"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
In
broad terms, folk art can be two-dimensional, sculpted, or assembled.
James Hampton’s The Throne of the Third Heaven of the
Nations’ Millennium General Assembly is one of the most
perplexing and spectacular examples of the latter.
Hampton
(South Carolina, 1909-Washington, D.C., 1964) spent more than 14
years creating his masterpiece from gold and silver aluminum foil,
Kraft paper, and plastic over wood furniture. His vision is huge: 27
feet from left to right, by 10 feet by 14.5 feet.
It
will smack you right in the eyes when you enter the Smithsonian
American Art Museum. Not all of it is on view: consisting of 180
components, it is too big.
Hampton
worked in a rented garage, “transforming its drab interior into
a heavenly vision, as he prepared for the return of Christ to the
earth. The Throne is his attempt to create a spiritual
environment that could only have been made as the result of a
passionate and highly personal religious faith.
The
total work suggests a chancel complete with altar, a throne,
offertory tables, pulpits, mercy seats, and other obscure objects of
Hampton’s own invention. His work also includes plaques, tags,
and notebooks bearing a secret writing system which has yet to be,
and may never be, deciphered. [from the exhibit label]
James Hampton, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, (partial) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington.
At
first, the brightness of the foil makes one wonder if everything has
been crafted of silver. The center of vision is the seven-foot-high
throne. To its right, objects refer to the New Testament and Jesus.
To its left, the Old Testament and Moses. Everything is much more
complex than this description. When created in the Carolina garage it
stood on a three-foot platform. This was his only work of art.
Everything
was made from discarded materials — old furniture, derelict
planks, cardboard cutouts, jelly glasses, exhausted light bulbs, desk
blotters, mirror fragments, electrical cables, and other found
objects, some scavenged from second-hand shops and the federal office
buildings where he worked.
Of
a simpler craft, and more beautiful and less perplexing, is this
carving by Frank Brito (1952-2005) of Christ Child of Atocha.
This elegant folk carving came from the collection of Chuck and Jan
Rosenak, whom I wrote about last week.
The
Luce Center label offers this explanation:
The
Spanish city of Atocha was occupied by the Moors in the fifteenth
century. Many Christians were imprisoned and only children were
allowed to bring food and water to the captives. One day a child
dressed as a pilgrim carried a loaf of bread and a canteen of water
into the prison. When he had given food and water to every man the
guards were astonished to find the basket and canteen were still
full. The people of Atocha believed that Christ had heard their
prayers and had come back in the form of a child to save them. Frank
Brito carved this figure holding out the basket of bread to emphasize
Christ’s rewards for the faithful.
Frank Brito, Christ Child of Atocha, Smithsonian American Art Museum, from the Chuck and Jan Rosenak collection.
Another
sculpture I like consists of 15 separately carved figures, Yeibichai
Dancers with Medicine Man and Patient by Tom Yazzie (1930). The
male figures average nearly a foot high, the women less. They stand
on a platform 51" long.
This
is another Rosenak discovery.
The
Yeibichai are supernatural beings who created the Navajo people and
taught them how to live in harmony with the universe. This piece
represents the Nightway ceremony of the Navajos, in which a medicine
man calls upon the power of the Yeibichai to heal someone.The
ceremony also involves a dance with fourteen people: six men, six
women, a dancer representing the Talking God, and one representing
the Water Sprinkler. Tom Yazzie has depicted all of the participants
in their ceremonial masks and headdresses to represent the Yeibichai.
[The Luce Center label.]
Tom Yazzie, Yeibichai Daners with Medicine Man and Patient.
These
last two pieces came to the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a
combination gift from the Rosenaks and a purchase funded by Luisita
L. and Frank H. Denghausen Endowment. The Luce Center is located on
the third floor of the museum.
When
Pierre l’Enfant was laying out Washington, he planned a space
for the construction of a national church or a pantheon to
memorialize our heroes. Instead, in 1836, President Andrew Jackson
authorized the site for the construction of a fireproof national
patent office as a place where models of inventions could be
displayed. It is one of the oldest public buildings in Washington and
considered one of the finest in the country of Greek Revival public
architecture.
The
building was expanded periodically and used by different government
entities. During the Civil War it was a military hospital.
When
the building was scheduled for demolition, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower interceded to save it. After extensive modernization, the
south half of the building became the National Portrait Gallery, the
Archives of American Art, and, on the top floor, an art library,
where I spent many hours, although the Library of Congress is more
complete.
The
northern half houses, as it is now known, the Smithsonian American
Art Museum. This is the most comprehensive repository of American art
in the world, with more than 7,000 artists represented. The museum is
deeply involved in educational activities. These include a
printmaking studio.
On
two occasions when my daughter Anne Bradham, a watercolorist, (See
Moments in Art, “Along My Questing Path”) was in high
school in Maryland, she was excused from regular classes to take a
two-week workshop in making prints.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum
Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball was held in this room, one of the most elegant in Washington, D.C., which is now part of the American Art Museum.
Washington
is full of extraordinary museums, but places like this one, the
Phillips Collection, the Textile Museum, the Renwick, the Corcoran,
Dumbarton, and others that are not on the Mall are often overlooked
by tourists.
But,
as the French say, they are worth the voyage.
Lawrence Jeppson is an art consultant, organizer and curator of art exhibitions, writer, editor
and publisher, lecturer, art historian, and appraiser. He is America's leading authority on
modern, handwoven French tapestries. He is expert on the works of William Henry Clapp, Nat
Leeb, Tsing-fang Chen, and several French artists.
He is founding president of the non-profit Mathieu Matégot Foundation for Contemporary
Tapestry, whose purview encompasses all 20th-century tapestry, an interest that traces back to
1948. For many years he represented the Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie and
Arelis in America.
Through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the American Federation of
Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and his own Art Circuit Services he has been a contributor to
or organizer of more than 200 art exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan.
He owns AcroEditions, which publishes and/or distributes multiple-original art. He was co-founder and artistic director of Collectors' Investment Fund.
He is the director of the Spring Arts Foundation; Utah Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Fine
Arts Legacy Foundation
Lawrence is an early-in-the-month home teacher, whose beat is by elevator. In addition, he has spent the past six years hosting and promoting reunions of the missionaries who served in the French Mission (France, Belgium, and Switzerland) during the decade after WWII.
