William Edmondson
William Edmondson | |
---|---|
Born | William M. Edmondson December 1874 Davidson County, Nashville, Tennessee |
Died | February 7, 1951 |
Occupation | Sculptor |
William Edmondson (c. 1874–1951) was the first
Biography
Edmondson was born sometime in December 1874 on the Compton Plantation in
When his father died in late 1889, 16-year-old Edmondson refused to continue to work tirelessly on the plantation and relocated to Nashville.
In 1948 Edmondson stopped sculpting. On February 7, 1951, at age seventy-six, he died quietly in his home in Nashville, Tennessee, where illness had confined him to bed for several months. As he was the last of his siblings to pass, his five nieces and seven nephews carried out his funeral service which was held the next day.[1] Edmondson was buried in Mount Ararat Cemetery, now Greenwood Cemetery (Nashville, Tennessee), Nashville's oldest black cemetery. Today there is no sign of Edmondson's grave marker because at the time cheap wooden caskets were used to bury African Americans. As the wood decayed it would cause the grave markers to sink into the earth.[1] Mt. Ararat burial records of the period were lost in a fire, so his exact grave site is unknown.
Art career
Edmondson entered the world of sculpture at the advanced age of about 60 years old in 1934. He reported that he received a vision from God, who told him to start sculpting: "I was out in the driveway with some old sculptures of stone when I heard a voice telling me to pick up my tools and start to work on a tombstone. I looked up in the sky and right there in the noon daylight, he hung a tombstone out for me to make. I knowed it was God telling me what to do."[4] He carved tombstones primarily from chunks of discarded limestone from demolished buildings, which were delivered to him by wrecking companies' trucks. A signature Edmondson tombstone reflects strong large lettering carved in the stone.[1] He began his career by working on these tombstones, which he sold or gave to friends and family in the community. Soon he began carving lawn ornaments, birdbaths, and decorative sculptures. In his yard hung a sign "Tomb-Stones. For Sale. Garden. Ornaments. Stone Work W M Edmondson."[5]
Edmondson's work was influenced by his
Edmondson had a large audience in Edgehill as many of his figures were on display not only in his yard, but in that of neighbors' homes and gardens. A few years into Edmondson's sculpting career,
Edmondson's career lasted for about fifteen years. His work never commanded large sums during his lifetime. In 1939 and again in 1941, he worked under the Works Progress Administration, a government-sponsored relief program that included artists. In the late 1940s, his health began to fail and his artistic production slowed. Edmondson professed to be uninterested in fame, and he appears to have struggled financially during the final years of his life. He is believed to have created about 300 works during his working lifetime.
Exhibitions
Edmondson was given a one-man show, the first by an African American artist, at the
After very sporadic exhibition through the 1950s and 1960s (mostly as part of "folk art" exhibits), collector Edmund Fuller wrote a biography of Edmondson which was published in 1973. His sculpture was included in the influential "Two Centuries of Black American Art" exhibition curated by Fisk University Art Department chairman David Driskell in 1976. In 1981 the new Tennessee State Museum opened with a permanent solo exhibition with six of Edmondson's sculptures featuring loaned sculptures from Elizabeth Starr's personal collection,[1] and the essays in the accompanying catalog sought to elevate appreciation of Edmondson's work as fine art. Through the 1980s and 1990s Edmondson's sculptures were exhibited extensively, though often in the limiting context of the labels "outsider", "folk art", "self-taught", and "naive". In 1999, Nashville's Cheekwood Museum of Art mounted a major traveling retrospective exhibition and catalog that included in-depth biographical and critical essays on his life and work. This exhibit included donated sculptures from the personal collections of the Fletcher, Formosa, and Overton families.[11] A 2006 exhibition, "William Edmondson, Bill Traylor, and the Modernist Impulse", paired Edmondson with another well-known self-taught artist and argued for Edmondson's acceptance as an artist without limiting labels. This exhibit displayed twenty-one of Edmondson's sculptures which is the largest collection of Edmondson's art in the country.[5] In 2016 the Smithsonian American Art Museum received one of its largest gifts of folk art work from Margaret Z. Robson, among them were three of Edmondson's sculptures.[12]
Edmondson's art is displayed permanently at the
Legacy
On August 20, 2014, Mayor Karl Dean opened Nashville's first arts park, named in Edmondson's honor. The park, managed by the Nashville Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, includes sculptures by Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley inspired by the work of William Edmondson. The park is located in a traditionally African-American neighborhood.[13] Even though the site of Edmondson's house at 1434 Fourteenth Avenue South is now a public school, it has been officially recognized with a Tennessee historical marker.[1] About a few miles away, some of Edmondson's tombstones are on display at a local cemetery.[5]
Since his death, Edmondson's work has gradually come to be highly appreciated by critics and collectors, and his sculptures garner up to $70,000-$300,000 at auction.[5] In January 2016, "A Boxer" sold at a private auction for $785,000 the highest price ever paid for an Edmondson work.[9]
Selected recent exhibitions
- Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
- The Art of William Edmondson 1999 organized with the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY
- William Edmondson and Friends: Breaking the Mold, 2014
- Visions from Above: The Life and Work of William Edmondson, 2017
Collections with Edmondson works
- American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY
- Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN
- The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
- Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
- Tennessee State Library, Nashville, TN
- The Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN
- Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN has the largest collection of William Edmondson sculptures.
References
- ^ OCLC 41932532.
- ^ ISBN 9781578061815. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
- ^ "10 things to know about William Edmondson". Christie's. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
- OCLC 32664611.
- ^ ISBN 9780374335281.
- ^ a b "William Edmondson". Ricco Maresca Gallery. Retrieved May 23, 2015.
- ^ Outsider Art Sourcebook, ed. John Maizels, Raw Vision, Watford, 2009, p.70
- ^ ISBN 9780932171634.
- ^ S2CID 193905394– via Art & Architecture Source.
- ^ "William Edmondson, a down home artist forging beauty from stone". aaregistry.org. Retrieved May 23, 2015.
- ^ Freeman, Rusty R. (2000). "The art of William Edmondson at Cheekwood". Folk Art. 25 (1): 30–7 – via Museum of American Folk Art/ New York, NY.
- ^ Baptiste, Laura (December 13, 2016). "Smithsonian American Art Museum Acquires Major Collection of Self-Taught American Art". Smithsonian.
- ^ "Edmondson Park dedication officially opens city's first arts park". Nashville.gov. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. August 20, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
Sources
- Thompson, Lovett, Freeman, McWillie, Gundaker and Sims, The Art of William Edmondson, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee and University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1999
- The WPA Guide to Tennessee, Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Projects Administration for the State of Tennessee, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1986
- Outsider Art Sourcebook, ed. John Maizels, Raw Vision, Watford, 2009