Price: $50.00
(as of Aug 10, 2024 05:49:21 UTC – Details)
A nuanced reassessment that transforms our understanding of this self-taught artist
Arguably the most successful African American artist of his day, Horace Pippin (1888–1946) taught himself to paint in the 1930s and quickly earned international renown for depictions of World War I, black families, and American heroes Abraham Lincoln, abolitionist John Brown, and singer Marian Anderson, among other subjects. This volume sheds new light on how the disabled combat veteran claimed his place in the contemporary art world. Organized around topics of autobiography, black labor, artistic process, and gift exchange, it reveals the range of references and critiques encoded in his work and the racial, class, and cultural dynamics that informed his meteoric career. Horace Pippin, American Modern offers a fresh perspective on the artist and his moment that contributes to a more expansive history of art in the 20th century. Featuring over 60 of Pippin’s paintings, this volume also includes two previously unknown artist’s statements—“The Story of Horace Pippin as told by Himself” and “How I Paint”—and an exhibition history and list of artworks drawn from new research.
From the Publisher
The Ending of the War, Starting Home
’On that picture [The Ending of the War, Starting Home] I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do, but my next pictures I am working my thought more perfectly.’ [Pippin’s] emphasis on persistence triumphing over adversity fit the public mood in a nation exiting the Great Depression and entering another world war.
Above: Horace Pippin, The Ending of the War, Starting Home, 1930–1933. Oil on fabric in wood frame embellished with wood and metal, 26 × 30 1/16 in. (66 × 76.4 cm), framed: 32 × 39 ½ × 2 in. (81.3 × 100.3 × 5.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Robert Carlen, 1941-2-1.
The Domino Game
In The Domino Game, touches of local red draw the eye across the composition from the bandanna of the pipe-smoking matriarch, Harriet, to the dotted blouse of his older sister Bertha Pippin Brown, with whom he sits at the table, to the quilt assembled by his oldest sister, Christine Pippin Green, sitting by the stove.
Above: Horace Pippin, The Domino Game, 1943. Oil on composition board, 12 ¾ × 22 in. (32.4 × 55.9 cm), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., acquired 1943.
Giving Thanks
Horace Pippin, Giving Thanks, 1942. Oil on canvas (later mounted to composition board), 11 × 14 3/8 in. (27.9 × 36.5 cm). The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, BF990. (c) 2019 The Barnes Foundation.
The Park Bench
[T]he image of a seated elderly black man seems to have haunted him, and he adopted that compositional formula for the unsigned, probably unfinished The Park Bench of 1946. It updates Joe’s and Tom’s period costumes and split-rail seats, and labor eliminates their young companions, leaving a man so lost in his thoughts that he is unaware of our presence.”
Above: Horace Pippin, The Park Bench, 1946. Oil on canvas, 13 × 18 in. (33 × 45.7 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Daniel W. Dietrich II, 2016-3-4.
The Getaway
His dynamic composition is usually ascribed to the formal and conceptual influence of Winslow Homer’s Fox Hunt (1893), in which a desperate fox, beset by crows, crosses a snowbound coast under a deep-blue sky. While Pippin metabolized Homer’s figures, palette, and diagonal composition, he inverted the grim narrative by giving the fox a crow for dinner.
Above: Horace Pippin, The Getaway, ca. 1938–1939. Oil on canvas, 24 5/8 × 36 in. (62.5 × 91.4 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Daniel W. Dietrich II, 2016-3-3.
Publisher : Yale University Press; Illustrated edition (February 25, 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 264 pages
ISBN-10 : 0300243308
ISBN-13 : 978-0300243307
Item Weight : 2.55 pounds
Dimensions : 8.3 x 1 x 10.3 inches
