BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor:

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Description of Pictures: Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor
September 28, 2018 – March 17, 2019
Bill Traylor (ca. 1853–1949) is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. A black man born into slavery in Alabama, he was an eyewitness to history: the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the steady rise of African American urban culture in the South. Traylor would not live to see the civil rights movement, but he was among those who laid its foundation. Starting around 1939—by then in his late eighties and living on the streets of Montgomery—Traylor made the radical steps of taking up pencil and paintbrush and attesting to his existence and point of view. The paintings and drawings he made are visually striking and politically assertive; they include simple yet powerful distillations of tales and memories as well as spare, vibrantly colored abstractions. When Traylor died in 1949, he left behind more than one thousand works of art.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIPGBT_181229_009.JPG: Between Worlds The Art of Bill Traylor n the late 1920s, Bill Traylor (ca. 1853–1949) left one lifetime behind and embarked on another. Born enslaved in Alabama, Traylor was an eyewitness to history: the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the steady rise of African American urban culture in the South. After seven decades of labor, his tethers to plantation life had all fallen away, so he traveled, alone, into the cityscape of segregated Montgomery. Traylor would spend the next two decades in Montgomery, looking back at a hard, haunting agrarian past; looking ahead at a rapidly evolving world in the city. Traylor became an artist at a time and in a place where personal expression for black Americans posed great risk. Yet in his final decade, he took up pencil and paintbrush and attested to own his existence and point of view. In just a few years, Traylor put down a lifetime of memories, dreams, stories, and scenes in over a thousand works of art. Traylor's compelling imagery charts the crossroads of radically different worlds -- rural and urban, black and white, old and new -- and reveals how one man's visual record of African American life gives larger meaning to the story of his nation. Curated by Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art
2. SIPGBT_181229_012.JPG: Drinking Bout, ca 1939-42
3. SIPGBT_181229_017.JPG: House, Blue Figures, Blue Lamp, ca 1939-42
4. SIPGBT_181229_021.JPG: Man in Brown and Blue House with Figures, ca 1939-42
5. SIPGBT_181229_025.JPG: Untitled (Exciting Event: House with Figures), ca 1939-42
6. SIPGBT_181229_037.JPG: House, ca 1941
7. SIPGBT_181229_042.JPG: Untitled (Radio) ca 1940-42
8. SIPGBT_181229_047.JPG: Traylor often painted on discarded cardboard window advertisements or box tops. This large display card once advertised the Philco Mystery Control, a wireless remote invented for radios in 1939. Here, similar imagery and story lines seen in Untitled (Yellow and Blue House with Figures and Dogs) coalesce into a single tightly organized scene. The characters may be the same, but Traylor distilled them into loosely painted, stylized figures that deliver an explosive energy; details give way to fluid abstraction.
9. SIPGBT_181229_049.JPG: Untitled (Figures and Construction with Blue Border), ca 1941
10. SIPGBT_181229_052.JPG: Figure Construction (Woman and Man with Axe), ca 1939-42
11. SIPGBT_181229_057.JPG: Blue and Black Figures on Construction with Orange Bird, ca 1939-42
12. SIPGBT_181229_060.JPG: Untitled (Woman with Umbrella and Man on Crutch), 1939
13. SIPGBT_181229_064.JPG: Man and Woman Pointing with Dog, ca 1939-42
14. SIPGBT_181229_068.JPG: Top Hat, ca 1939-42
15. SIPGBT_181229_072.JPG: Woman, Blue Gloves, Brown Skirt, ca 1939-42
16. SIPGBT_181229_077.JPG: Woman, ca 1940-42
17. SIPGBT_181229_081.JPG: Woman in "O" and "X" Pattern Dress, ca 1939-42
18. SIPGBT_181229_085.JPG: Spread-Legged Drinker, ca 1939-42
19. SIPGBT_181229_088.JPG: Black Turkey, ca 1939-42
20. SIPGBT_181229_093.JPG: Untitled (Seated Woman), ca 1940-42
21. SIPGBT_181229_105.JPG: Man Pointing with Three Birds, ca 1939-42
22. SIPGBT_181229_108.JPG: Untitled, ca 1939-42
23. SIPGBT_181229_115.JPG: Two Men, Dog, and Owl, ca 1939-42
24. SIPGBT_181229_119.JPG: Violence is pervasive in Traylor's art. People wield hatchets, clubs, or guns, they fall from heights, run from dogs, and flee into trees; sometimes they hang, lifeless. His images draw on the personal but describe an environment rife with peril and challenge. Lowndes County, Alabama, where Traylor lived and worked for much of his life, was the heart of the Jim Crow South, where racial persecution was commonplace.
25. SIPGBT_181229_120.JPG: Exciting Event (Man on Chair, Man with Rifle, Dog Chasing Girl, Yellow Bird, and Other Figures), ca 1939-42
26. SIPGBT_181229_125.JPG: Yellow Chicken, ca 1939-40
27. SIPGBT_181229_130.JPG: Figures and Construction with Cat, ca 1939-42
28. SIPGBT_181229_134.JPG: Figures on Construction, Dog Treeing, ca 1939-42
29. SIPGBT_181229_141.JPG: Figures and Trees, ca 1939-42
30. SIPGBT_181229_145.JPG: Between the Civil War and the modern civil rights movement, thousands of African Americans were subjected to acts of torture and murder known as lynchings. Racial terrorism was illegal, but in Jim Crow America it was rampant and far too often tolerated or endorsed. Lynching peaked between 1877 and 1950 -- Traylor's adult lifetime. He often drew violent scenes but rarely depicted racial persecution in an overt way. A small number of Traylor's drawings, however, attest to the injustice and inhumanity he had witnessed.
31. SIPGBT_181229_151.JPG: Untitled (Figure Construction in Black and Brown), ca 1939-42
32. SIPGBT_181229_157.JPG: Untitled (Dog, Figures, and Tree), ca 1939-42
33. SIPGBT_181229_161.JPG: Untitled (Man, Woman, and Dog), 1939
34. SIPGBT_181229_167.JPG: Red Man, ca 1939-42
35. SIPGBT_181229_171.JPG: Female Drinker, ca 1939-42
36. SIPGBT_181229_177.JPG: Untitled (Man in Blue Pants), ca 1939-42
37. SIPGBT_181229_182.JPG: Self-Portrait, ca 1939-40
38. SIPGBT_181229_186.JPG: Fighter, ca 1940
39. SIPGBT_181229_192.JPG: Man Wearing Maroon and Blue with Bottle, ca 1939-42
40. SIPGBT_181229_194.JPG: Man with Two Canes, ca 1940
41. SIPGBT_181229_198.JPG: Abstraction, Red, Blue, Brown (AKA Abstraction), ca 1939
42. SIPGBT_181229_203.JPG: Man with Yoke, ca 1939-42
43. SIPGBT_181229_210.JPG: Red Man on Blue Horse with Dog, ca 1939-42
44. SIPGBT_181229_215.JPG: Man with Cane on Construction, with Dog, ca 1939-42
45. SIPGBT_181229_222.JPG: Untitled (Man Carrying Dog on Object), ca 1939-42
46. SIPGBT_181229_225.JPG: Figures on Blue Construction, ca 1939-42
47. SIPGBT_181229_231.JPG: Figures, Construction, ca 1940-42
48. SIPGBT_181229_238.JPG: Two Cats Jumping on a Man, ca 1939-42
49. SIPGBT_181229_245.JPG: Untitled (Basket, Man, and Owl), ca 1939
50. SIPGBT_181229_249.JPG: Untitled (Ross the Undertaker), January 1940
51. SIPGBT_181229_253.JPG: Man in Black and Blue with Cigar and Suitcase, ca 1939-42
52. SIPGBT_181229_258.JPG: Man, Woman, ca 1940-42
53. SIPGBT_181229_262.JPG: Walking Man, ca 1939-42
54. SIPGBT_181229_269.JPG: Untitled (Mule), December 1939
55. SIPGBT_181229_273.JPG: Yellow Horse, Black Mule, ca 1939-42
56. SIPGBT_181229_278.JPG: Untitled (Mule and Horse), ca 1939-42
57. SIPGBT_181229_282.JPG: Spotted Dog and Black Bird, ca 1939-40
58. SIPGBT_181229_290.JPG: Exciting Event with Snake, Plow, Figures Chasing Rabbit, ca 1939-42
59. SIPGBT_181229_294.JPG: Untitled (Rabbit), April 1940
60. SIPGBT_181229_298.JPG: Untitled (Chase Scene), ca 1940
61. SIPGBT_181229_306.JPG: Blue Rabbit Running, ca 1939-42
62. SIPGBT_181229_313.JPG: Black Jesus, ca 1939-42
63. SIPGBT_181229_319.JPG: Bird, ca 1940-42
64. SIPGBT_181229_322.JPG: Untitled (Chase Scene), ca 1939-42
65. SIPGBT_181229_330.JPG: Man and Woman, ca 1939-42 (Reverse) Man and Large Dog
66. SIPGBT_181229_336.JPG: Traylor sometimes made paintings on both back and front of a paperboard support. For this particular artwork, the two images may relate to a single topic. Here, a black man argues heatedly with a white woman; his clothes are strikingly similar to hers and to those of the man (perhaps her husband) shown on the other side. She points in his face but he gestures to something behind him -- the past perhaps, a time when his clothes might not have been as fine as a white man's. Although the reality of the Jim Crow South would have made such an encounter dangerous for him and therefore unlikely, Traylor depicts the man standing up for himself.
67. SIPGBT_181229_337.JPG: Man and Large Dog, ca 1939-42 (Reverse) Man and Woman, ca 1939-42
68. SIPGBT_181229_341.JPG: Traylor adeptly used animals as allegorical stand-ins for people. A diminished white man leading a giant, raging black dog may subtly refer to the paradox of slavery: a strong and mighty being, held in bondage through the powers of social agency and wealth. Traylor's paintings of single canines -- hulking animals painted in or set against blazing reds -- convey the enormity of emotions, including fear, rage, and torment, feelings that African Americans had to outwardly suppress in segregated society.
69. SIPGBT_181229_343.JPG: Untitled (Dog Fight with Writing), ca 1939-40
70. SIPGBT_181229_348.JPG: Cat and Dog, ca 1939-42
71. SIPGBT_181229_351.JPG: Two Fighting Dogs, ca 1939-42
72. SIPGBT_181229_357.JPG: Untitled (Two Dogs Fighting), ca 1939-42
73. SIPGBT_181229_362.JPG: Mean Dog, ca 1939-42
74. SIPGBT_181229_367.JPG: Traylor's dogs convey a wide range of character types, from docile pets to lethal foes. His many depictions of fighting hounds suggest an ongoing desire to capture raw animal ferocity and the intense dynamic of mortal conflict. On plantations, canines were common farming and hunting aides, but they were also trained to hunt and kill humans. From the time of slavery, through the decades of Jim Crow segregation and into the present, dogs have been an effective tool for instilling terror. Often portraying the embattled beasts in different colors, Traylor subtly conveyed the notion of an interracial battle.
75. SIPGBT_181229_368.JPG: Untitled (Scene with Keg), ca 1939-40
76. SIPGBT_181229_376.JPG: Untitled, ca 1939-42
77. SIPGBT_181229_379.JPG: Hog, Dog, and Chicken Stealing, ca 1939-42
78. SIPGBT_181229_383.JPG: Untitled (Mule, Dog, and Scene with Chicken), July 1939
79. SIPGBT_181229_390.JPG: Dog and Crow, ca 1939-42
80. SIPGBT_181229_392.JPG: Blacksmith Shop, ca 1939-40
81. SIPGBT_181229_398.JPG: It is uncertain when Bill Traylor began drawing, but his earliest known works -- rudimentary drawings done in pencil -- were made in early 1939, when he was around eighty-six. After decades of farm labor, the aged Traylor was spending days drawing near a blacksmith shop and lodging nightly at a funeral home in the segregated black business district of Montgomery. In these first drawings, Traylor takes stock of the world around him, documenting hand tools, objects, animals, and people, and learning how to organize pictures as records and tell stories.
82. SIPGBT_181229_402.JPG: WPA Poster, ca 1939-42 Traylor never became literate, yet with the help of people he knew, he developed a drawn version of his name that he sometimes added as a signature to his works. Traylor's awareness of significant letters is nevertheless apparent in his careful replication of the "alphabet" acronyms used on posters promoting Depression - era social programs -- the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and Resettlement Administration (RA). These federal agencies all helped people by providing work. In an unconventional way, Traylor's art became a literary equivalent -- a personal means of recording what he had seen, felt, recalled, or believed.
83. SIPGBT_181229_408.JPG: Untitled (NRA WPA), ca 1939-42
84. SIPGBT_181229_442.JPG: Rabbit, ca 1940-42
85. SIPGBT_181229_448.JPG: Traylor often drew rabbits flying through the air, escaping, or simply running free. Sometimes their legs appear uncannily human-like, as if Traylor wanted to only thinly disguise its resemblance to a running man. In Untitled (Chase Scene), Traylor draws a distinct parallel between a rabbit and a fleeing man. Here a figure -- the only character painted in black -- runs for his life; alongside him, a rabbit matches his frantic pace as a bird above signals the hope of escape. The pair is pursued by a man in a hat and a dog; the predators hunt the prey.
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