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| Rick Powell photographed January 20, 2013 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. BlackArtistNews photo. All rights reserved. |
Scholar celebrates American modernist at Cleveland
Museum of Art
BlackArtistNews
| January 27, 2013
On the eve of the 57th Presidential Inauguration and the Federal celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University delivered a vigorous, unrestrained lecture on modernist artist William H. Johnson (1901-1970) at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The event coincided with the exhibit William H. Johnson: An American Modern, on
view November 3, 2012 through January 21, 2013.
Powell enthralled the audience with his telling
of the artist's story; his hands and arms swirled frantically as his words
weaved the tapestry that was William H. Johnson, a man born and raised in the
segregated south whose talent enabled him to travel to more than twenty
countries during his career which – sadly – was cut short due to mental
illness.
Powell’s gestures and movements in some ways
reflected the exuberant energy of Johnson’s work and to bear witness to such
passion made one wonder what exactly sparked his interest in documenting the
artist’s life.
When asked that question, the professor revealed
a bit of his own personal history: “[When] I was a student…I [saw
Johnson’s] works and I just couldn’t figure out how you could on one end do all
this expressionist work with paint building up on the surface and then turn
around and do one with a church and people doing the jitterbug. I couldn’t
figure it out and that’s what got me really fired up. I wanted to make sense of
a career.”
He further elaborated:
“I started off as an artist. I got my MFA in
printmaking and taught briefly in Norfolk at Norfolk State University. But I
guess it was always in the back of my mind the idea that I wanted to write
about artists who weren’t being written about. I wanted to do research on
aspects of art history that people had neglected. And so you can kind of see
with William H. Johnson I found a mission and it was a wonderful opportunity to
not only learn more about a career but in some ways learn a little bit more
about the larger issue of art and modernism and history and how circumstances
sometimes come together in interesting ways to either obliterate a story or
bring a story to the fore.”
Powell eloquently framed the events of Johnson's
life in relation to the art that he produced.
"You can tell in Johnson's work his real,
invested place in the Academy, in painting. In knowing how to put paint on a
canvas," he noted.
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| Powell with members of the Friends of African & African American Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. BlackArtistNews photo. All rights reserved. |
This is an excellent article in that through it I learned the reasons that Professor Powell has continuously devoted his time and energy toward advancing knowledge about a remarkable artist, William Henry Johnson. Because of Powell's efforts----through solid training as a young graduate scholar in the history of art and African American cultural studies at Yale University---he ably traveled throughout the world to learn important details about Johnson's life. His research resulted in an important monograph on the artist as well as several art exhibitions that have explored not only Johnson's art but also his connection to the history of American visual culture, especially African American culture and aesthetics. Thanks to Milo for his coverage, his writing and for the photographs of the Cleveland Museum event. Well done, Jerry C. Waters, American Art Historian, January 28, 2013
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