UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5h18d8gc Author Alexander, Aleesa Pitchamarn Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil RiGhts Alabama A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the deGree Doctor of Philosophy in Art History by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander Committee in charGe: Professor Jenni Sorkin, Chair Professor E. Bruce Robertson Professor GeorGe Lipsitz September 2018 The dissertation of Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander is approved. GeorGe Lipsitz E. Bruce Robertson Jenni Sorkin, Chair September 2018 Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama Copyright © 2018 by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I must thank my advisor and committee chair, Jenni Sorkin. In innumerable ways, she has shaped me as a scholar, writer, thinker, and person. Without her support, this project simply would not exist. I also wish to thank my committee members Bruce Robertson and George Lipsitz. Their unwavering support, intellectual guidance, and practical advice have proved invaluable throughout the course of my graduate career. I am also indebted to the many years of mentorship I received from Laurie Monahan, whose early guidance will always be appreciated. My dissertation received generous external support from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at The Met, I was able to have rich, ongoing conversations with many curators and fellows in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. I am especially grateful to my supervisor Randy Griffey, whose scholarly generosity and kind demeanor I aim to emulate. To my fellow fellows—thank you for making all of my New York City dreams come true. Thank you to my art history familia at UC Santa Barbara, for giving me another place to call home. To my husband, Gavin Hartnett, his family, and my own: thank you for believing in me when my own confidence (often) wavered. I want to thank the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and the Arnett family for all the assistance and access I was given over the years. There is no way I could properly write a dissertation on this topic without such help. Special thanks to Bill Arnett, who changed the entire course of my dissertation on one hot August day in Birmingham, Alabama. Most of all, thank you to the artists and families of Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, and Ronald Lockett, for letting me into your lives, sharing your stories with me, and allowing me to share these stories with others. iv VITA OF ALEESA PITCHAMARN ALEXANDER July 2018 EDUCATION Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 2018 Master of the Arts in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 2012 Bachelor of the Arts in Art History, Willamette University, May 2010 PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2015-2017: Teaching Associate, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara 2011-2017: Teaching Assistant, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara 2013: Special Collections Assistant, Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara 2008-2010: Museum Collections Assistant, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, OR PUBLICATIONS “Thornton Dial Takes Fifth Avenue,” CRITICS PAGE, The Brooklyn Rail. July 11, 2018. https://brooklynrail.org/2018/07/criticspage/Thornton-Dial-Takes-Fifth-Ave “Ronald Lockett's The Enemy Amongst Us and the Artistic Lineage of Bessemer, Alabama,” Blog Post: Collection Insights. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. July 3, 2018. https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/collection-insights/2018/ronald-lockett-enemy- amongst-us-birmingham-bessemer-alabama “Jug Head I,” “Jug Head II,” “Lovers,” “Homage to Malcolm,” “The Afro American Thunderbolt,” “Bosom for Aunt Surlina.” Catalogue Entries. Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture. Exhibition Catalog. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 2018. “Toys,” “Glass Bowl with Fruit,” “Chalkware,” “Milliner’s Head,” “Noah Purifoy,” “Baby in a Red Chair,” “Index of American Design.” Catalogue Entries. Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Exhibition Catalog. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2018. v “Hobby,” “High Trash,” “Lists,” “Classification,” “Accumulation/Collection,” “Scrapbooks.” Catalogue entries. Henry Darger 1892-1973. Exhibition catalog. Paris: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2015. “Miranda July,” and “Harrell Fletcher.” Encyclopedia entries. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web resource. 2016. Book Review: “Bruce Nauman: The True Artist.” Foreground: Fine Art for the Culturally Curious. Los Angeles: Shelf Media Group. Web resource. January 2015. “Art brut.” Encyclopedia entry. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Web resource. 2016. SELECTED EXHIBITION EXPERIENCE 2018: Contributing Researcher, Epic Abstraction, The Met Breuer 2018: Contributing Researcher, History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011: Research Assistant, Timeless Renaissance: Count Alessandro Maggiori (1764-1834) as an Art Collector, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University 2009: Curator, Carl Hall: From the Archives, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University 2008: Curator, D.E. May: The Artist as Archivist, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AWARDS 2018: Invited Lecturer, Art Study Seminar, Harvard Art Museums, February 2018 2017-2018: Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016: American Craft Council Conference Scholarship 2016: Graduate Research Grant, The Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design 2014: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowship for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 2014: Margaret Mallory Travel Research Grant, UCSB 2013: Graduate Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award (nominee), UC Santa Barbara 2013: Graduate Committee Award, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, UC Santa Barbara 2013: Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (nominee), Academic Senate, UC Santa Barbara 2010-2014: Doctoral Scholars Central Fellow, UCSB vi ABSTRACT Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander Within the discipline of art history, the terms “outsider,” “folk,” or “self-taught” have been historically applied to artists who have worked outside of prevailing institutional structures. Such classifications have often marginalized the artistic production of untrained, working-class African American artists in the twentieth century, particularly in the Southern United States. My dissertation reframes the discussion of twentieth-century Southern black art as a thoroughly modern and contemporary phenomenon, grounded in particular material and social conditions that, far from isolated, have instead engendered rich artistic communities. It does so by taking as a case study the Birmingham-Bessemer School, a group of male artists working in postindustrial Alabama in the decades following the Civil Rights movement. Though excluded from the primary narratives of American modernism, the artistic production of Lonnie Holley (b. 1950), Thornton Dial (1928-2016), and Ronald Lockett (1965- 1998) contest received histories of modern artistic production, including, but not limited to: found object assemblage, relational art and performance, site-specific installation, and nonrepresentational painting. vii First, I examine how the formal and material characteristics of work produced by the Birmingham-Bessemer School—the use of discarded and recycled materials, assemblage-like structures, and the prevalence of yard installations—are tethered to the unique environmental conditions of the greater Birmingham area as it gave rise to industry at the turn of the twentieth century. Secondly, I discuss the entry of the School’s artistic production into the predominantly white art world through museum exhibitions beginning in the 1990s. I argue that the curatorial struggle to showcase the complex social and cultural origins of their work has prevented this form of visual expression from being fully understood within the mainstream art world, as defined by prevailing institutional structures of the museum and the art market. In an effort to historically account for the Birmingham-Bessemer School, my study integrates formal analyses of artwork, artist interviews, exhibition catalogues, and media responses through the lens of queer and critical race theory. This dissertation removes Southern black art from mythologizing narratives of isolated genius or quaint, folk production, by situating it as a challenge to longstanding regional centers of modern and contemporary art in the United States. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..1-29 Chapter One: Lonnie Holley’s Trash Lessons………………………………………………………..30-81 Chapter Two: How Thornton Dial (Re)invented the Idea of Modern Art…………..….82-116 Chapter Three: Ronald Lockett: Queer Refusal…………………………………………………117-158