#billtraylor — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #billtraylor, aggregated by home.social.
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"Untitled (Man Carrying Dog on Object)," Bill Traylor, c. 1939-1942.
Traylor (1853-1949) is someone I've talked about before...to give a quick summary, he was a Black man born into slavery, was a sharecropper most of his life, and only took up art at the age of 85, when he was an unhoused person on the streets of Montgomery, AL. He started to draw on scrap cardboard just to pass the time, but his work gathered notice and he actually had a show before he died. His work was rediscovered in the early 1980s and now he's hailed as one of the great self-taught Naive/Outsider artists.
Traylor's work can be bewildering; I've seen simple drawings of people and horses and then elaborate pictures of I-Don't-Know-What. Here we have a man carrying a dog on his head, on top of what looks like an urn. Maybe. What is it? What is the significance of the dog? Only Traylor would know....but then again, sometimes artists will just create and not think of meaning. Even David Lynch has said that the meanings of works like ERASERHEAD are unknown to him.
From the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
#Art #BlackArtists #BillTraylor #OutsiderArt #NaiveArt #VisionaryArt
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"Untitled (Man Carrying Dog on Object)," Bill Traylor, c. 1939-1942.
Traylor (1853-1949) is someone I've talked about before...to give a quick summary, he was a Black man born into slavery, was a sharecropper most of his life, and only took up art at the age of 85, when he was an unhoused person on the streets of Montgomery, AL. He started to draw on scrap cardboard just to pass the time, but his work gathered notice and he actually had a show before he died. His work was rediscovered in the early 1980s and now he's hailed as one of the great self-taught Naive/Outsider artists.
Traylor's work can be bewildering; I've seen simple drawings of people and horses and then elaborate pictures of I-Don't-Know-What. Here we have a man carrying a dog on his head, on top of what looks like an urn. Maybe. What is it? What is the significance of the dog? Only Traylor would know....but then again, sometimes artists will just create and not think of meaning. Even David Lynch has said that the meanings of works like ERASERHEAD are unknown to him.
From the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
#Art #BlackArtists #BillTraylor #OutsiderArt #NaiveArt #VisionaryArt
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"Untitled (Man and Woman)," Bill Traylor, 1939-42.
Traylor (c.1853 - 1949) is one of America's great outsider artists. A poor black sharecropper, he didn't begin making art until he was 85 years old and living on the streets of Montgomery, AL. A young white artist noted the drawings he made and supplied him with paint and other materials. He had one exhibition, in 1940, but nothing sold, but at least it brought enough notice for him to be taken off the streets and living with family.
Now he is seen as a major self-taught artist, with some critics claiming they see all sorts of anti-Jim Crow symbolism in his works.
From the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
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"Untitled (Man and Woman)," Bill Traylor, 1939-42.
Traylor (c.1853 - 1949) is one of America's great outsider artists. A poor black sharecropper, he didn't begin making art until he was 85 years old and living on the streets of Montgomery, AL. A young white artist noted the drawings he made and supplied him with paint and other materials. He had one exhibition, in 1940, but nothing sold, but at least it brought enough notice for him to be taken off the streets and living with family.
Now he is seen as a major self-taught artist, with some critics claiming they see all sorts of anti-Jim Crow symbolism in his works.
From the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
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"Untitled (Radio)," Bill Traylor, c. 1940-42.
Traylor (1853-1949) was a black man born into slavery and after Emancipation was a sharecropper for much of his life. He didn't begin to draw until he was his 80s and homeless, living on the streets of Montgomery, AL. He seemed at first to only draw to please himself, recording images from his life on pieces of scrap paper found in the street, but local artists noticed his work and encouraged him to draw more, and even arranged a couple of exhibitions, although nothing sold.
It wasn't until long after his death, in the late 1970s, that interest in his work took off and now he's regarded as a significant American artist, straddling the line between naive folk art and abstract modernism.
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
#Art #FolkArt #AbstractArt #BlackArtists #AmericanArt #BillTraylor
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"Untitled (Radio)," Bill Traylor, c. 1940-42.
Traylor (1853-1949) was a black man born into slavery and after Emancipation was a sharecropper for much of his life. He didn't begin to draw until he was his 80s and homeless, living on the streets of Montgomery, AL. He seemed at first to only draw to please himself, recording images from his life on pieces of scrap paper found in the street, but local artists noticed his work and encouraged him to draw more, and even arranged a couple of exhibitions, although nothing sold.
It wasn't until long after his death, in the late 1970s, that interest in his work took off and now he's regarded as a significant American artist, straddling the line between naive folk art and abstract modernism.
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
#Art #FolkArt #AbstractArt #BlackArtists #AmericanArt #BillTraylor