By the time this "big, genial man, plain in speech and inmanner" died, just 10 years after his work was "discovered" hangingin the window of a West Chester, Pa., shoemaker, he was considered tobe among the 20th century's most important American artists."Pictures just come to my mind," Pippin once explained, "and I tellmy heart to go ahead."
That statement of purpose serves as the title of theretrospective "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," openingSaturday and running through July 10 at the Art Institute ofChicago. The show, featuring 93 of Pippin's 136 known works, is themost comprehensive exhibit of the artist's work assembled to date.It also is the largest group of his paintings exhibited here since1941, when 39 went on display at the Arts Club of Chicago. And manyof the canvases and burnt-wood panels in the Art Institute exhibithave not been shown since the artist's death. "I Tell My Heart" isan event of some significance.
Pippin was a sensitive and deeply religious man. His works,more than half of which were produced during the last six years ofhis life, represent a kind of autobiographical summing up. In them,he recalled World War I battle scenes, the somber winter landscapesof the Brandywine River Valley and the rooms remembered from hischildhood. He also painted biblical and historical subjects, as wellas colorful still lifes and a few portraits. The best of these worksconvey a feeling of directness and profoundly felt emotions.
Pippin revealed his talent for drawing while still in gradeschool, when he won a box of crayons in a contest sponsored by an artsupply company. As a young man, he moved from job to job, unloadingcoal, working as a hotel porter, and finally, making iron molds atthe American Brakeshoe Company. During World War I, he served as anArmy corporal in a segregated infantry unit, and suffered a shoulderwound, which permanently impaired the use of his right arm.
Returning from the war, disabled and disillusioned, Pippinturned to art as a form of physical and emotional therapy. Using aniron poker heated in a coal-burning stove, he burned spare imagesonto wood boards, mostly rough planks, old oak table leaves or doorpanels. Holding the poker in his right hand, which he balanced onhis crossed knees for support, he would "draw" by shifting the boardthis way and that. Sometimes he had to turn it completely upsidedown to burn in the outlines of his images.
These were mostly outdoor scenes, such as ice fishing and duckshooting. One depicts a trapper returning home in the snow. Anothershows buckets hung on maple trees for collecting syrup. In theseworks, he often left the outlines of cabins and trees untouched sothe color and texture of the stained and varnished boards would showthrough. The rest of the drawing was filled in with broad areas ofwhite, blue or black oil paint.
"This," the artist recalled, "brought me back to my old self."
Pippin's unusual technique allowed no room for mistakes. Everydetail of the picture had to be planned out in advance. As a result,he developed an almost uncanny feeling for line and composition.Within a few years, the process also had strengthened his arm to thepoint where he was able to use a paintbrush well enough to attempt anentire painting.
The picture "The End of the War: Starting Home" (1930) records agroup of African-American soldiers advancing on an enemy trench, withbombs exploding in the air and burning planes falling from the sky.The painting took three years to finish. Pippin said he gave it "atleast one hundred coats of paint." And, indeed, in some places, thepigment is built up so thick the image looks as if it had beencarved.
Given the pride Pippin took in his military service, it is notsurprising that he should choose this subject for his first majorpainting. Nor is it surprising that he should include "home" as partof its title. Home, for Pippin, was symbolic of the past. A lost tranquility
Many of the artist's best paintings reflect his desire toreclaim the tranquility he had known before the war. This isespecially clear in his images of small-town life and home. "AfterSupper, West Chester" (1935), for instance, is a marvelous picture ofinterracial harmony, expressed largely through the use of symmetry.
In the center of the painting, two young girls form an arch withtheir upraised arms. From here, the viewer's eye is directed to apair of trees, then two houses, two rain barrels, and finally, at theedge of the canvas, two mothers seated in rocking chairs, each with ababy on a blanket. Everything in the picture reflects balance andorder in a metaphor for the relationship of its black and whiteneighbors.
Pippin, perhaps, is best known for his intimate glimpses intointeriors that chronicle African-American family life. These roomsseem like stage sets, with corners that appear almost to flatten out,and floorboards, which, in some cases, run straight up and down.Here, women sit at a table playing dominoes, children at prayer kneelat their mother's feet and a small child gets a Saturday night bath.One woman, at the end of a long day, puts up her feet and smokes apipe.
Some observers have criticized these images, with their tornwindow shades and crumbling plaster walls, as stereotypes of "poorblack folk." Others see them as bits of treasured memory, lovinglyaccurate in their detail, right down to the coffeepot and iron fryingpan on the shelf, or the chair placed near the wood-burning stove.Sometimes the artist would search for months to find just the rightkind of object, so, as he said, he would have "all the details thatare necessary to paint it exactly the way it is and exactly the way Isee it."
With the support of influential supporters such as the famouscollector Albert Barnes and the philosopher Alain Locke, success camequickly to Pippin. His works sold well. But he took a lot of heatfrom academy-trained black artists, who were jealous of theself-taught Pippin's success. They accused him of being manipulatedby the tastemakers, who just happened to be infatuated withprimitive, or folk artists at the moment. An artist's response
Pippin took such criticism in stride. It was his vision thatmattered most, and there are some great examples of it on display atthe Art Institute. Among these are the artist's reflectiveself-portrait at his easel (1941), with its crisp blue background;the haunting, mask-like intensity of "Christ (Crowned with Thorns)" (1938), and the bleeding, beseeching Christ of " TheCrucifixion" (1943).
"Holy Mountain III" (1945) is one of the artist's best. Thework portrays a white cloaked figure with a staff watching overchildren playing with animals on a grassy field of red flowers, whichare shaped like tiny crosses. Barely visible in the dense forestbackground, however, are fighting soldiers, white grave markers and ahanged black man. The painting's date, Aug. 9, corresponds to theWorld War II bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.
Perhaps the most poignant of Pippin's images, however, is hislast complete painting, "Man on a Bench" (1946). It is an eloquentimage of a solitary old black man sitting on a park bench, wearing acoat and cap the color of World War I khaki. The scene's melancholyis tempered by the light-hearted antics of a squirrel playing amongthe trees in the distance. It has been called a picture "of deepdespair" and has been likened to a "spiritual self-portrait." "Itis," as one historian noted, "the end of a journey, reflectingPippin's loneliness and isolation."
Garrett Holg, a locally based free-lance writer, is the Chicagocorrespondent for ARTnews magazine.
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