewers to the intersection of art
and politics, of pure creativity and the desire to examine social injustice.
Mr. Wilson, who was 92 when he died Thursday evening in his Brookline home,
pursued that path since he was a boy on Roxbury’s streets, learning to sketch
and honing a burgeoning talent that eventually would place his paintings and
sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts and far beyond.
“To me the
eloquence of the piece is not only in the face, but in the rhythms of the
gesture,” Mr. Wilson told the Globe in 1986, just before the bust was unveiled
in the Rotunda on what would have been King’s 57th birthday. “The head is
tilted forward, as if to communicate with the viewer. I hope the sculpture will
stimulate people to learn more about King, to perpetuate his struggle.”
Mr.
Wilson’s own journey to prominence was fueled in part by his reaction to art he
saw as a teenager during visits to the MFA.
“None of
these people looked like me and just by omission the implication was that black
people were not capable of being beautiful and true and precious,” he told the
Globe in 1995 when “Dialogue: John Wilson/Joseph Norman,” opened at the MFA and
his own sculptures and sketches shared museum space with the work that drew his
criticism years before.
Of that
show, Globe art critic Christine Temin wrote that Mr. Wilson “emerges as a
powerful artist, too little known for someone who has produced stellar work for
half a century.”
Writing
about “Eternal Presence,” a career survey of Mr. Wilson’s work that opened in
2012 in Danforth Art, Globe art critic Sebastian Smee called him “one of
Boston’s most esteemed and accomplished artists” and wrote that from Mr. Wilson’s
early sketches to his more recent large-scale charcoal drawings, “the impulse
has remained the same: It is an impulse toward clarity, toward truth.”
“I think
he will gain in importance as time goes on,” said Katherine French, director
emerita of Danforth Art, where several of Mr. Wilson’s works remain on display
through May 17.
“He will
be recognized as a major artist of the 20th century. I really have no doubt
about that,” added French, who has finished curating “John Wilson: Boston’s
Native Son,” a show that opens in the St. Botolph Club Feb. 18.
The second
of five siblings, Mr. Wilson was born in 1922 in Roxbury, where his parents
settled after emigrating from British Guiana and found little work once the
Great Depression hit. Mr. Wilson always was aware of racial inequities. His
father regularly read African-American newspapers such as The Amsterdam News,
which seemed to have images of lynchings in “practically every other issue,”
Mr. Wilson said in a 2012 interview with French, who wrote an essay about the
artist that Danforth Art will soon publish.
Drawn to
art classes at Roxbury Memorial High School, Mr. Wilson was art editor of the
school newspaper and took classes at the Boys Club from teachers who were
students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. They showed his work to
faculty at the Museum school, which awarded a full scholarship to Mr. Wilson.
There, he counted among his teachers Karl Zerbe, a Boston Expressionist born in
Germany. Years later, critics would see early evidence of Mr. Wilson’s talent
in “Boy with Bow Tie,” drawn in his mid-teens.
In 1945,
Mr. Wilson graduated from the Museum school with highest honors, and one of his
works was included in “The Negro Artist Comes of Age,” an Albany Institute of
History and Art exhibition. He taught at Boris Mirski modern art school in
Boston and graduated in 1947 with a bachelor’s degree in education from Tufts
University. Among his key works during those years was a print depicting Bigger
Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “Native Son.” Mr. Wilson
also developed an admiration for Mexican muralists, particularly Jose Clemente
Orozco
Awarded a
traveling fellowship from the MFA, Mr. Wilson moved to Paris and studied with
the modern artist Fernand Leger. After returning home, Mr. Wilson visited the
Lower East Side in New York City, where he met Julie Kowitch, a teacher who had
graduated from Brooklyn College. They married in 1950 and went to Mexico on a
John Hay Whitney Fellowship. As an interracial couple, they traveled by
necessity in separate cars while passing through the segregated South.
Though
Orozco died a few months before he arrived in Mexico, Mr. Wilson was drawn to
mural making — art that could be viewed by those who, like him, had grown up in
the streets with neither the money for museums nor social access to private
collections. A lasting work from this period was “The Trial,” a lithograph
depicting three judges, their faces hidden behind white theatrical masks,
looming vulture-like over a young black boy who stands awaiting judgment.
Back in
the United States, Mr. Wilson produced lithographs for unions in Chicago and
taught in New York City before returning to Massachusetts in 1964 to teach at
Boston University. Over the years, his work was included in exhibits at museums
and galleries including the Museum of Fine Arts and Martha Richardson Fine Art
on Newbury Street. Mr. Wilson also worked to create the National Center of
Afro-American Artists in Roxbury.
“Essentially,
he felt that his main objective as an artist was to deliver a message to people
about black dignity, about racial justice, about poor people trying to get a
better deal in life,” his wife said. But also, sketching constantly on index
cards and any available scrap of paper, Mr. Wilson composed portraits of family
members, friends, and life unfolding around him. During one car trip to New
York City with his daughter and infant grandson, “he did a series of sketches
of him over the backseat of the car,” said his daughter Erica of Brookline. “I
have them framed in my hallway.”
A service
will be announced for Mr. Wilson, who in addition to his wife and daughter
leaves a son, Roy, of Watertown; two brothers, Frederick and James, both of Los
Angeles; and four grandchildren. Another daughter, Rebecca Wilson-Sealy, died
last year.
A
perfectionist in everything he did, Mr. Wilson “was incredibly physical when he
worked,” his son recalled. “He moved with tremendous energy. Each stroke seemed
decisive.”
In 1986,
Mr. Wilson wrapped the King sculpture in blankets and an old sleeping bag,
tucked it into the back of his Mazda, and headed to the Capitol Rotunda. Before
that trip, he had not stepped inside the Capitol building.
“Somehow
it seemed like the epitome of the seat of power, and it alienated me,” he told
the Globe in 1986. “I never felt part of it. But when I delivered the
sculpture, that changed. I felt, ‘A piece of me is in that building.’ ”
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