Walls That Speak: The Murals of John Thomas Biggers

Walls That Speak The Murals of John Thomas Biggers Updated Edition

Olive Jensen Theisen

University of North Texas Press Denton, Texas

Text ©2010 Olive Jensen Theisen All rights reserved. Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Permissions: University of North Texas Press 1155 Union Circle #311336 Denton, TX 76203-5017 The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48.1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theisen, Olive Jensen.  Walls that speak : the murals of John Thomas Biggers / Olive Jensen Theisen. -- Updated ed.       p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-1-57441-289-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  Biggers, John Thomas, 1924-2001. 2.  African American artists--Biography. 3.  African American mural painting and decoration--20th century. 4.  Biggers, John Thomas, 1924-2001--Themes, motives. 5.  African American art--African influences.  I. Biggers, John Thomas, 1924-2001. II. Title.  ND237.B587T49 2010  759.13--dc22                                                            2010023075 This book was made possible by the generous support of the Houston Endowment, Inc.

CONTENTS

Preface, 1996  v Preface, 2009  vii INTRODUCTION  1 Background  1 The mural as art form  2 Images of Africa  4 CHAPTER 1. EARLY YEARS: 1924–1949  8 Gastonia, North Carolina, 1924–1941  8 Hampton Institute: 1941–1946  9 1. Dying Soldier, location unknown  14 2. Community Preacher (Country Preacher), location unknown  15 3. U. S. Navy Mural, destroyed  17 Pennsylvania State University: 1946–1949  19 4. Burial, location unknown  19 5. Sharecroppers, Paul Robeson Center, Pennsylvania State University  19 6. Baptism, Hampton State University  22 7. Day of the Harvest and 8. Night of the Poor, Burrowes Hall, Pennsylvania State University  23 CHAPTER 2. TRANSITION: 1949–1957  27 Houston: 1949–1957  27 9. Harvesters and Gleaners, destroyed  29 10. Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, Blue Triangle YMCA, Houston, Texas  32 11. History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas, Paul Pewitt ISD, Morris County, Texas  40 12. History of the International Longshoremen’s Local 872, International Longshoremen’s Association Local #24, Houston, Texas  47 CHAPTER 3. BRIDGING PAST AND PRESENT: Africa and after, 1957–1974  51 West Africa, July–December, 1957  51

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Houston 1958–1974  52 13. Web of Life, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas  54 14. Red Barn Farm, Dowling Veterinary Center, Houston, Texas  58 15. Birth from the Sea, Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas  59 CHAPTER 4. INFLUENCES: African art and mythology, 1957–2001  62 John Biggers’s African art collection  62 Selections from collection  64 Predominant themes from the collection  65 African sculpture and geometric abstraction  66 Design elements  66 Literary sources: Biggers’s cosmic universe  67 A Pantheon of ancient deities  67 Development of visual metaphoric language  68 CHAPTER 5. INTEGRATING PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE: 1974–1983  70 Houston Texas  70 16. Family Unity, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas  73 17. Quilting Party, Houston Music Hall, Houston, Texas  77 18. Christia V. Adair, Christia V. Adair Park, Harris County, Texas  81 CHAPTER 6. MATURE YEARS: 1983–1993  86 Houston, 1983–1989  86 19. Song of the Drinking Gourds, Tom Bass Regional Park, Harris County, Texas  87 20. East Texas Patchwork, Paris, Texas Public Library  90 Gastonia, North Carolina, 1990–1993  92 21. Origins and 22. Ascension, Winston-Salem State University  93 23. House of the Turtle and 24. Tree House, Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia  99 CHAPTER 7. THE LAST YEARS: 1994–2001  106 25. Celebration of Life, Minneapolis, Minnesota  106 26. Salt Marsh, University of Houston  107 27. Nubia: The Origins of Business and Commerce, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas  113 CONCLUSION  117 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  119 NOTES  123 JOHN BIGGERS’S SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY  131 INDEX  133

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PREFACE: The Murals of John Thomas Biggers

The hope of finding a painting by a “famous artist” in some gloomy closet sends many a junk store enthusiast digging through piles of canvases in dusty places. One Saturday morning I found myself in a storeroom pushing aside map stands, overhead projectors and other left-over classroom equipment in order to get a look at a very long painting leaning forlornly against a far wall. For a variety of reasons, I thought it might be a painting by the African American muralist John Biggers. Locating the signature affirmed my suspicion. But why was it here, abandoned and in disrepair? To make a long story very short, this book evolved out of the need to answer those questions. Eventually, I reached John Biggers by phone in Houston and later was able to meet with him and his wife Hazel. Several years passed as we sought ways to draw attention to this very special work and secure protection for it. My husband finally became the enthusiastic catalyst for the eventual insuring, framing, and re-installation of History of Negro Education in Morris County Texas in the new elementary school library. A formal re-dedication ceremony was held in October 1989. Dr. and Mrs. Biggers drove up from Houston for the event. That day in conversation, we discussed the need for a book on all of Biggers’s murals. The artist suggested with a smile that I should take on the project. I heard myself saying, “Sure, OK, I’ll give it a try.” (At that point I didn’t even know exactly how many murals he’d done. Such audacity.) And that was the beginning of a fascinating twenty-year adventure. This text was far more comprehensive than the one I had originally imagined. Biggers took me to various mural sites; I took notes, queried him, taped our conversations and visited his collectors. Eventually I was able to see all of the murals on-site except those at Penn State. Several times between 1990–1993, Biggers reviewed the manuscript for accuracy. The body of the work was finally completed in November 1993. Hampton University Museum published the first edition in October 1996. John and Hazel Biggers’s generous hospitality and cooperation made this collaboration a rare pleasure. Olive Jensen Theisen, 1996

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PREFACE: walls that speak

The need for a revised edition of The Murals of John Thomas Biggers became apparent even before the first edition had been formally introduced. By that time John Biggers wasn’t quite ready to end his mural career. In 1995 he was already at work on a plan for a community mural in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when invited to submit a mural proposal for the University of Houston in Texas. Following completion of the University of Houston’s Salt Marsh (1998), he agreed to produce one more mural for Texas Southern University (1999). In five years he had completed three new murals, even as his physical condition had steadily worsened. In the fall of 2000, ill and very tired, he reluctantly set his brushes aside. On January 25, 2001, the artist died. At the suggestion of the Editorial Board of the University of North Texas Press, I updated The Murals of John Thomas Biggers, adding a chapter to cover those last three murals. As I dug into the material again, I realized how essential familiarity with African art would be to the understanding and appreciation of the later murals. A second chapter began to form, one that focused on African art from Biggers’s personal collection. I re-located some books that been given to me much earlier, and found some insights that were very helpful in uncovering some of the mysteries of his last works. Exclusively Afro-centric in its approach, there was much to ponder. It seemed as though John Biggers’s indomitable spirit had nudged me to explore this forgotten material. Because of that, I came to a better understanding of his cosmic view and the way such a vision influenced his inventive and beautiful mural tales. Olive Jensen Theisen, October 9, 2009 A note about the text: facts about the murals—titles, dates, dimensions, medium, placement—have come directly from the artist’s notes, slides, and interviews. I hope readers will use this information to appreciate the scale of Biggers’s works. Although I have checked the information to the best of my ability, readers will note some discrepancies. Some measurements and medium descriptions do vary from source to source. I have relied on Dr. Biggers’s best memories and the notes on his slides for final decisions. At Dr. Biggers’s suggestion, terms referring to racial and ethnic origins are those in common use during the time frame of the particular mural described. As a result, descriptors will intentionally change from “colored” to “Negro” to “Black” to “black” to “Afro-American” to “person of color” to “African American.”

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This book makes many references to previous murals. To simplify looking up a mural, check the figure number. The first number refers to the chapter in which the mural is discussed and illustrated, and the second number gives approximate placement in the chapter.

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Fig. 01.1 Metamorphosis, 1974–1975. Conté crayon drawing. Preliminary Family Unity sketch. Private collection

Introduction

u  u  u Background John Biggers spoke truth though his art for sixty years. Despite his death in 2001, his rich complex images continue to delight the eye, puzzle the mind, and capture the imagination. Enigmatic as some of his works are, they still burst with life and vigor. His influence upon generations of art students, especially young African Americans, was immeasurable. Though he certainly had some detractors, John Biggers was revered as mentor and teacher; his singular art inspired, as did his thoughts and words. Despite his many accomplishments, national recognition came late to Biggers. There are a number of reasons that might have been. Most importantly, Biggers followed his own voice exclusively: absorbed by personal artistic challenges he paid scant attention to prevailing trends in the art world. Secure in his own identity, he remained deeply rooted in his Southern and African heritage. Not to be forgotten, Biggers established his career at a time when the white-dominated art world generally ignored the work of “Negro” artists. In The Vanguard Artist, for example, a 1965 book on contemporary artists, the authors noted: On close interrogation—and with all good will—our artists were unable to identify a single top-flight Negro painter or sculptor now at work in the United States… Clearly many would have felt more comfortable reporting that they knew accomplished Negro painters; that none exists was unanimous judgment rendered after much thought and with great reluctance.1 By the time The Vanguard Artist was in print, John Biggers had earned a doctorate at Pennsylvania State University, built a vigorous art department at Texas Southern University, painted murals, professionally illustrated books, received a UNESCO fellowship to travel in West Africa, written and published a successful book of his drawings from that trip that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and been awarded a number of major art prizes. Early in his career, John set an aesthetic agenda for his work: to develop positive visual archetypes directly related to his own cultural and ethnic heritage. In this effort, he was a pioneer, far ahead of his time. General acceptance of the value of diversity in cultural and ethnic differences within the population was in the future, well through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

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u  u  u The Mural as Art Form By his own admission, Biggers was first and foremost a muralist, a storyteller. “It has been in the preparation for, or as the result of a mural study that I created most major images for my paintings, drawings and lithographs.”2 To better appreciate the singular visual language of Biggers’s murals, it should be helpful to understand the artist’s place in the development of the mural as a contemporary art form. Mural painting has been regarded by many primarily as a subcategory of painting, and as such, subject to the same rules as a half-sheet watercolor or small oil. However, the mural has its own history, purposes, and structural elements. It is a public art form, a marriage of architecture with another of the fine arts, often—but not limited to—painting. Murals have been carved or modeled from wood, stone, clay, or plaster; constructed from glass, plastic, fiber, or metal. Some have been created primarily for decoration, others for the purpose of communicating ideas. Murals can more properly be compared to a theatrical production, rather than an easel painting. Just as a play has plots and subplots, so a mural has major and minor points of focus and interest. A mural can be personally expressive, but is usually addressed to a wide audience. Murals have been created from many materials, with a wide range of themes, but what all murals have in common is the wall. To one degree or another, a muralist must find some way of integrating images with the size, shape, and texture of the wall surface. The muralist must also decide how spatial illusion is to be treated: will the style allow the flatness of the wall to dominate, or will the flatness open into deep space? And finally the artist must generally select a theme that is appropriate to the architectural space as well as the potential viewing audience. It is the Mexican mural movement of the twentieth century that has had the greatest impact on the development of the mural as a contemporary art form and on John Biggers as a mural artist. The work of Diego Rivera in particular set a standard for muralists throughout the century. For his imagery, Rivera drew upon the indigenous art of Mexico; for his themes, the social conditions of the Mexican worker; and for his design, the masters of the Renaissance and the modern Cubist artists. Rivera’s principles for working with wall space, as described by art historian Francis V. O’Connor, are in evidence in many of Biggers’s murals: 1. Suspension of the pictorial complex between a clearly defined ground foreground and a continuous sky. The clearly defined ground plane leads the eye into a flattened Cubist-like space of the middle ground. 2. Maintenance of the wall plane with a high horizon line using diagonal avenues of thrust and multiple perspective points to justify that horizon. 3. Compositional unification of the wall plane by using an underlying geometry based somewhat on the principle of dynamic symmetry. 4. Balance of the symmetrical system filling each area with implied motion. 5. Simple bold modeling of figures derived from Giotto to provide legibility at a distance. 6. Basic palette of earth colors and black to provide a uniform tone across the wall with bright colors used only for accent. 2  u

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7. Overlapping of silhouette, and massing of heads to create a continuous frieze beyond the length of the wall. 8. Use of words and slogans to emphasize the message. 9. Attempt to relate content of the mural to the setting planned by some situational or directorial placement. 3 If Rivera’s work were a primary influence for John Biggers, the murals of American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton would surely follow as a close second. Rivera and Benton were contemporaries, but Benton sought to create a distinct style by painting images that specifically reflected life in the United States. In his use of the picture plane and space division, his use of the wall for dense and active imagery, and his bold modeling of figures, Benton followed Rivera’s lead. But in the humor, energy, and aesthetic appeal of his works, Benton had no peer. The mural movement flourished in the United States during the Depression of the 1930s, as the federal government’s Works Progress Administration employed out-of-work artists to create art works for new public buildings. Artists working for the Federal Art Project (known as the WPA/FAP) created 2,259 murals throughout the nation, including frescoes, mosaics, and photographic murals.4 John Biggers recalled: “One of my earliest memories of art was the WPA/FAP mural in my hometown post office building in Gastonia, North Carolina.”5 A number of wellknown African American artists worked in the WPA/FAP, including Richmond Barthé, Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence and Lois Mailou Jones.6 ( John Biggers was about five or six years younger than this group). With the onset of World War II, federal support for mural projects came to an abrupt halt, except within the military. Biggers, as a Seabee artist in the U.S. Navy, received a number of mural assignments. After the war, many artists turned away from social realism towards art that was more personally expressive, such as abstract expressionism. As O’Connor noted, black artists kept the mural tradition alive: The only artists in the country to retain the mural as a means of expressing social concerns were black Americans … who continued to use the mural as an art form traditionally suited to express a people’s quest for justice and dignity … Rivera’s classic style, with its structured forms and its potential for narrative clarity… appealed to black artists seeking to present a quietly forceful image of their people’s history and aspirations. These murals, like so much of the representational art of the Abstract Expressionist years, were ignored by the official world of museums, critics and art publications, yet they helped to sustain the hope and ideals of Southern blacks until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. 7 O’Connor named John Biggers as a member of that group of muralists, along with Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, and Charles White. Elmer Brown, Phillip Hampton, James Parks, and Charles Stallings should also be mentioned.8 Another mural movement evolved in the late 1960s from the work of these black artists. Known as the Community Artist movement, it stressed the direct involvement of local residents in the mural-making process, and the placement of murals outdoors on community walls. Alan Barnett observed that “It had its origins among Black artists and especially those who found support in the colleges   u  3

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of the South. Pride in their African heritage first appeared in the art of the Negro Renaissance that began in Harlem in the twenties… but the most prolific seedbed of murals of Black consciousness was Hampton Institute with Viktor Lowenfeld.”9 Viktor Lowenfeld, the renowned art professor who had fled Nazi Europe, was a mentor for John Biggers and other students at Hampton Institute. Barnett observed that later Biggers and his student muralists at Texas Southern University formed a similar hotbed of mural development in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s.10

u  u  u Images of Africa While Biggers drew on American, Mexican, and European influences, he also looked to his own cultural roots in the American South and in Africa to develop his own unique iconography.11 Biggers was first introduced to African art while a student at Hampton Institute. Unlike many other Europeans, Viktor Lowenfeld readily acknowledged the influence of African art in the work of the early Modernists. It was not until 1984, with the opening of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “Primitivism” in the Twentieth Century, that this connection was firmly established in the art world.12

Fig. 01.2 Priests Before a Shrine, 1957. Conte crayon. Private collection

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Fig. 01.3 Africa Detail, pencil drawing, 1942, Hampton University Museum

Fig. 01.4 History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas, 1955. Casein on muslin, 66 x 264 in. Original location: Library, George Washington Carver High School, Naples, Texas. Current location: Elementary school library, new addition, Paul Pewitt Independent School District, Omaha-Naples, Texas (formerly Carver High School)

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Early in the twentieth century, Howard University philosopher Alain Locke wrote of the relationship between African and modern European art, suggesting that Picasso and Braque found in African sculpture the insights that led them to Cubism.13 Locke urged Negro artists to look to the ancestral arts of Africa for inspiration. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s marked the introduction of the African idiom in the mural art of black American artists. Palmer Hayden, Archibald Motley Jr., Richmond Barthé, and Aaron Douglas responded to Locke’s call; Douglas’s murals of the 1930s combined Modernism and Africanism in an unusual flat style with a series of graduated values. 14 Writing about the Harlem Renaissance in 1971, however, art historian Nathan Irwin Huggins claimed that the African American was no more likely to value African art than was the art establishment at large. “The untutored Afro-American could sense no more in a piece of African sculpture than could an European. There was an ocean and an age of experience between the black men of the two continents.”15 So it took time for the art world to appreciate the relationship of African art to African American artists. In 1989, the Dallas Museum of Art mounted a major exhibition, Black Art-Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art, which included works by John Biggers. With this exhibition, the linking of the two worlds was formally acknowledged and accepted.16 From the start of his career, Biggers’s murals contained references to African art and culture. The artist recalls Viktor Lowenfeld asking about the central figure in his student mural, Community Preacher (also called Country Preacher). “Viktor asked, ‘John, what’s he preaching about?’ I answered that he was preaching about Africa.”17 Many of the rural Southern images in Biggers’s works have African antecedents, including the peaked roof shotgun house (fig. 01.5), the wash pot, and the vibrant textiles.

Fig. 01.5 Woman Waiting, 1950. Pencil. Private Collection

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Fig. 01.6 John Biggers at work on Quilting Party. Houston Music Hall

John Biggers’s six-month visit to West Africa in 1957, supported by a UNESCO fellowship, had a profound impact on his work. His later murals are filled with figures from African life and art. (figs. 01.2 and 01.6) In integrating these African images with European and Regionalist influences, John Biggers eventually succeeded in his aim of creating an inclusive and affirming visual language. This book covers twenty-seven murals painted (fig. 01.4) by John T. Biggers over a span of sixty years, from 1941 to 2001. Although the mural has been understood in various ways, John Biggers has had a clear vision of what a mural was and what it could do as a medium of artistic communication. He believed that art had the power to shape and transform lives and his purpose in life was to create images that would inform, transform and transcend the ordinary life of his people.

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CHAPTER 1 EARLY YEARS: 1924–1949 Mural painting is architectural. It’s part of the building. One of the marvelous things about the medium is that you have to go to the building to paint, if it’s really done right. Murals that can be painted directly on the walls, to me, are the greatest expression… To me it’s a medium in which to express the community… If you do the painting for people, and you feel that you are part of the culture, that is the greatest thing that can happen to you. Everyone in the community becomes a part of that mural. John Thomas Biggers, quoted in Felts and Moon, “Artists Series: An Interview with John Biggers”

u  u  u  Gastonia, North Carolina, 1924–1941 John Thomas Biggers was born on April 13, 1924, the youngest of the seven children of Paul and Cora Biggers. The family lived in the Negro area of Gastonia, North Carolina, a mill town in the heart of the segregated South, where Paul Biggers worked as a teacher, preacher, cobbler, blacksmith, and farmer. Although poor in worldly goods, Paul and Cora Biggers created a rich and loving home life that placed high value on religion, education, and creative endeavors. John Biggers recalled whole summers “building a complete city from clay soil, sticks, rocks and moss in a cool space under our house.”1 With great pleasure, he described vivid childhood memories of his mother and grandmother quilting, his brothers drawing pictures from the Bible and magazines, and his father studying quietly. “I had a marvelous father. He was very stern, hard man, because he’d come out of a very hard way of life, but there was a wonderful relationship between him and Mama. Mama was the boss of many things but he was the source behind the throne.”2 When John was in his early teens, he lost his father to the complications of diabetes, as well as his sister Lillian. John’s older sisters, Ferrie and Sarah, and his brothers Joe, Jim, and Sylvester (fig. 1.1) took over much of the responsibility of rearing their little brother, while their mother worked to support her large family by taking in laundry. As John grew older, his daily routine included lighting fires under his mother’s large iron washpots and helping her hang the heavy wash out on the lines to dry.

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Early Years: 1924–1949

Fig. 1.1 John Biggers with his older brothers, c. 1950s. Left to right: John, Joe, Jim, Sylvester

Later, when he was sent to high school with his brother at nearby Lincoln Academy, John stoked the furnaces there as well to pay for his tuition. Lincoln Academy, a Congregational boarding school, had been founded in the late nineteenth century for freed slaves and their children. Paul and Cora Biggers had met as students there, and John’s siblings Sylvester and Ferrie had also attended the school. Although a good student, John Biggers recalls that his older brother Jim had to rescue him from occasional scrapes with school authorities. At Biggers’s fiftieth high school reunion, his former principal, Dr. Henry McDowell, laughed when he saw his old pupil: “John Biggers was never supposed to come to this point—we nearly had to send him home before his senior year.”3 Biggers completed his high school at Lincoln Academy, and was accepted at Hampton Institute, a highly regarded college for Negroes in Hampton, Virginia. His goal was to learn plumbing, but his plans soon changed considerably.

u  u  u  Hampton Institute, 1941–1946 The world that John Biggers knew as a young college student in the fall of 1941 was far different from today’s world. The United States had not yet entered World War II. Public schools, colleges, and the military were racially segregated, with great inequities between the Negro and the white systems. In the South, Jim Crow laws stood firmly in place, while the North practiced a nebulous apartism that achieved the same result. Negroes were expected to “know their place” as a subservient class, and were kept there through fear, brutality, lynchings, and other terrible injustices. Although exceptional individuals were planting the seeds of change, the great accomplishments of the Civil Rights era lay in the future.

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The status quo must have been particularly frustrating to gifted young Negroes like John Biggers, who aspired to lives beyond their immediate communities. To these men and women, Hampton Institute and other historically black colleges offered a rare beacon of hope. These institutions offered an opportunity to receive a college education and to learn useful skills. Hampton Institute—soon Hampton University—was founded by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong who had commanded the 9th United States Colored Troops in the Civil War. (fig. 1.2). The school was built so that after that war, the children of those soldiers would have a place to go to school. There was a strong tradition of learning trades, and learning them well. “That was the basis of my Hampton education—always the discipline of fine craftsmanship. It was said: ‘Hampton graduates, you will walk proudly, you will be honest, and you will know all the virtues.’ ”4 After her son enrolled at Hampton, Cora Biggers hoped that he would follow a vocational program and become a financially secure plumber. But her youngest son signed up for an evening drawing class, taught by art professor Viktor Lowenfeld. “When I heard Lowenfeld talk, that was the end of plumbing.”5 Biggers wrote to his mother, saying that he wanted to become an art major, and she lovingly set aside her practical hopes for her son’s future.

Fig. 1.2 Plaster bust of Hampton Institute founder, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, sculpted by John Biggers, 1943. Left to right: Viktor Lowenfeld, Armstrong’s wife, daughter, R.O’Hara Lanier, Cora Biggers and John Biggers

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Early Years: 1924–1949

Viktor Lowenfeld, an Austrian Jew who had fled Nazi persecution in 1938, was a powerful, charismatic teacher and author who would change the direction of art education in the United States. Holding degrees in both art education and psychology (Biggers noted that Lowenfeld had studied with Carl Jung), he had already published one of his revolutionary treatises, The Nature of Creative Activity, by the time he left Europe. Offered many teaching positions when he arrived in America, Lowenfeld chose to come to Hampton in the fall of 1939. He brought with him a keen sense of the horrors of segregation and persecution, and strong convictions as to art’s role in righting those societal ills. Biggers spoke of his mentor: “Hampton was his first job here, you see. When Herbert Read got him out of Austria during the occupation by Hitler and his group, he went to Harvard. Harvard at the time offered displaced European professors a stipend, room and board, until they could find something here. Because of his experiences in Europe, Lowenfeld decided to go to Hampton because it was a Negro school, and he felt that liberation had to come to people all over the world.”6 At Hampton, Lowenfeld rapidly built an impressive art department in which John Biggers thrived. As Biggers’s instructor, Lowenfeld provided him with a strong foundation in art, and as a friend and mentor, he offered the guidance and understanding the young man needed in those important years. Through Lowenfeld’s nurturing and direction, Biggers encountered the works of artists, musicians, and intellectuals who would stimulate his imagination throughout his career. Biggers recalled that Lowenfeld introduced his students to the great composers by inviting them to German suppers at his home. He would play the music of the European masters, whom Biggers learned to love. “Now when I work, I need different kinds of music for different phases. I need Beethoven and Brahms when I’m thinking and planning it out—but then I shift to blues, jazz, and gospel for my energy when I’m actually painting.”7 Lowenfeld instructed his art students in practical skills as well. “Viktor felt it was important for us to learn, in the time-honored manner, how to prepare our own art materials.”8 Student painters made their own gesso from whiting and rabbit foot’s glue, applying it to muslin, percale sheeting, or masonite. Biggers used fresh egg tempera in his early murals, mixed daily from a three-part mixture of whole egg, damar varnish, and water, with the brush then dipped in showcard tempera paint. (Laughing, Biggers recalled, “with that egg in it, that stuff could really smell!”)9 In art classes at Hampton, Viktor Lowenfeld began to evolve his own theories about teaching Negro art students. He believed that the situation of Negroes in America (at that time) would inevitably result in their creating art different from that of the mainstream culture. He encouraged his Hampton students to produce art that had personal meaning likely different from that of the mainstream white culture: by imitating others, Lowenfeld thought, Negroes perpetuated their own feelings of inferiority.10 When Biggers was asked if Lowenfeld required all of his students to paint murals, he responded emphatically: “No! Viktor encouraged what was there but did not direct our ideas. He believed it was up to each person to make a commitment to an idea. It was his job to find the right technique to develop our skills so that our idea could be created.”11   u  11

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Fig. 1.3 The artist Charles White (center) with Hampton students Joe Mack and John Biggers (right) 1942

In 1942, Biggers met a second man who would have a profound influence on his life, the artist Charles White. (fig. 1.3) White had been awarded a Julius Rosenwald grant to paint a mural at a Negro college, and he selected Hampton as the location for the project. His wife at that time, artist Elizabeth Catlett, accompanied White; she taught a class in sculpture while at Hampton.12 Recalling Catlett and White, Biggers said, “Learning from Charles White, Betty Catlett and Viktor Lowenfeld was such a wonderful opportunity. Listening to them criticize each other’s work—it really got me motivated. Viktor and Charlie would argue. Viktor would say, ‘Well Charlie, I don’t think that’s so very good,’ and then tell him why. Charlie would get so mad—he’d say, ‘G’won, get out of here.’ Then we’d see them at supper, all laughing and smiling and hugging each other … I know that many students were overwhelmed, but that experience made me really want to become an artist.”13 Encouraged by Lowenfeld, Biggers spent as much time as possible with White while completing his mural, The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in America. By his own admission, Biggers said, “I produced little ‘Charles Whites’ for a while.”14 I watched his every step, became his helper, made myself as useful as I could to him. He even put me in the mural [the young Biggers appeared as a runaway]. Charlie blocked out his drawing, then worked it out in geometric forms and planes. He started from spontaneous little scribbles, then tightened it up in black-and-white studies, and then loosened it up again in the color study. He blew up every figure to full size before he put it on the wall, but because he’d “overdrawn” the preliminary work, the painting lost its freshness. I learned from that, not to make such highly detailed sketches that I can’t change them on the wall. In my latest murals I made a conscious effort to

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Early Years: 1924–1949

concentrate my energy in the painting rather than the drawing. Charlie really liked drawing rather than painting. I do too. I use my brush more like a pencil, with thousands of tiny hatching strokes. 15 [See, for example, fig. 01.2] While at Hampton, Biggers was also introduced to the works of the twentiethcentury Mexican mural artists, particularly those of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. “What the three great painters—Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco—did was pioneering in capturing the life of people. It was really inspirational. This is when I wanted to become a mural painter—when I saw what those guys had done … Well, after all, I knew this subject too.” 16 Impressed by the social content of the Mexican artists’ works, Biggers determined to use his gifts in a similar way—to describe the circumstances of the people in his world and to encourage them, through identification with his murals, to fight their inequitable conditions. Biggers’s earliest murals, Dying Soldier (1942) and Community Preacher (1943) addressed the conditions of Negroes living in the South, and those leaving their rural homes to join the segregated American military during World War II. Biggers himself was drafted into the Navy in 1943. This was his introduction to real segregation—in the United States military—and he found it very difficult. Eventually assigned to create visual aids for teaching, he was then able to maintain contact with Lowenfeld while stationed at the U.S. Naval School at Hampton Institute and at nearby Norfolk Base. “Pearl Harbor affected us all to such an extent that many dropped out of school that Sunday morning to join the service. The soldier in that drawing is me. I was thinking about all I would lose, and I just began to draw my thoughts. (fig. 1.4) Later Viktor gave me some tracing paper and showed me how to organize those drawings into Fig. 1.4 a composite. This was my first Home Life. Pencil sketch. Private collection. mural.”17 Sketches were done on fragile paper and have sustained some damage.   u  13

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Dying Soldier

Dying Soldier (fig. 1.5) documented a young Negro man’s conflicting feelings about the United States’ entry into World War II. In this work, Biggers addressed the inevitability of military service, the unresolved issue of racial discrimination in the military and throughout society, and the bitterness and sadness that comes with losing all aspects of normal family life. Even though Biggers’s strengths as a draftsman were yet undeveloped, he created a visual statement with considerable power. Certain characteristics of Diego Rivera’s mural guidelines found in Biggers’s mature murals, are evident in this early work: the complexity of imagery, with story laid upon story, the use of multiple vanishing points, which create the illusion of

Fig. 1.5 Dying Soldier, 1942. Egg tempera on muslin. 96 x 120 in. Original location: UTSE-CIO Temple, Chicago; Current location: Unknown. Shown: Pencil drawing, 22 x 28 in., Hampton University Museum

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depth while maintaining a sense of the wall’s flatness, and the symmetry of design, with a large centrally placed figure. Labor leader Willard Townsend, a member of Hampton Institute’s Board of Trustees, acquired Dying Soldier and Community Preacher, in 1946. The murals were unveiled at a formal ceremony on November 3, 1946, at the headquarters of the United Transport Service Employees, CIO in Chicago. Biggers was asked to prepare notes for the program, which described the murals in some detail: The Dying Soldier portrays the thoughts, which occur to a dying soldier caught in barbed wire on the battlefield. His thoughts are painted in pastel colors, while reality stands out in dark, determined colors and shading.” The thoughts on the left side deal with the spiritual life while those on the right deal with the more earthly past. In the right upper corner he walks happily with his girl friend. The sun is shining and a little stream flows through the landscape. College life is recalled in football and track. As he steps into the city, hard labor begins, symbolized by the street cleaner. With it, racial discrimination and persecution set in, symbolized by the lynching. The little stream grows to a torrent which breaks on the lynch tree and pours down to his dying body. On the right side of the painting, home life is represented by the soldier’s wife, feeding her baby in surroundings of grief and poverty. (See Fig. 1.4) A man is drowning in the slums, a scrub woman cleans the floor and Jesus on the Cross sweeps over the entire mural down to the head of the dying soldier. In this way, Mr. Biggers symbolizes the spiritual forces as related to the head, while the earthly forces, embodied in the streaming torrent, are related to the body.” Most startling in his mural is the concept of the representation of how thoughts integrate: how one idea stands out more vividly as another vanishes, how reality mingles with the imagination, how the flood rises into the clouds and how the roaring planes sweep over the soldier’s head. At the bottom of the painting is reality: soldiers fighting against rocks, while the dying soldier is left entangled in the barbed wire fence, surrounded by bayonets and worn-out boots and other symbols of death.18 With the extraordinary influence that Viktor Lowenfeld had achieved within the art community, he was able to arrange a show of his students’ works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. That show, Young Negro Art, was presented at the new museum October 6–November 28, 1943. Apparently making no connection between this young student’s mural painting, Dying Soldier, and works of art that react to the horrors of war and man’s inhumanity to man, such as Goya’s Disasters of War and Picasso’s Guernica, Art News commented, “Of the screaming propaganda of John T. Biggers’ picture, the less is said the better.” However, the show fared better with the Art Digest in a positive article entitled “Young Art Impresses New York,” which suggested that the strength of the show was due to Lowenfeld’s guidance. 19

Community Preacher (Country Preacher)

Community Preacher (fig. 1.6) speaks of the power of the preacher in the Negro church and the importance of his message. From early on, the church provided one of the few opportunities within the Negro community for the expression of   u  15

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Fig. 1.6 Community Preacher, 1943. Egg tempera on muslin. 96 x 120 in. Original location: UTSE-CIO Temple, Chicago; Current location: Unknown. Shown: Composite pencil drawing, 9 x 12 in., Hampton University Museum

genuine emotion, the transmission of knowledge, and the development of leadership. Through their sermons, preachers made religion a source of hope for their fellow sufferers.20 The United Transport Service Employees, CIO, purchased Community Preacher in 1946, with Dying Soldier. The program from the unveiling ceremony contained the following description of the mural: Biggers presents a preacher delivering a sermon to an audience that is responding emotionally. What he preaches is represented in softer colors in the upper part of the mural—the past of the Negro race, showing the cultural life of Africa: the dance, art in its various forms and home life. The hand holding the sword painted in transparent colors symbolizes exploitation. It points toward reality—slave laborers, sharecroppers—painted in the left corner of the mural. Thus, Biggers wanted to contrast culture with civilization, pointing out that civilization does not always mean progress—very often it means exploitation.21 As Biggers explained, the preacher in this mural is speaking of Africa. Here is early evidence of Biggers’s belief that the positive meaning of African heritage must be loudly proclaimed from the pulpit. This early mural, Community Preacher, is an example of the highly expressive artwork encouraged by Viktor Lowenfeld: “Lowenfeld said to scribble out our

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ideas, not trying to make them perfect. With Charles White and Betty Catlett both working on campus, we had real artists doing that. I saw Betty start from little scribbles of her sculptures. My ideas for this mural started with little sketches about Africa, and grew as I got into the research. I really couldn’t draw yet but the complexity is there. I was so involved in those drawings.” 22 Community Preacher foreshadowed many of Biggers’s later works, particularly in the many African images and with the device of leading the viewer into the work by facing the dominant figure inward. The mural also included a depiction of the shotgun house found throughout the South—a long, narrow structure, often containing just one or two rooms, with a peaked roof and front porch. The shotgun roof would become a recurring symbol throughout Biggers’s body of work. Surpassing his earlier draftsmanship, the carefully modeled central figure, the preacher, evidenced Biggers’s growing knowledge of form. Biggers recalled the early lessons he learned from his older brothers, standing on a chair watching them copying pictures out of the Bible. “I saw how my brothers modeled form with light and dark. They seemed to know just what to do.”23 Guidelines for distinguishing a mural from an easel painting were clearly delineated by Lowenfeld. A muralist, he taught, must adjust his composition to the architectural space provided: the mural must be part of the wall. The muralist should not emphasize deep illusionist space but rather emphasize the integrity of the wall itself. Finally the content of the work must consider the architecture as a whole, as the work is destined for a large, public audience. A mural is therefore a means of communication that tells a story or transmits an idea. 24 John Biggers followed these principles throughout his career. Judged by Lowenfeld’s guidelines, this early student work shows evidence of Biggers’s struggle to maintain the integrity of the wall. The viewer’s eye is pulled back and forth in shallow space by stacking the figures from top to bottom; value contrasts direct the eye. The content of the work is coded by value contrasts as well: the distant African past life is represented in light delicate shades, but as the preacher speaks of present conditions, the artist’s hand becomes heavy and the tones deep and dark. The complexity of the imagery has a tendency to overwhelm the viewer, but the intensity of the preacher’s message is clear.

U. S. Navy Mural

During his service in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1945, Biggers worked as a visual aids specialist, giving him the opportunity to continue to paint and draw. The U.S. Military believed that working artists could aid in the massive war effort by developing instructional materials, recording events, and creating original events to build morale. As a part of the morale-building effort, while stationed at the U.S. Naval School at Hampton, for example, he was asked to create a series of murals for the walls of the officers’ mess, housed in the campus boathouse. The pencil drawing shown here (fig. 1.7) was a preparatory study for a mural Biggers painted for the U.S. Naval Gymnasium (Hampton Institute’s Williams Gym) now the student union. In this work, Biggers portrayed a scene that occurred repeatedly in the early 1940s, as young men left the security of their small   u  17

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communities for service in the military. The artist made it clear that the young sailors he depicted had come from a life of hard work and were willing to serve their country. At the far left are men building a house, carrying lumber, driving footings, hammering boards. In the background is the community of small one-room houses, the shotgun house typical of the homes in the rural Negro communities of the South. Characters are engaged in a variety of activities: A woman sweeps the front porch, another scrubs clothes on a wash board; children play in the yard, while young men relax in the background; one plays the guitar. Also in the background are family members in their Sunday best, standing behind a wire and wood fence that divides the domestic scene from the military. At the far right sailors are marching proudly in uniform. The influence of Diego Rivera is evident in this early composition, in the diagonal placements, high horizon, clusters of middle-ground activity, and boldly modeled figures. The complexity of the work is quite ambitious for such a young artist. Biggers strove to portray his military subjects realistically, a practice that did not always meet with the approval of his superiors. While stationed at the Norfolk Naval Base, he was assigned to create a mural requested by the admiral of the Norfolk fleet. Biggers chose to focus on the laborers at the base, the Seabees: Seabees there were primarily Negroes, loaders and unloaders of live ammunition and military equipment. I did many drawings of those men at work. When the commander saw my mural drawing, he rejected it, saying, “No, no, we can’t have this in a mural. This is like slavery. I can’t have you disgrace our Navy.” And so that mural was never painted.25 All of Biggers’s murals from his Navy days have disappeared or were destroyed. Some photographic records survive: one in Viktor Lowenfeld’s Creative and Mental Growth (rev.ed. 1952) and another in the Hampton University archives.26 As for the mural depicted here, Biggers recalled: “At the end of the war, when the Navy left the Hampton campus, the mural was dismantled. Many people wanted it as a souvenir, and so it was cut in many small pieces and given away for those who wanted a remembrance.”27

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Fig. 1.7 U.S. Navy Mural, 1945. Egg tempera on canvas. Original location:U.S. Naval Gymnasium (Williams Gym, now the Student Union), Hampton Institute. Current location: Dismantled. Shown: Pencil drawing, 20 x 60 in. The drawing was damaged while the artist had placed it in temporary storage after leaving Hampton. Hampton University Museum

Early Years: 1924–1949

u  u  u Pennsylvania State University, 1946–1949 At the end of World War II, Viktor Lowenfeld left Hampton Institute for Pennsylvania State University where he had been invited to develop an art education department. John Biggers soon followed his teacher to Penn State, earning his B.S. and M.S. degrees in 1948. (Biggers earned and was awarded a doctoral degree from Penn State in 1954, several years following his move to Houston and Texas Southern University.) Coming from the familiar, more intimate environment of Hampton, Biggers struggled with feelings of isolation as one of just a dozen Negroes among thousands of white students on the large university campus. The northern climate was cold and unfamiliar. “I was lonesome there and only felt comfortable at Viktor’s house. But the registrar befriended me and occasionally invited me to Sunday dinner with his family, including his daughter and her boyfriend. I was grateful for the invitations and their friendship, which meant a great deal to me.”28 Viktor Lowenfeld’s experience as a victim of Nazi persecution enabled his student to see beyond the suffering of his own people, as Biggers recalled: I was often invited home to the Lowenfelds’ for supper, and on the way, Viktor would stop at the post office for his mail. One day, while reading his mail, his eyes filled with tears. Quietly he said: “This letter says that all my family is gone. They were all killed in the concentration camp.” Then he turned to me and said, “John, they are lynching some folks down your way, but they are exterminating all of mine.”29

Burial

With Lowenfeld’s guidance, Biggers continued to develop his art as a means of speaking of the life circumstances of the American Negro. A number of his Penn State murals have disappeared, including Burial (fig.1.8). Biggers estimated that he had probably done over a dozen murals while at Penn State. Notable in Burial was Biggers’s attempt to solve a complex spatial problem, such as trying to create the illusion of depth in the burial ground. The theme of the mural is revealed by the lynch rope hanging above the grave. Lynching and death by lynching were still bitter realities in 1948.

Sharecroppers

Biggers’s mural, Sharecroppers (fig. 1.9) is a dramatic portrayal of the sharecropper’s world, one of few earthly rewards, except the closeness of family and the joy of religious experience. The mural conveys a sense of bleakness and despair, mixed with a feeling of longing for home that is both touching and intense. Sharecroppers marks the real beginning of Biggers’s determination to use art to transform social conditions, as the Mexican muralists had done. He hoped that through art the Negro people might rise to free themselves from the chains of an oppressive history of racial segregation. “Don’t you see, John, that you must use your art to fight these terrible injustices,”30 Lowenfeld often reminded Biggers.

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Fig. 1.8 Burial, 1948–1949. Tempera. 48 x 96 in. Location: Unknown

Fig. 1.9 Sharecroppers, 1946–1947. Egg tempera on muslin. 46 x 93 in. Original location: Art Education Department, Pennsylvania State University. Current location: Paul Robeson Cultural Center, Pennsylvania State University

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“Paul Robeson actually saw this work in progress and recalled that he had experiences like that on a plantation in North Carolina.” Biggers explained that the legendary singer was on the Penn State campus for a concert. “Viktor said to him, you must come talk to my students—and so he did. Robeson said that he had lived the sharecropper life too.”31 Sharecroppers is divided into three compositional units symbolizing the spiritual, physical, and emotional life of the sharecropper. The dominant form is the centrally placed family—father, mother, and six children—recalling Biggers’s own large family. Two of the children face frontally, two are in profile, and the youngest face into the picture. The parents appear heavily burdened and physically exhausted. The family stands before their little shotgun house; in the background is a cluster of similar houses. “Viktor once said that the sharecropper’s horizon extends to the edge of the shotgun shack and the washerwoman’s to the edge of her tub.”32 To the left, white-robed figures are participating in the ceremony of baptism by immersion. Behind them, white crosses point toward a small wooden church. Similar figures to the right express the emotional release that the baptismal ceremonies would bring to the participants. This mural demonstrates Biggers’s growing sophistication in design. While his earlier Hampton murals have an unsettling sense of randomness, here he achieves a sense of unity through patterned repetition of figures and houses in an overall Xshaped compositional format. He again uses multiple viewpoints so that the mural would continue to attract viewers as they walk past the work. The main figures dominate the center, looming large and strong. Given the scale of the work (46-inches by 93-inches) the impact was overpowering. The figures draw the viewer into the scene, which has a clearly defined middle ground and background. Biggers has countered his tendency to volumetric form by emphasizing the linear quality of the dancing figures on the right. As a result, his attempt to retain the flatness of the wall was somewhat but not completely successful. The mural also shows marked growth in Biggers’s drawing skills. Although the central family grouping displays some difficulties with perspective and foreshortening, the exuberant figures on the right show a new freedom in Biggers’s drawing. Biggers likened the spirit of these figures to the falsetto cry of the fervent gospel singer, a joyous memory from his childhood. In Sharecroppers, Biggers continued to use Lowenfeld’s formula of egg, damar varnish, and water with showcard tempera, painted on stretched and gessoed muslin. “We had no money in those days, and so we used the cheapest, yet the most durable mixture that we could. The newer commercially prepared materials like polymer acrylic had not yet become dependable. Although some painters carefully extract and use only the yolk, and others only the white, Viktor had us use the whole egg. We felt that it gave more transparency to the paint.”33 Rather than applying white paint over dark, Biggers used the white of the gessoed painting surfaces to provide the light. Thus Sharecroppers has a luminosity not usually achieved with such a somber palette.34 The placement of light and dark areas seems to suggest that no matter how despairing the surroundings, the love of family and the spiritual life provide light in a dark world. The painting is further enriched by a variety of textural contrasts: water, wood, mud, hair, skin, and clothing.   u  21

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As with Biggers’s Hampton murals, the images in this early work foreshadow much of his later iconography, particularly the powerful, oversize hands of the sharecropper gripping this hoe. “Like most beginning drawing students, we were all drawing our hands and feet smaller than they should be. Viktor said that hands were very important, that we express our feelings with our hands, work and create with our hands, and that they should be drawn larger than life.”35 Other images that reappear in Biggers’s later works include the shotgun house in rhythmic repetition, the eight-member family, the contrasting elements of earth and water, the duality or twin-ness suggested in this composition by the contrasts between earth and water, and between the harsh reality of the sharecropper’s life and the spiritual fervor of the religious celebrants. Sharecroppers hung in Viktor Lowenfeld’s office until after Lowenfeld’s death in the early 1960s. Biggers recalled, They called me in Texas and asked if I would agree to have this mural moved to the new black student center. Now Sharecroppers hangs in the Paul Robeson Center at Penn State. When I was invited back to Penn State fifty years later, I found that the colors were as bright and fresh as they were when I painted it. I noticed, though, that I was still using the same compositional format, the same structure, but with more sophistication. I just laughed at myself.36

Baptism

Following completion of Sharecroppers, Biggers turned again to the theme of the Negro South for his mural Baptism. (fig.1.10)37 In this work, the artist depicted a highly meaningful religious ceremony for many Southern Negroes—baptism by immersion outdoors in a stream or pond—and confronted his own ambivalent feelings about the church. At eighteen, my anger was great and I became irreligious. I felt that people used the emotional release of the baptismal ceremony as an escape from facing problems—not getting to the heart of their troubles because they’d had a catharsis, an emotional release. But later, in my own art, baptism became a

Fig. 1.10 Baptism, 1947–1948. Egg tempera on muslin. 50 x 144 in. Original Location: Art Education Department, Pennsylvania State University. Current Location, Hampton University Museum

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symbol of renewal. An important part of my work now is the cleansing lifegiving properties of water.38 Like Sharecroppers, Baptism is a three-part, symmetrically organized composition with a strong central section of predominantly lighter values, balanced by areas of darker values on either side. At the center is the baptismal figure, the newest member of the religious community, with arms outstretched. Witnesses in undulating lines, wearing sparkling white robes, surround the central figure. These people appear to be transported by feelings of spiritual ecstasy. By contrast, the darkly clad workers and their families to the left look exhausted and downtrodden. The contrasting qualities of the rhythmic baptismal figures and the dark static figures reinforce the exhilarating effect of the ceremony on the participants, giving the sense that there is hope and release in the ceremony. It is less certain, however, that baptism is the cause of continued acceptance of oppression, as Biggers had believed as a young college student. Overall, the color scheme is monochromatic, but the artist uses a dark red color selectively to move the eye across the scene from the central baptismal character to the red-garbed children at either end. There is a rich bit of watery texture in the baptismal river. The luminosity of color in this mural echoes that of the works of sixteenth-century artist El Greco. And indeed Biggers recalled: “Lowenfeld told me that he could see what I was trying to do, and that I should plan a trip to the National Gallery in Washington to study the El Greco works there. I did, and there are the results.”39 Because Biggers’s early student murals were hung in many different settings, they cannot be judged by the standard of interaction between architectural space and the mural. Biggers did attempt to retain the integrity of the wall, avoiding such devices as linear or atmospheric perspective. Instead, he allowed the placement and size of the figures to create the illusion of space. Using heavily contrasting areas of light and dark, he created the sensation of the white forms projecting toward the viewer, the dark massed figures on receding planes into the background. As with Biggers’s other early murals, many elements in Baptism foreshadow those found in his later works. The centrally placed baptismal figure, and the elongated and expressive hands so reminiscent of El Greco, are seen again in Biggers’s 1953 mural, Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, and in the 1955 work, History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas. The placement and treatment of the watery forms prefigures Biggers’s later iconography. His last murals included cleansing waters, and depicted water as the very source of life itself.

Day of the Harvest and Night of the Poor

As a master’s degree candidate at Penn State, Biggers painted two murals representing a major part of his thesis work: Day of the Harvest (also called Harvest Song) and Night of the Poor (figs. 1.11, 1.12)40 Lowenfeld did not tell me what he had in mind as a setting, but sent me to a department store in Philadelphia to get the right size sheet—a four-hour trip. He insisted that I make an exact scale drawing. When I asked him why, Viktor replied that he intended the murals for Burrowes Hall and that he would need administrative approval from laymen, who would not be able to visualize the project without seeing an exact sketch.41   u  23

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Fig. 1.11 Day of the Harvest (Harvest Song) 1948–1949. Egg tempera on percale sheeting, 71 x 83 in. Location: Burrowes Hall, Pennsylvania State University

Fig. 1.12 Night of the Poor. 1948–1949. Egg tempera on percale. 71 x 83 in. Location: Burrowes Hall, Pennsylvania State University 24  u

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Biggers stretched and gessoed his percale sheet surfaces to fit within existing wall moldings, located on opposite sides of the entry foyer in Burrowes Hall, then the location of Penn State’s School of Education. Appropriately, Biggers chose the theme of education for both murals. To explain the meaning of his works, the artist provided written commentaries, which were inset on adjoining panels (9 1/2-inches by 71-inches) at the time of installation. For Day of the Harvest, Biggers wrote: This mural is contrasted with the opposite painting. It is showing how the people of all lands have learned to co-operate in a spirit of creativeness. Each life is symbolized by fruit and harvest, the historical symbols of fertility and wealth. The singing is indicative of the well being of people whose happiness has been founded on the education they received during childhood. 42 The mural depicts a swirl of figures, organized in a spiral around a central cluster of men, one singing and playing the guitar. Signs of plenty are evident, well-fed children grouped toward the base of the painting. Rich luminous colors draw the viewer into the swirling forms, and the pattern of light and dark is skillfully laid out creating the sensation of exploding energy. The composition brings to mind the spiraling ever-expanding universe. Day of the Harvest demonstrates Biggers’s growing maturity as an artist. There is radiance, an energy about the work that is most engaging: Thomas Hart Benton’s murals are similar in the movement, swing, and modeling of the figures. In contrast, Biggers’s earlier works appear more static. The looser, freer technique first seen in the far right portion of Sharecroppers dominates this mural. By this point, the artist had nearly resolved his earlier problems with proportion and scale. The overall figure placement presents a very strong unified design. Biggers’s unique technique for mural painting emerges in these two murals. He uses a small brush in a hatching stroke that upon close examination looks like a drawing technique rather that a painting technique. However, from a distance, the tiny strokes meld into strong volumetric forms. (Biggers continued to use this technique throughout his life.) Day of the Harvest is a clear homage to Rivera, as evident in the depiction of the central figures, and also has some of the jubilant flavor of Siqueiros’s Vision of Impending Victory of Science over Cancer at the Medical Center in Mexico City.43 “Diego Rivera was my god then,” Biggers recalled. “Here I am at cold wintry Penn State; working in the style of a Mexican painter—I was so influenced. Look at those Mexican hats. I loved the drapery, the way it fit the body.”44 Night of the Poor presents a sharp visual and thematic contrast to Day of the Harvest. As Biggers stated in the accompanying side panel: In this mural … the effect the lack of education has on people is depicted. It is shown by their inability to get along, their lack of co-operation and knowledge which results in “empty bags” as the symbol of poverty, their lack of knowledge and starvation. Through such contrasting experiences as seen in the two murals, the artist sought to emphasize that the ultimate goal of education is life itself.

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The mural has a despairing quality that makes it difficult to view. The figures are virtually skeletal, and the open mouths of the empty bags loom hauntingly toward the viewer. Most disturbing is the small child at the base of the painting who appears to be a victim of starvation, with distended belly and too-frail legs. In Night of the Poor, the power of the compositional organization overshadows all else. Biggers used design principles to communicate his ideas, highlighting a new level of artistic maturity in his work. For example, by shrouding the eerie figures in the upper left and arranging them in a repetitive pattern, he suggested the anonymity of poverty. Day of the Harvest and Night of the Poor represented Biggers’s first assignment to design a mural to fit a specific space. He did so admirably. His approach retained the integrity of the surface while providing a rich contrast of color, texture, and shape. While these two murals give evidence of Biggers’s growing sophistication in design and draftsmanship, they presented some thematic difficulties. Without the accompanying explanatory panels, it would be difficult to recognize that Day of the Harvest related to the value of childhood education and Night of the Poor to the lack of education leading to poverty. Although many mural artists have used words to clarify the story they are telling, the image should offer important visual clues. These murals do not, and thus cannot be considered completely successful. Nevertheless, the two works represent a major step forward in John Biggers’s development as a visual artist and a culmination of his student work.

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CHAPTER 2 TRANSITION: 1949–1957

u  u  u Houston, 1949–1957 I went to Greenwich Village very early and found I didn’t have anything in common with the people there… I felt that if I had anything to say, I would have to say it in the South. I wanted to come where I felt the black people’s roots really are—and they are in the South. —John Thomas Biggers, quoted in Felts and Moon, “Artist Series: An Interview with John Biggers”

Fig. 2.1 Artist at Texas Southern University, 1950

John Biggers returned to his roots in the South in 1949, when he agreed to come to Houston from Pennsylvania State University to establish an art department at Texas State College for Negroes. (The college became Texas Southern University in 1951.) Dr. R. O’Hara Lanier, the president of Texas Southern, was a Hampton Institute alumnus who was already familiar with Biggers’s work. Through the suggestion of Susan McAshan, a prominent patron of the arts in Houston, Lanier offered Biggers the position at the college. As Biggers remembered: “While I was still at Penn State, Jim Dorsey, the dean of the division of fine arts at Texas Southern, called from Texas and said they’d like to have something of mine for the opening ceremony at the new Julius C. Hester House Community Center in Houston.” Biggers’s Baptism was subsequently shipped and installed at the new center. Mrs. Susan McAshan, who had built the House, suggested to President Lanier, “You should get that young man to come here and start your art department,” and they did. “The faculty of our art department taught off-campus classes at Hester House for several years,   u  27

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which gave the department a good start because it drew students to the campus classes.”1 At the time, Houston was losing its small-town ethos and was on its way to becoming a major city, fueled by the oil boom. But its citizens still clung to one tradition: segregation of the races. The historic Supreme Court decision desegregating the public schools, Brown v. Board of Education, was still five years away. Given the situation in Houston and throughout the South at the time, many of Biggers’s colleagues and acquaintenances questioned his decision to teach at a college deliberately established to keep blacks and whites separate. (fig. 2.1) “There were those who resented the fact that I had agreed to support a segregated institution—and one of them was our first landlord. He was so angry with me, even though he’d offered Hazel and me a room to stay in. ‘How could you do it, John?’ ” Biggers said of his decision: “I hoped to help the young blacks of 1949 substitute a feeling of self-respect for their then-current feelings of self-contempt by developing an appreciation for their own art and heritage, and I thought that I could do that better at a school like Texas Southern.”2 On the Texas Southern campus, however, there was a general antagonism toward digging for African roots. Acculturation was widely believed to be the answer to the problem of racial segregation and its negative effect upon personality and self-image. 3 Of that period, author Margaret Just Butcher wrote, “Prejudice has made the Negro half-ashamed of himself.”4 Ralph Ellison, in his classic, Invisible Man, called that awareness feeling like an “invisible man.” Although Houston was booming, with great opportunities, Biggers found that the promise offered by Texas Southern was far greater than the immediate reality. We arrived to find an art department that was supposed to be started in one rundown room in a temporary annex building with peeling paint, and no money! For at least the first year, my supply orders were “lost” whenever I turned them in, and so we scrounged for materials wherever we could find them … We began by recruiting a few students, including some Houston area teachers, cleaning and painting the room, and digging for scrap materials for supplies. Their first major assignment was to paint murals, which I thought would bring fresh paint to the walls while developing an appreciation for our cultural heritage.5 The art program began to grow and flourish, with two more faculty members, Carroll Simms and Joe Mack (both Hampton alumni), arriving the following year. (fig. 2.2) Biggers immediately went to work himself, drawing and painting, setting an example of creative behavior for his new students. By the time of Biggers’s retirement, more than a hundred student murals covered the Texas Southern University walls. Through the work of Biggers, his colleagues and students, and other artists, Houston became known in the 1950s for its murals. As the Houston Chronicle noted in 1953: “Constant exposure to murals is making Houstonians increasingly mural conscious…the phenomenon of vast spaces serving as canvases has helped to make the local folks more aware of art.”6 Biggers himself noted “The Bank of

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Fig. 2.2 Mural presentation, June 1954. John Biggers (left) with Viktor Lowenfeld and Joe Mack

the Southwest in Houston installed a mural by Rufino Tamayo. I always brought my students there to study.”7 Yet even with his successes at Texas Southern and elsewhere, Biggers could not escape from the ugly reality of racism. “When we moved to Houston in 1949, the museum was open to blacks only on Thursdays. You couldn’t even park your car downtown… In the spring of 1950, I submitted my conté crayon drawing Cradle to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts competition. One day my immediate boss received a call saying that the drawing had won the Purchase Award.” As Biggers recalled, the museum director, James Chillman, told him: “ ‘We will have to celebrate separately or we will lose all that we’ve worked for, for twenty-five years. I want you to come down to the museum on Thursday evening. We will have our own party with champagne and then view the exhibit. If you will do this thing, I guarantee there will be no segregation in this museum next year.’ And that is what happened. The museum was desegregated, just as he promised. We’ve been friends ever since.”8 A similar event occurred in Dallas two years later. Biggers submitted his drawing Sleeping Boy to a competition, and his work again won top honors. When he and his wife, Hazel, drove from Houston to Dallas to receive his award, it was presented to him in the parking lot.9 (At the time, it would have been difficult for the artist to imagine that both museums would eventually exhibit and acquire many of his works.) The mainstream art community frequently dismissed Biggers as a Regionalist. But he continued to follow his own path, focusing his art on the history and culture of the Negro in the United States. During his first eight years in Houston, Biggers painted four large murals, each expressing his concern with the condition of common working men and women. He also completed his doctoral thesis, based on his exhaustive research in preparing the mural Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, and earned his Doctorate of Education from Pennsylvania State University in 1954. The year 1957 marked a turning point for Biggers. He was awarded a grant from UNESCO (the United States Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to spend six months traveling and studying in West Africa. His work and his life would never be the same.

Harvesters and Gleaners (Negro Folkways)

Soon after their arrival at Texas Southern, John Biggers, Joe Mack, and Carroll Simms received a request to create artworks for a new building in Houston, the   u  29

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Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes. The home, financed with private contributions, was to be constructed on a beautiful piece of countryside donated by Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Dupree of Houston. Everyone involved with the project agreed that the art should be based on Negro folklore and history, to provide pleasant memories for the residents of the home. The architects then specified an exterior sculpture by Simms and interior murals by Mack and Biggers. The two murals were to be installed on the sixtyfoot-long east and west walls of the main hall, which would serve as both dining area and activity room. The walls were to be warm red brick to balance the murals, and the ceilings timbered beams.10 From its inception, Biggers’s mural was planned as part of the architectural structure of the room. [figs. 2.3, 2.4] It was created as a continuous panel series, installed in sections over doors and between windows. “This was the first opportunity I’d had to work with architects on a mural. It was a marvelous experience. [The architects] saw the mural as integral to the building, rather than as superficial decoration. I felt it was a rare opportunity and agreed to do it as a gift of love.”11 In describing his planning for the mural, Biggers said that he chose to portray old age as a stage of harvest and wisdom—the golden autumn and winter. “I decided to depict in the mural, [from] left to right, season and harvest. A youth fishing against a background of baptism which would be an expression of religious ecstasy, symbolic of man’s rebirth and soaring spirit. Woodsmen felling trees, gathering timber. Indoor life during winter months and a warm atmosphere of quilting, cooking, children sleeping, men sharing conversation and warmth provided by the womenfolk and the home. A huckster supplying farm produce to town neighborhoods from his market on wheels. Finally, elders and children going picnicking and fishing in a horse-drawn wagon.” 12 Creating a mural for such a long wall in a fairly narrow room required a careful design plan to engage the viewer from any point in the room. To achieve this, Biggers clustered his figures in separate scenes that flow from one end of the wall to the other, with multiple perspectives moving the eye from one scene to the next. The mural, painted in muted browns, oranges and soft gray-greens, contained a rich variety of textures. Color, value and repetition provide an overall unity to the massive work.

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Fig. 2.3 Harvesters and Gleaners, 1952. Detail, center. Preliminary drawing, color pencil

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Fig. 2.4 Harvesters and Gleaners, 1952. Egg tempera on masonite panels. 108 (at highest points) x 720 in. Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes, Houston. Current location: Unknown

With Harvesters and Gleaners, Biggers also succeeded in creating a work that complemented the building’s architecture. The content of the mural was compatible with the function of the building and the work appeared to flow comfortably around the doors and windows. The mural had a linear quality that helped to maintain the integrity of the wall, despite all the activity within: the wall itself seems to undulate back and forth in space. The quality of the draftsmanship varied somewhat although Biggers’s depiction of familiar figures engaged in the rhythms of work improved with each mural. However, the new material—the indoor winter scene—appeared somewhat stiff and awkward by contrast. The influence of Thomas Hart Benton is evident in Harvesters and Gleaners. Certain features are reminiscent of Benton’s monumental works, particularly his Indiana murals: the affection shown for ordinary people and their activities; the rhythmic undulation of the figures; and the incorporation of architectural features into the work’s design. 13 In spirit, the mural is characteristic of Benton’s Regionalist style: a departure from Biggers’s earlier, more political murals, which were more aligned with those of the Social Realists. 14   u  31

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Although working in a realistic style, Biggers continued to develop the iconography that characterized his later works. The arching tree branches in the baptismal and orchard scenes would appear in Biggers’s next mural, Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, and in later works such as Web of Life and Red Barn Farm. Biggers noted: “Those massive trees arching over Main Street near the Houston Museum of Fine Arts were the inspiration for so many of my tree forms. I just loved those Gothic tree arches.”15 Biggers again included a baptismal scene, as well as rows of shotgun houses; in the harvest scenes, the empty sacks of Night of the Poor are now filled to bursting. As in the previous works, some figures are depicted with their backs to the viewer. The artist introduced several new images in this mural. The children asleep in front of the fireplace foreshadow his haunting protest drawing of the 1970s, Give Me Two Wings to Fly Away. (see figs. 2.3 and 3.3) Next to the children are seated women, working on a quilt stretched on a quilting frame. Biggers would return to this quilt image again and again in his later works. The Eliza Johnson Home was vacated on the death of its major benefactor and then scheduled for demolition to make way for public housing. Biggers’s panels, which had begun to deteriorate while the building stood empty, had to be removed: “I was approached with questions about their value. I referred the guy to one of the museums. When last seen, the panels had been loaded into a pickup truck by someone who was trying to peddle them all over town. I don’t know what happened to them.” 16

Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education

When I left home, I couldn’t get over the treatment of women; the image of a mule in harness with blinders on kept coming to mind. My mother said it was just the way of society, but I could never accept this. Women are the creators of culture and civilization. My art has always honored the role of women as equal partners in the struggle and celebration of life. 17 Early in 1952, the Reverend Fred T. Lee of Houston came to Biggers with a proposal. Lee wanted to donate a Biggers painting in memory of his late wife, Dela, to the new Blue Triangle Branch YWCA building located near the Texas Southern campus. Although Lee had barely enough money to supply the artist with paint and brushes, Biggers agreed to work on the project—subject to several conditions. First, Biggers wanted to use an entire wall in the new building to paint a mural; and second, he wanted to use as a theme the lives of some of the heroic women of the nineteenth century. In his doctoral dissertation, Biggers explained that “by creating such a mural, he hoped to stimulate self-identification of the Negro woman with her own background and heritage, portray graphically certain events in the history and development of America not well-known and … stimulate a greater appreciation for this art form as a means of communication.”18 After a few skirmishes, the YWCA officials and Reverend Lee accepted Biggers’s conditions. The artist decided that he would focus his new mural on two remarkable women, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. 19 Harriet Tubman (1821–1913) was a slave who escaped to the North and became a conductor for the Underground Railroad. Tubman, who was often called

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Fig. 2.5 First sketch on envelope. Private collection

“General” and “Moses,” made nineteen trips home to bring three hundred slaves to freedom. Sojourner Truth (1797– 1883), freed by the New York Emancipation Act of 1827, became an itinerant preacher and was the first Negro woman to speak out publicly against slavery. Much of her public speaking was also devoted to promoting education for Negroes and women’s suffrage. At the same time Biggers accepted the YWCA commission, he received a grant from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust to study lithography and etching under Jules Heller at the University of Southern California in the summers of 1952 and 1953. During those two summers, he worked on drawings and did research for the YWCA mural. In California, Biggers was surprised to encounter his former teacher and mentor, Viktor Lowenfeld, who was teaching a summer course in Long Beach. After seeing Biggers’s voluminous research for the new mural project, Lowenfeld told him that he had completed the major portion of the research for a doctoral dissertation. Biggers resisted the idea of an artist with a doctorate, but Lowenfeld persuaded him that he needed the degree. On Lowenfeld’s recommendation, Biggers kept careful records, documenting each phase in photographs. Biggers’s first drawing of the mural composition was on the back of an envelope, as he and Lowenfeld talked in California (fig. 2.5). He completed a number of individual sketches to work out his ideas. Biggers later wrote of the challenge of depicting the heroic figure of Harriet Tubman (fig. 2.6): “The problem was to create a female figure of Herculean strength and power, yet full of human emotion … a protector of children, mother of men, leading broken and enslaved humanity in a freedom march. There was much satisfaction upon the completion of this drawing.”20 The artist’s first complete color drawing (fig. 2.7) included rolling hills on the left, and a freight train symbolizing the new industrial age. Biggers removed that scene once he had painted it on the wall, feeling that it violated the flat architectural space. On his return to Houston from California, Biggers proceeded with work on Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education (fig. 2.8). First he prepared the wall surface for the mural. He applied two coats of flat white oil paint directly onto the plastered wall to seal it off, making it less absorbent and creating a white, luminous ground. Biggers used this white ground for highlights in the mural, rather than applying white pigment, which helped to reinforce the presence of the wall.   u  33

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Fig. 2.6 Detail, Harriet Tubman. Conté crayon drawing

Fig. 2.7 Complete color drawing. Private collection

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Fig. 2.8 The artist at work

Fig. 2.9 Process: Line drawing for wall (detail)   u  35

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Biggers then transferred the line drawing to the wall. He first blocked off the drawing in two-and-onehalf-inch squares, equal to one square foot of wall space. Following that, he used charcoal to sketch in the lines, square by square. The artist then placed more permanent lines over the charcoal, in yellow ochre casein, which dries to a hard waterresistant clear film, and began laying in washes and developing details (figs. 2.9, 2.10). Several weeks into the mural, Biggers was interrupted by a protest from several angry YWCA members: I was greeted with “Young man, stop that at once. Get down from that ladder.” The women who were objecting felt that young black women “should not be faced with the true story of their background, given the true conditions of slavery and of the long social and political struggle of the masses of Negro people.” These women considered the mural unethical, immoral and without educational meaning. Production was delayed for discussion between the protesting local women, the YWCA officials, Reverend Lee and myself. The matter was finally resolved and I was allowed to continue. But you see, at that time, Negroes were ashamed of their own background and history and preferred to live by imitation. I felt it only pointed to the need for more such educational public art projects.21 Years later, Biggers reflected on the mural protest after reading an article on Thomas Hart Benton: “I didn’t know how much I had in common with him. He was hated by the people he painted, because he wanted to paint people as they were, not as they wanted to be seen. And that’s what I wanted to do—to paint my people as I saw them.” Biggers said of Benton: “I felt that in his early work he stereotyped blacks, but later I had to reassess my views. I realized that he and I had some things in common.” 22 The YWCA members, despite the controversy, enthusiastically received the completed mural. (fig. 2.11) In a letter to Dr. Biggers, the YMCA chairman agreed that the mural “seemed to be growing on people.”23 Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education was dedicated on April 22, 1953. In the dedication program, Biggers laid out the narrative of the mural:

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Fig. 2.10 Process: laying in dark tones/ negative spaces

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Fig. 2.11 Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, 1953. Casein, painted directly on prepared plaster wall. 95 x 280 in. Blue Triangle Branch YWCA Building, Houston

Masculine society has been inclined to place woman in a minority role; yet in the history of our country no more heroic work has been done than that performed by woman. She has not only organized the family but has had to lead in struggles in which that family could grow. She has been the leader in public, rural and informal education… No attempt has been made to show every character in the mural, but to symbolize through two main characters the sociological, historical and educational contributions of Negro women to American life and education. The right side represents slavery out of which Harriet Tubman leads her people, symbolized by the Torch of Freedom pushing over the column, symbol of a dominant society, which is supported by man’s labor. (fig. 2.12) Left of the column, the Tree of Life, also supported by man’s labor, embraces the balance of the mural depicting progress in education, science, music and healthful living, with Sojourner Truth as the Pioneer Teacher. The search for knowledge in a free society becomes available to the old and young, men and women, as symbolized by the old man reading by the lamp.   u  37

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The contribution of the third woman, Phillis Wheatley [an eighteenth-century Negro poet], appears in the book being read by the mother with the child. All of that embraced by the Tree of Life is in contrast to the hopelessness expressed in the figures at the far right. The church on each side symbolizes the spiritual background of those women who have maintained leadership roles in our society. One is also aware of the matriarchal influence of the family as well as the madonna theme apparent on both sides.24 One of the most striking differences between this work and Biggers’s earlier murals is the change of palette. Here, Biggers introduced warm blues and oranges in a complementary color scheme, a marked contrast to his earlier brown-and-green monochromatic works. He set aside his frequently used black tones, with the brown tones seeming to come from mixtures of the complementary blues and oranges. The white of the wall shines through in the highlighted areas. Although the viewer can sense the volume of the figures, it is the linear quality of Biggers’s draftsmanship that predominates and unifies the composition. There is an overall textural softness that provides a needed balance to the somber, brutal themes of the work. The use of multiple perspectives and vanishing points, creating varying planes in space, allows the artist to tell many stories within one giant stage. Biggers used the tree and the plantation house column to create spatial divisions, with the railroad tracks and rows of houses and people reinforcing those divisions. The nature of color and form as used in this mural does not follow the laws of visual perspective. The color used has symbolic meaning, and sizes for forms and details grow in proportion to their importance. The red earth of the Southland, the earth green-grays of the fields and shacks, the textures of burlap bags, faded blue overalls and feed sacks, bright spots of gingham textiles and patched quilts work influenced the color in the mural.25 In this work, Biggers began to apply more of Diego Rivera’s principles for working within mural space: the use of color symmetry, in which color is carefully placed to move the eye from point to point; the overlapping of silhouettes and the massing of heads; the introduction of bold diagonals that move the eye from the baseline to high horizon, with the underlying geometry unifying the wall plane; and the bold, simple modeling of the figures.

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Fig. 2.12 Slave and shotgun houses (detail, center)

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Fig. 2.13 Woman quilting (detail, left side)

Biggers again used images that would reappear in his later works: the quilt motif (fig. 2.13); railroad tracks; rows of shotgun houses (Fig. 2.14); the church/ school building; figures facing inward with bare soles exposed; the faces of the old man reading, and the young man with a vision; and oversized hands and feet. I got a great deal of joy out of making those powerful hands and feet—even more than the faces. The people of my youth who’d worked as canecutters, miners, sharecroppers—the people I knew about­—all had those strong hands, feet and shoulders. I was trying to portray working people, not “European gods.” After all, we were the laborers.26 Using his research and documentation from Contribution of Negro Women, Biggers completed his doctoral dissertation, which was submitted in partial requirement for his Doctorate in Education from Pennsylvania State University. In January 1954, Viktor Lowenfeld wrote to Texas Southern President R. O’Hara Lanier: On the basis of the excellent work Mr. John T. Biggers has done both scholastically as well as creatively, he will not only be allowed to receive his doctoral degree with no additional credits, but he will be exempted from his final examination. Instead, he will present his thesis at an open forum in which the Dean of the College of Education, the Dean of the Graduate School and the Executive Committee of the Graduate School have expressed their desire to participate [Penn State President Milton Eisenhower also attended]. This is one of the greatest honors this University has bestowed upon any doctoral candidate. 27   u  39

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This unprecedented action, guided by Viktor Lowenfeld, set a standard for graduate doctoral programs in art education for several decades. Nearly forty years later, the hall, which housed the mural at the Blue Triangle Branch, was refurbished in memory of Reverend Fred T. Lee. The women of the YWCA marked the occasion with a celebration honoring John Biggers, held November 15, 1992. Hundreds of women from the community turned out for the celebration. Tribute after tribute, ringing through the hall, spoke of Biggers’s role in helping the African American woman to appreciate her cultural heritage. In an act of great generosity, Biggers had assigned the reproduction rights for the mural to the Blue Triangle Branch in 1953, to benefit their programs. Their 1992 tribute recognized his remarkable contribution: “Thank you for your spirit of unselfish sharing. Dr. John T. Biggers is a true friend, for he has given a part of himself. Today’s celebration is a gesture of appreciation for your wonderful gift of understanding and teaching. [In] your kindness you have touched the heart and soul of the Blue Triangle family.”28

History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas If you love a child, and that child disappears, you will always wonder what happened to that child. It is like that with my murals. For seventeen years, I had wondered what happened to a mural I painted for Naples, a little community in northeast Texas. The story of how that “child” was rescued has given me the inspiration and energy to keep on going now. —John Biggers, Texas Art Education Association, annual conference, Nov. 13, 1993. History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas (see fig. 01.4) was rediscovered in a crowded public school storeroom thirty years after its dedication and installation. It has a survival story to tell—one in which a local community refused to abandon an artwork that spoke to its heritage. But allow your author to tell the tale: One beautiful fall Saturday morning in 1985, I was searching for some audiovisual equipment for my class. I was not looking for a missing mural. But there,

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Fig. 2.14 Shotgun houses

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leaning against a wall, was a large (288-inch by 60-inch) mural painting that certainly looked like an early John Biggers work. His technique was unmistakable. I quickly located his signature on a book edge. But how did it get there? Why were there little gashs in it? Who had hidden it away in a closet? I raced back to the classroom, and from my teacher-students, learned more and was referred to Mr. Alton Dacus, who had taught with Mr. P. Y. Gray, the mural’s namesake. Dacus had recently retired from the school district and was willing to speak to us about the history of the mural. We subsequently videotaped his mesmerizing presentation. Later I bravely called Biggers’s home in Houston, spoke to Dr. Biggers, and received a great deal more background and information about the “missing child.” In 1987 I was invited to attend the formal dedication of East Texas Patchwork (see fig. 6.6) in Paris, Texas, and there I met John and Hazel Biggers. We then were able to talk at length about his new work, so different stylistically and thematically from the Naples mural. The story of this mural began in the early 1950s with P. Y. Gray, principal of the new George Washington Carver High School for Negroes in Naples, Texas. This was to be the first black high school in Morris County. Mr. Gray, the backbone of the three-room school for twenty-seven years, was near retirement, and the school board was seeking a good way to recognize his contributions while celebrating the opening of the new four-year high school. The Naples school (for Negroes only) was previously only an eleven-year school. Students desiring a full high school diploma had to board at a neighboring county high school. Gray had become well acquainted with John Biggers and his murals while attending summer school at Texas Southern University. He therefore recommended to the school board that they consider a Biggers work as an appropriate celebration for their new school. The school board agreed to Gray’s recommendation, and commissioned Biggers to create a mural for the new Carver High School library based on Gray’s master’s degree thesis, History of Negro Education in Morris County. The artist recalled with pleasure his early visits to the Naples community, describing the beautiful countryside, the warm welcome, the good food, and the long hours of talk with Gray about the community’s hopes for the future of education in the region. From his early sketches, Biggers created an eight-foot composite drawing, which he showed to the Naples community. His plan was approved with some changes. (The Naples Monitor still has a print of that early drawing in its photo morgue.) (fig. 2.15) The unveiling ceremony was scheduled for Sunday, March 20, 1955. “When the mural was ready for installation, I rolled it up and carried it on the train to Naples. We were working on stretching it on the supporting structure up to the time of the dedication.” He paused and chuckled quietly. “We were all hot and sweaty—and in our good clothes.”29 In his 1978 book on the Texas Southern art department, Black Art in Houston, Biggers described the work: The mural offered the possibility of emphasizing the family patriarchal role, in contrast to the matriarchal viewpoint of the YWCA Blue Triangle Branch work.   u  41

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Fig. 2.15 Early Drawing of History of Negro Education

Fig. 2.16 Preacher, detail

Spirituality, cooperation, and industriousness of this and other black communities gave me the inspiration for the first sketches. The spiritual leader— the preacher—a descendant of the chief priest, was instrumental in arousing his people to an improvement of their lot through education and to any sacrifice necessary to pay for it (fig. 2.16). I portrayed the preacher invoking the people, through prayers, to make offerings that would brighten the future. Gazing upon this ritual that will determine their destiny are innocent youth perched birdlike on a post oak fence. Rough clapboard shacks with gloomshrouded doors and windows symbolize a hopeless past. Adjacent to them can be seen the brilliant light of a new vision: tomorrow. Yearning heartstrings seem to repeat a rhythm—pounding, thrusting forward and backward—and fence rails give the impression of echoing the staccato of the prayers. Near fence posts and shacks can be seen a vision of the schoolroom, unbuilt at that time, and pupils with their teacher (fig.2.17). But an old matriarch there had retrieved her charges from the fence posts of idleness and had begun drilling into them discipline, honesty, integrity and the three R’s. 42  u

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Fig. 2.17 The hope for a school (far left)

Fig. 2.18 Detail (center right) Principal/teacher P.Y. Gray, and frame classroom

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In a center panel, the Carver High Principal, P. Y. Gray, and his assistant, a homemaking teacher, instruct students in quilting, weaving, cooking, preserving, farming and animal husbandry as well as in reading, writing and arithmetic. (fig. 2.18) In the background can be seen farm additions representative of an interim period of growth and consolidation. Symbolic of the area’s industry that gave support to the educational vision are a railroad, oil storage tanks, warehouse and smokestacks. These represent also a deliberate attempt compositionally to balance and contrast rural earthiness with community industrialization. On the far right side of the mural appears the new consolidated school building, Carver High, with the children arriving in new buses from all parts of the county. (fig. 2.19) 30 [School buses were a new addition to the Naples district.] History of Negro Education is divided into four storytelling units that are somewhat symmetrical, but not mechanically so. The spatial divisions are similar to the YWCA mural, although the underlying geometry with its triangular configurations is more clearly visible and there is a stronger sense of order and stability. The difference between the YWCA mural and the Naples mural is not accidental: each reflects the spirit of the historical times portrayed. The post-Civil War era depicted in the YWCA mural was a time of great confusion and upheaval. In contrast, the Naples mural describes a later time and celebrates a period of growing self-sufficiency for Negroes. The viewer moves along quite comfortably through the many complex stories; the diagonal lines of the railroad tracks, fence rails, and buildings naturally take the eye from the strong baseline to the top of the picture. The mural details show the linear textural quality of the brushwork. The palette is made up of muted, warm earth tones that reflect the colors of the northeast Texas countryside. Figures are clearly and simply modeled in umber, sienna, and soft green shades. This mural marks a shift for Biggers in the creation of his images. Apart from his Navy murals, the images in his earlier works had come from his research and fertile visual memory. In this work, he combined drawings from memory with drawings from observation, including P. Y. Gray’s portrait and a wall from the new Carver High School. As with many of Biggers’s murals, this work reflects the influence of Rivera, particularly in the palette,

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Fig. 2.19 The new school constructed, with school buses (right)

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the grouping of figures within spatial divisions, and the inscriptions incorporated into the composition conveying a social message. Those prescient inscriptions, seen in the open book held by Gray, are thought to represent the collective ideas of Gray, Superintendent Frank Bean, and John Biggers: 1. Parents must be made aware of the seriousness of the condition of dropouts. 2. Retardation is to [sic] high, more effective teaching programs should be built. 3. Teacher training institutions should screen all prospective teachers. 4. Adequate buildings and facilities. 5. Consolidation. The use of Biggers’s developing iconographic language is also evident in the mural. Once again, the quilt theme appears, as do the shotgun houses, the railroad tracks and the overshadowing “tree of life.” The strong male figure with arms outstretched, at the apex of the dominant pyramid composition, presents a strong contrast to the bowed male figure in the YWCA mural. The figure here reaches out with open hands, holding “seeds of hope.” It is balanced by the preacher figure on the far left, and the young man with the wondering expression, hand to face, at the far right. (That same face appeared earlier in the YWCA mural.). History of Negro Education remained in the Carver High School library for some fifteen years. The mural’s bold imagery made it difficult to ignore, but a new generation of students had little background to understand and appreciate its message. Racial integration and economic growth had come to northeast Texas. The painting had become little more than a target for restless high schoolers. When a new integrated high school was completed in the early 1970s, Carver became the district elementary school. (Despite the Brown ruling in 1954, many Southern states resisted integrating their schools for several decades.) The ceilings were lowered to create a suitable environment for children, and the mural no longer fit the available space. Probably because of its unwieldy size and certainly because of its strong images, the Biggers mural went into storage under the band hall. After some years, it ended up in an outside shed. Some thought it should stay there. Some didn’t. In the late 1970s, a group of former students who had attended Carver High School in the mid ’50s began to wonder about their mural. They searched and eventually found it in the shed, in remarkably good condition, considering the humid climate of the region and the casual treatment the mural had received. Slightly torn and dusty, it was returned to the old library, which had become a storeroom for audiovisual equipment. Some attempts at cleaning and repair were made, but were soon abandoned.31 (A lone carbon-colored figure, leaning over the quilt frame, serves as a reminder of that effort.) Those interested quickly saw the need for the artist’s hand in any restoration effort. Cherished by some, but an uncomfortable reminder of the past for others, the mural posed a dilemma for school administrators. What to do? The problem was solved as many problems are—nothing was done for another decade. However, the notice given to the finding of the early mural created some excitement in the area and the value of the mural was brought to the attention of   u  45

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the school district in the late 1980s. “We immediately made plans to treat it as an important piece of art work,” recalled Randy Dungan, principal of the elementary school that housed the mural.32 The district constructed a new library for the school, and History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas was framed and installed on a large wall in the new library. (fig. 2.20) John Biggers was then invited to return to Omaha-Naples for a formal rededication of his mural on October 27, 1989. That day he did some touching up on the mural with paints and brushes quickly assembled for his use. Biggers spoke for the school children, signed autographs, and met with the people of the community he’d visited so long ago. “It was a very emotional time,” Dungan said. “Dr. Biggers stopped when he walked into the room and saw the mural. He cried and said, ‘I never thought this could happen in a million years.’ “33 The celebration included some graduates and former staff members of Carver High School, current school board members and administrative personnel from the now-integrated school district, and a special guest, P. Y. Gray, Jr. the elderly son of the original inspiration for the mural. Other Gray family members came from all parts of the country to celebrate their grandfather who’d meant so much to the little community. Emotions ran high as speakers recalled the bittersweet memories of life in the old segregated high school. For the Naples community, the ceremony that Friday afternoon in October brought a great sense of reconciliation with an often-difficult past. (fig. 2.21) The artist captured the profound meaning of the celebration in his remarks: “This event marks for me the climax of my career. I need nothing else. I told a story with meaning for this community which you have kept alive all these years—this is why I paint. There is no greater satisfaction.” 34 46  u

Fig. 2.20 Children, mural in new library

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Fig. 2.21 Author introducing John Biggers at community celebration

History of the International Longshoremen’s Union Local 872 Doing this mural was a fulfillment of a childhood fantasy, a romantic experience. I think my feeling for dockworkers first came from the song “Old Man River” and from my reading of Mark Twain. And I thought labor unions were a wonderful thing. —John Biggers, interview, July 1993 Biggers was commissioned to create this work for a new building to be constructed for Local 872 of the Longshoremen’s Union. Biggers’s colleague at Texas Southern, Carroll Simms, also received a commission from the Union. Together the two artists spent a good bit of time making sketches and preparatory drawings at the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel. Biggers absorbed the sights, smells, and sounds of the busy port, recalling his days in the Navy. The world of the longshoremen provided great inspiration for Biggers: “Longshoremen are strong and proud. They possess certain traits peculiar to men who often risk their lives—living exuberantly and even recklessly on the razor’s edge of chance. They work and love and endure pain with robust humor.”35 Biggers was also inspired by Richmond Barthé’s powerful sculpture, Stevedore. “It expressed the macho meaning of what a man was—I really bought that macho stuff. I didn’t learn till later who the real men were.”36 Remembering the work on the Longshoremen mural, Biggers recalled: “I had more fun in the research than in the actual painting, because I was so pressed for time. A UNESCO grant that I applied for two years earlier, to study traditional life in Africa, had come through. I was told to be in Ghana by July 1, 1957—three weeks away.”37 To complete the mural on time, Biggers went to work on an intense schedule, painting from 3 a.m. until classtime and after classes until midnight. He   u  47

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worked with casein and water washes on masonite panels set up in the art department, putting his brush technique to a severe test. The artist met his deadline, and John and Hazel Biggers left for Ghana as planned—but not without yet another crisis. Biggers had counted on using the commission payment for living expenses while in Africa; however, the architect was unable to meet his financial commitment to the artist and couldn’t pay him. Fortunately, a friend of the Longshoremen’s Union came to the rescue by purchasing the working drawings for the mural.38 The mural (fig. 2.22) presents a vivid view of the longshoreman’s life and the atmosphere of the ship channel. Long and narrow, the work is symmetrical, with a dominant center section and two side areas focusing on union history and union leadership. In the left-hand section, men are depicted hauling huge drums, pushing dollies and loading platforms filled with heavy sacks (fig. 2.23); at the top far left are scenes from a major labor strike of 1934–35. (Almost a third of the U.S. unionized labor force, including dockworkers, were involved in a series of strikes in this period, following the passage of New Deal legislation recognizing labor’s right to organize.) The center section focuses on a pair of hands in the act of connecting a large hook to a rope, as workers of varying ages load a ship’s hold. On the far right, board members of the Longshoremen’s Union are depicted standing in front of railroad cars on a loading platform (fig. 2.24). Biggers commented that he had some difficulty getting all of the men together for their portraits; he left spaces to add several more portraits, but was unable to complete them within the short time frame. This is a forthright mural celebrating the workingman—the theme appropriate for its location at a union local. It was later included in a Houston exhibition, Americans at Work: Realism Between the World Wars, sponsored by the Transco Energy Company in 1985. 39 In this work, the figures are cleanly modeled in tones of blue-green and umber. The palette, suggestive of the ocean, gives visual unity to a very complex scene. Varying surfaces—the burlap-wrapped cotton bales, the thick rope, the muscles of the dockworkers—provided textural contrasts. The feeling of steady heavy activity pulses through the crowded dock scenes. The compositional structure was becoming a familiar hallmark of Biggers’s murals, with its arresting foreground, high horizon line, middle ground filled with dense activity and diagonal lines leading to multiple vanishing points. At this point in his development, Biggers had become skilled as a draftsman of the human figure, and very comfortable with the Riveraesque spatial compositional structure. The Longshoremen mural is a polished work that marks the end of a phase of the artist’s development that began with his arrival at Hampton Institute in 1941. For John Biggers, the sights and sounds of Houston harbor were soon overtaken by the imagery of Africa. Ananse, the mythical African spider figure, would capture the artist in its web of life, and forever change the way he saw the world.

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Fig. 2.22 History of the International Longshoremen’s Local 872, 1957. Egg tempera. 9 x 24 ft.

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Fig. 2.23 Left panel, Detail, dockworkers

Fig. 2.24 Right panel, Detail, Union leaders

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Chapter 3 Bridging Past and Present: Africa and After, 1957–1974

The journey to Africa was the most significant of my life’s experiences. Living intimately with the African and understanding something of his problems enabled me to better understand my own. Thus strengthened, I gained a new confidence for the future. —John Biggers, Ananse: The Web of Life in Africa

u  u  u  West Africa, July 1957–December 1957 In July of 1957, John Biggers left America with his wife, Hazel, for six months of study in West Africa, funded by a UNESCO grant. The artist kept a careful record of his trip in words, drawings, and photographs, which he later incorporated into a book, Ananse: The Web of Life in Africa, first published in 1962. In Ananse, he wrote of his thoughts in flight, as his plane approached the coast of Africa: “As an American Negro, my lifelong desire had been to bridge the gap between African and American culture. When I was an art student …Viktor Lowenfeld taught us something about the noble meaning of African sculpture.” He continued: “But African art—in fact African culture generally—remained devoid of significance in our lives. I felt cut off from my heritage, which I suspected was estimable and something to be embraced, not an ignobility to be scorned. I believed that many of my American brothers, in their flight from the stereotyped concepts of our race, had also flown from their real selves and had created a grotesque, unattainable image based on Caucasian attributes, a development that must surely prove a hindrance in the struggle to attain dignity and self-respect in contemporary society … I remembered the self-conscious questions asked me and my students by other members of our race, ‘But why do you paint Negroes?’ Our answers—‘Whom should we portray? Whom do we know best? Are we not Negroes?’—failed to satisfy.”1 In Africa, John and Hazel Biggers traveled through Ghana, Togo, Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin), and Nigeria, where they experienced the heady atmosphere of independence as country after country became free from colonial rule.   u  51

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While in Ghana, the couple stayed in the home of a university art instructor, Patrick Hulede, whose portrait, along with that of Hulede’s mother, appears in Two People in Ghana. (fig. 3.1) John and Hazel were given an extraordinary opportunity to learn about the cultural and spiritual heritage of their ancestors. Africa provided the artist with a wealth of images—both from his direct observations and from his study of African culture. (fig. 3.2) He studied African myths and legends, naming his book for Ananse, the mythical African spider, an all-knowing fixer, trickster, and teacher. He was particularly drawn to the creation stories of a matriarchal deistic system. In African tribal legend, God has both male and female properties. The queen mother is the moon—the source of all creation—who gives birth to the sun, the king of heaven, and to the stars, the children. (This African fable will reappear in many forms in Biggers’s later murals.) In Ananse, Biggers wrote: “The African woman, in her divine creative capacity, motivated within me a desire to paint murals on creation from a matriarchal point of view; whereas the European artist had been motivated to paint creation from a patriarchal view.”2 Biggers’s African trip was a turning point in his life, leading him to embark on a long artistic struggle to integrate into his work the heritage of Africa, Europe, and the American South. He has said that the early years following his visit were the most difficult, having an almost paralyzing effect on him. He wondered at times if he could ever assimilate such an experience. 3

u  u  u Houston, 1958–1974 Upon his return to Houston, Biggers resumed work on Web of Life, a mural to be located in a new science building at Texas Southern University. He took several more years to complete the work, which Houston art critic Mimi Crossley called “a mural that ranks with national treasures.”4 Web of Life depicted a marked change in Biggers’s style. In this mural, he moved from his earlier figurative, narrative approach—one that evoked the experience of the Negro in the Western world—to incorporate an Afrocentric point of view as well. In the early 1960s, however, Biggers again found that he was ahead in his thinking: at 52  u

Fig. 3.1 Two People in Ghana, 1960. Conté crayon

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Fig. 3.2 Mother and Child at Durbar, 1960. Conté crayon

Fig. 3.3 Give Me Two Wings to Fly Away, 1965. Conté crayon

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that time many black Americans still looked with embarrassment rather than pride on their African origins, and preferred to identify with the mainstream white culture. It was not until the late 1960s and 1970s that the search for African roots was widely accepted as a positive force. Few would remember how iconoclastic the mid-career thinking of an artist like John Biggers must have seemed. During the years following his Africa trip, Biggers was engaged in an intense and difficult period of work, as he sought to find a way to integrate his experiences and beliefs into a visual language—his own distinctive iconography. His progress was slowed by several bouts of poor health due to diabetes and personal struggles, but the downtimes ultimately provided him time for reflection and assimilation. From 1958 to 1974, he produced numerous drawings and paintings, completed three murals, illustrated several books and published Ananse in 1962 (reprinted in 1967, 1979, and 1996). There was a marked development in his draftsmanship, as he continued to work from direct observation as well as his fertile imagination. His drawings, always strong, now seemed to soar as visual descriptions of the land, people, and spiritual life that he had come to love. All of this artistic activity went on at the same time Biggers was continuing to teach in and administer a growing art department during a politically charged time on college campuses throughout the country. Although the civil rights movement had a profound personal impact on Biggers, his overriding concern was creating archetypal images that would provide a means of positive self-identification for African Americans. Give Me Two Wings to Fly Away (fig. 3.3) was one of his few works that had an overt political reference. That piece referred to the September 15, 1963, bomb blast that killed the four little girls in Sunday School at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Alabama. After completing Birth from the Sea in 1966, Biggers did not begin work on another mural until 1974. During this eight-year gap, however, Biggers continued to develop his symbolic language. This period of development had an intense impact upon his next mural, Family Unity, and his later works.

Web of Life

The mural Web of Life (fig. 3.4) originated with a request to the Texas Southern art faculty from President Samuel Nabrit: he asked that they create murals and sculpture for the newly completed science building on the university campus. The new building was to be named Nabrit Hall in honor of the president who had succeeded Dr. Lanier in 1955.

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Fig. 3.4 Web of Life, 1960. Casein with egg emulsion on canvas. 72 x 312 in. Original location: Nabrit Science Hall, Texas Southern University. Present location: Texas Southern University Art Gallery

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Fig. 3.5. Detail, Center, Earth mother

Biggers regarded Nabrit’s request as one of the most encouraging experiences of his tenure at Texas Southern. “It was another landmark in our efforts to cooperate creatively on community projects and to produce what we were teaching our students.” 5 The artist began work on the mural prior to his trip to Africa, completing a one-inch-scale, black-and-white drawing and a four-inch-scale color drawing. His initial plan was to paint the mural directly onto the wall, around existing doorways. Fortunately, for later preservation efforts, he decided to change the mural’s location and put the work on canvas. “I did the whole drawing before I went to Africa. I changed only one thing when I came back. I didn’t see anything else to change. Later, when I painted it, I added the symbol of Ananse and his web with the sun’s rays. I painted those sunbeams with gold paint.”6 (fig. 3.5) In Black Art in Houston, Biggers explained his purpose for the mural: To portray graphically … the interdependence of living organisms in the balance of nature and the relationship of all organisms to one another through the long line of evolutionary descent was the challenge and inspiration for the development of the mural concept … I had always been fascinated by this interdependence of life, especially by the concept of man and animal receiving nourishment from plants, and of plants likewise depending upon man for life’s substance—specifically in this case, the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. As early as my high school days I understood why man couldn’t continue haphazardly and ruthlessly to exploit, to destroy nature without harming himself. But as I have said before, we didn’t refer to this in those days as ecology. My memories of simple folkways and my love of the land, of animal and plant life, as a country boy, gave me inspiration for this mural.7 Web of Life is a symmetrical composition divided into five triangular areas. The mural abounds with organic forms. In the center is a full, rounded female figure nestling with an infant—an earth mother—surrounded by an interwoven complex of tree roots forming a womb (fig. 3.5). Above ground, reclining atop the tree roots, are a male and female figure, their gesturing hands barely touching (fig. 3.6). The root system continues to the left and right; small sleeping animals and infants nestle in the root nodules. (fig. 3.7, 3.8) Seasonal changes are depicted through further interweaving of the roots—reading from left to right: winter with its frozen waters and icicles; autumn, with harvest maidens and the moon; spring, with the planting of seeds in the fields; and summer, with blossoms bursting and waters flowing.   u  55

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Fig. 3.6 Detail, Center, Evolution

Fig. 3.7 Detail, Left, Winter

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Fig. 3.8 Detail, Right

The new forms in Web of Life emerged from the artist’s imagination, generated by his love of Diego Rivera and Michelangelo. References to the earth-mother figure and the nestling animals and humans in Web of Life can be seen in Rivera’s murals in the Chapel at the Universidad Autonoma de Chapingo, near Mexico City.8 Although different in setting and image, the two artists’s murals share a sense of the relationship of the earth and its creatures. The male and female figures placed over the earth mother resemble Michelangelo’s Night and Day sculptures from the tomb of Guiliano de’Medici in the Medici Chapel in Florence, although the triangular relationship of the three figures is inverted in Web of Life. 9 The hand gestures of the male and female figure are reminiscent of those in Michelangelo’s famous Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Biggers recalled that he used these references to Western art as a teaching tool: “This is one way I would teach art history to my students. I would show them Michelangelo’s works and say, ‘You see, here in my mural…’ ”10 Web of Life is the first Biggers mural in which the undraped figure appears, although, as he noted, “I always start with the nude figure, and then add the clothing when I’ve got the form right.” 11 The dominant color is an olive green turning toward blue, applied in tiny brush strokes throughout the entire large canvas. Biggers’s technique has remained the same from mural to mural, giving the impression of a very large drawing meticulously rendered. The spatial division is similar to that found in the artist’s earlier murals, but the appearance is very different, as the organic forms of the earth encompass the entire mural. Although the modeling of the forms remains rounded and naturalistic, the lower areas of the mural have a stylized abstract quality. There are a rich variety of textural contrasts—from running water to frozen icicles, sunny fields to damp underground. In Web of Life, Biggers told a story of creation from an Afrocentric, matriarchal view, while incorporating the dominant European images of creation. Focusing on the connectedness of human beings with the earth, he foreshadowed the environmental movement by nearly a decade. Web of Life hung in Nabrit Hall for twenty years—an affirmation of the students’ African heritage—but it eventually suffered from changing times. By the early 1980s, according to Biggers, the university administration had abandoned the Afrocentric aesthetic standard in its building décor in favor of a return to a European fashion. Shortly after his retirement from the university in 1983, Biggers received a phone call from a distressed colleague who told him that Web of Life had been vandalized—it suffered a large gash—and was about to be removed from the wall   u  57

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in Nabrit Hall. Fearing that inexperienced art handlers would do further damage, Biggers saw to it that the mural was carefully removed, rolled up, and stored in their family living room with hope for eventual restoration. 12 In storage for more than ten years, Web of Life was finally restored, thanks to a gift from Mrs. Susan McAshan, a longtime friend of the artist and the Texas Southern art department. The restoration was completed for the April 1995 opening of the major retrospective of the artist’s work, The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Hampton University Museum. Conservator Wynne Phelan of the Houston museum brought in an art restoration expert from Washington, D.C., Ron Cunningham, and he and his colleagues restored both Web of Life and also Biggers’s later work, Quilting Party. Biggers recalled: “It was a wonderful thing to watch them work. They worked thread to thread, and brushstroke by brushstroke. It must have taken them at least nine months.”13 As demonstrated by the fate of some of Biggers’s works, public murals are at the mercy of changing tastes as well as exposure to the elements. It is indeed fortunate Web of Life has survived. A remarkable artwork and an important record of Biggers’s development, the mural is also a significant hallmark of the ’60s civil rights movement and the era of black pride.

Red Barn Farm

While Biggers was working on Web of Life, friends Dr. and Mrs. Ford B. McWilliams approached Biggers and his colleague Carroll Simms about creating

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Fig. 3.9 Red Barn Farm, 1960. Casein with egg emulsion on canvas. 46 1/2 x 77 in. Dowling Animal Clinic, Houston

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art portraying animals for their new veterinary clinic. (Dr. McWilliams was the first black veterinarian to practice in Houston). Pleased to have the opportunity to focus on a new subject matter, Biggers settled on an indoor mural focusing on animals native to southeastern Texas. “I agreed to a case of champagne as payment—I enjoyed doing it so much. The farm out there was so beautiful. When my friend went on calls tending the horses, I’d go along and draw.”14 This mural provided a respite from Biggers’s aesthetic struggles. Red Barn Farm (fig. 3.9) is divided into three areas, with spaces defined as though one were looking through the branches of a tree. Within these spaces there are grazing, rooting, and drinking animals. Black Art in Houston included a romantic description of the scene: “A viewer with a feeling for nostalgia can almost hear a rustic cacophony: the grunts and snorts of gluttonous pigs chewing acorns and other nutriments as they scavenge through a wooded area; the yelps of leashed hunting dogs trembling with excitement in anticipation of a moonlight chase after coons and possums; a soft rustle of twigs and leaves caused by a variety of hard-tospot living things—birds, lizards, snakes, turtles, insects.” 15 The influence of Diego Rivera can be seen in Biggers’s approach to composition, even in this work of a completely different genre. The action begins in the dominant foreground, where the veterinarian stands among horses and a dog, and cats sit on the large tree branch. The viewer’s eye is led to the high horizon line and the red barn by means of birds in flight, running horses and diagonally furrowed fields and parallel fencing. Red Barn Farm is filled with lush textures of nature: grasses contrast with water, earth with swamp, tree bark with barn textures. Muted earth tones—greens, red-browns and blues—predominate and unify the composition, while the sparkle of white highlights (such as the barn’s white cupola) lead the eye over the mural’s surface. Watery reflections of light balance the symmetrical side areas of the work. At first glance, Red Barn Farm appears quite unrelated to Biggers’s earlier murals, but does contain familiar elements. The artist had used tree branches as spatial dividers in a number of murals, including Harvesters and Gleaners, The Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, and Web of Life. As in Web of Life, the organic, curvilinear forms of nature dominate the overall composition—the contrasting geometry of the barn provides a focal point. Water, too, is a recurring element, going as far back as Baptism (see fig. 1.10) and Sharecroppers (see fig.1.9) a symbol of cleansing and renewal, and increasingly, the origin of life. The interrelation of man and animals, a theme Biggers had begun to explore in Web of Life, would also become increasingly important in his later murals.

Birth from the Sea

In Birth from the Sea (fig. 3.10), Biggers succeeded in combining a creation myth of European origin with an Afrocentric one, doing so in a way that paid homage to both European and African art. As he noted: “I have always loved Botticelli [Birth of Venus] in which the creation story is related to the sea.”16 Biggers already had in mind a work telling the story of creation from the “maternal sea,” when he was approached by the head librarian of the Houston Public Library, Mrs. Harriet Reynolds, to paint a mural for the new W. L. Johnson Branch.   u  59

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“I did this as a pair with Web of Life, telling the creation story first from the earth and then from the sea.”17 The architect for the new building had implied to Mrs. Reynolds that Biggers “works for free.” Biggers remembered: “I said to her, ‘Did that architect build this building for nothing?’ That rascal! Well, she was so embarrassed that she offered to pay for the project from her own pocket. But I agreed to do the mural for the cost of the materials alone, because they didn’t have money for that.”18 Biggers began Birth from the Sea in 1964, but left Houston during the 1965–66 academic year to teach as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He completed the work in 1966 upon his return to Houston. The artist described the mural in Black Art in Houston: “In the center is depicted the womb of the sea. From it emerges a vessel, a Fanti fishing boat carrying a sphere: an egg—a new world. Dancing beside the boat is the maternal sea, whose wisp of garment is like an umbilical cord binding boat and figure as twins. “In the middle ground, a group of women animatedly discuss the great miracle that unfolds. On the right is another group, bearing gifts in anticipation of the miraculous birth. Emerging from this group, a fisherman casts forth his nets. Above the fisherman, a leviathan sends forth waves and currents. At extreme top left, drummers beat an eternal rhythm as they ride into the womb of the sea. In the foreground, left, a serving mother, the matriarchal symbol, bends over her work, like God bending over the clay while making the first man.” 19 The palette in Birth from the Sea presents a strong contrast to many of Biggers’s earlier murals. Using a complementary color scheme, Biggers echoed the sea with watery blues and greens, while highlighting the sunny figures with warm orange tones. The ocean sands shimmer with reflections and provide many textural contrasts. Sea creatures emerge from those glistening sands and the deep waters. The patterned garments of the female figures introduce further contrasts between transparency and opacity. 60  u

Fig. 3.10 Birth from the Sea, 1964–1966. Casein with egg emulsion on canvas 72 x 144 in. W. L. Johnson Public Library, Houston

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The use of light and shadow by means of color contrast was a new approach for Biggers. “I was aiming for a Rivera-like luminosity. He never violated the law of letting the wall show through for the light. I ended up using white paint in some areas. Rivera would have used only the white wall.”20 Dominating the mural is the central female figure, so reminiscent of Botticelli’s Venus. The model for this figure was a professor of creative dance at Texas Southern University, Marge Stewart, now retired. “She would come and dance for an hour or so, bringing her own music, and I would study her movements. After she’d leave, I’d make sketches. Finally we settled on the right pose for her to hold. Then it was a matter of working that pose into the composition with the boat and the other figures. I wish I still had the large drawing I did of her, but I sold it.” 21 Birth from the Sea, a richly symbolic mural, is the first in which Biggers began to synthesize his observations: Africa, his study of African art and mythology, and his groundings in the tradition of Western art. The original drawings for the figural groupings and the Fanti fishing boat—the sacred vessel holding the egg—can be found in Ananse. As Biggers explained: “In African legend, the boat has always been a symbol of the mother delivering the child—creation.”22 The pattern on the egg is also symbolic. “The egg in the boat is an ostrich egg. In the Kalahari desert, they punch two holes in an ostrich egg, fill it with water, seal it and bury it in the desert. Then when they move around, they always know where water is waiting for them, a real symbol of life.”23 The figure of the serving mother in the lower left section introduced a new matriarchal symbol: the spider web, with the woman’s hand holding the unifying center. The patterns on her clothing, as with that of the other female figures, have special meaning: “Look at the sun symbol on this woman’s garment. It was gold, just like the sun.”24 Her garment intentionally reflects the watery transparency of the sea and leads the eye to the seashells on the sand, “bringing to mind the myth of the people who came from the sea.” Biggers told the story: “In Africa, on the coast at the west end of Ghana, we were in a little town called Anamabu. There we were told of people who said they had come out of the sea. Those people said, ‘We will carry you out to show you where our people came from.’ “About two hundred feet from shore, the water was clear and the depth was about ten feet. We looked down and there were these wonderful sculptures looking up at us from the depths. We could see the sand, fish, and funerary sculptures. It was an ancient cemetery and the waters had long since risen over it. “I thought, ‘I don’t have to copy Botticelli—I can do the African legend.’ ” Biggers paused momentarily: “You see, we did come out of the sea, for the waters of the womb in which a child grows are the waters of life … When I realized that Botticelli stood Venus on a shell, I knew that with myth you can do anything—myth is of the heart and truth.”25

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CHAPTER 4: Influences: African art and mythology, 1957–2001

John Biggers’s trip to Africa transformed his art in unimaginable ways. Many knew of Biggers’s earlier work and had categorized him as a regional painter who painted images of suffering people. As it turns out, that was only half the story. In this chapter we will talk about some factors that influenced him on his pioneering journey into the creation of new images and ideas. (fig. 4.1) Following the 1996 publication of The Murals of John Thomas Biggers, Biggers gave me a little paperback book and suggested that I should read it sometime. I wasn’t familiar with the author and had much else to do, so that book sat untouched in my bookcase for over ten years. But recently, as I was looking for answers to some questions I still had about John Biggers’s work, I picked up Echoes of the Old Darkland and leafed through it. As I read, I found glimpses of ideas that Biggers had embedded in his murals. I returned to that little paperback many times to study some of the images in later murals. And I did understand one thing: Biggers had found a source for his “great heroic images.” (See Chapter 5)

u  u  u John Biggers’s African Art Collection John Biggers had long been interested in African art because of the Hampton University Museum collection and the encouragement of his teacher Viktor Lowenfeld. However, it was visiting and traveling in Africa that captured his collector’s passion. On a limited student budget, he began to acquire small, inexpensive objects that could be easily packed. One area of special interest was the gold weight. (fig. 4.2) These little weights had been used to gain the correct balance of specific weights when measuring gold powder. What made these objects so interesting to Biggers was that these little figures told stories suggesting familiar African proverbs, fables, and teaching tales. For example, a mythical long-necked bird, called Sankofa, twists its head backwards to touch its tail, which means that one can learn from hindsight. Another example: a two-headed crocodile with one stomach that symbolizes the importance of unity within a family or tribe.1 On my last visit to the Biggers home, I asked my host to show me his gold weight collection. He pulled out a worn little case from under his easy chair, opened it, and placed one in my hand. It was smaller and lighter than I had expected. Turning one over, I felt a small depression on the underside. I learned that the 62  u

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Fig. 4.1 John Biggers with his sculpture, Aunt Dicy (left) and African sculpture Mother and Twins (right),1970’s/ BW photo

Fig. 4.2 Ananse, the spider in his web. Gold weight, slide

Fig. 4.3 Biggers’s home, shelves of African art collection, 1997, BW photo

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depression would be filled with lead to ensure that the weight would correspond to the measure required.2 As I studied it, I saw that this little figure was a tiny replica of one of the larger sculptures in the family gallery area. I must have looked puzzled because Biggers suggested: “The work itself will speak and tell you its meaning. Take your time, hold it, turn it, and look at it. Give it a chance to talk.” 3 With that thought in mind, I left the gold weights and slowly moved from one sculpture to another. There were intricate ivory carvings, painted wood sculptures, metal figures, clay pottery, and wood and clay mother and child figures, grouped thematically. (fig. 4.3) John and Hazel Biggers’s home had the feel of a well-loved museum. Over the years, the collection had grown as the pocketbook and space allowed. Biggers sat pensively, turning a new piece over in his hands. (fig. 4.4) “Do I need to buy another sculpture? No. But can I turn down another opportunity to get another one that just came in? No. I’m hopeless. It’s like an addiction.” His dark eyes twinkled as he shrugged his shoulders. 4

u  u  u Selections from Collection We selected several pieces from Biggers’s African collection to examine closely, especially pieces that we recognized from some of Biggers’s most unusual post-Africa images. For example: look at this Ashanti figure, with a large slightly domed head and short arms extended outwards horizontally. This figure resembles a child’s doll and is meant to suggest an infant. This Asante figure is called an akua’ba and is intended to secure a pregnancy. Created with fine technical skill by a gifted woodcarver, this doll is to be cared for as if it were a real baby by a woman desiring a pregnancy.5 More importantly, the infant figure is understood as a universal form simplified, reduced to its essence, in three basic geometric shapes: sphere, ovoid, and cylinder. From Africa 1957 onwards, we will find similar shapes repeated from mural to mural, always seeming to suggest the simplicity of the child and yet the wisdom of the ages.6 In Family Unity (see fig. 5.5) the Child embraces the First Parents in the way that the figure above (see fig. 5.3) extends the arms outward to embrace all. This figuration was again repeated in the East and West Gates of the Christia V. Adair mural (see fig. 5.13) as well as others. 64  u

Fig. 4.4 John Biggers enjoying the feel of a new carving. BW photo Fig. 4.5 Doll (akua’ba), Ghana, Asante peoples, 20th Century. Wood, glass beads, and fiber. 11 14 x 5 7/16 x 1 7/8 in. Gift of Henry H. Hawley III. Dallas Museum of Art.

influences: african art and mythology, 1957–2001

u  u  u Predominant Themes from the collection

Fig. 4.6 Esi Mansi woodcarving, mother with twins, Asante peoples.

There were several predominant themes within the collection: mother and child, in Ghana called Esi Mansa and the sole African woman as “the great mother, the sustainer.” (fig. 4.6) There were musical instruments, boxes, and birds and animals that were part of a specific story or proverb, such as the familiar tale of the race between the tortoise and the hare. We recall that the slow-moving tortoise won the race with the hare by outsmarting the speedy animal with cleverness, not speed. In the kitchen there was a collection of stirring spoons with carved handles hanging over the stove area. In the studio a large collection of ceremonial combs was displayed. I looked closely at an Akan comb and noted the birds atop the comb. These birds are called Sankofa birds, twisting their heads backwards to touch their tails. This gesture was meant to illustrate that one learns from hindsight. As I walked into the living room gallery, I recognized other familiar forms that had appeared in his murals as early as 1974 in Family Unity (see fig. 5.5) and later Quilting Party. (see fig. 5.7) A ceremonial stool for the king of a village held a place of honor in the dining room. (fig. 4.7) Biggers often remarked that the king’s stool was the most important, and often the only furniture in the royal residence. Observe the story told in this piece: a jaguar has a crocodile

Fig. 4.7 Ceremonial stool, Asante peoples.

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by the tail, which appears to be defeated and in pain. Mother and child are safely protected covered by the throne/stool. The king calmly controls the action. Biggers made careful drawings of his pieces, and eventually some appeared in other works.

u  u  u African sculpture and geometric abstraction In the development of the 1974 mural Family Unity, Biggers initiated his vision to depict human origins in visual form. In the center group, Metamorphosis (see fig. 01.1) he addressed the idea of a First Couple, Conception, and Birth, in an abstract and geometric style suggested by the simplification and purposeful distortion of the face common to many African sculptures and dancer’s masks. The African artist, in these carvings (see figs. 4.5, 4.6), has emphasized the importance of the eyebrows, eyelids, eyeballs, and cheekbones by reducing the lesser features of the nose, mouth, and chin almost to an afterthought. Our attention is then drawn to the careful hair shaping and accompanying headdress. The features are simplified to basic shapes, the circle and the oval, which suggests a universal, not individual form. This is not a naturalistic representation of a specific woman nor was it intended to be. In East Texas Patchwork (see fig. 6.6), we again see the posture and geometric simplification of the three figures. Contrast those figures with these examples from the collection.

u  u  u Design elements The images that Biggers created were so powerful that his technical skill and masterful use of design fundamentals were often overlooked. Yet, without his skillful manipulation of these elements, his images would have been of lesser quality. In his mural compositions pre-Africa, Biggers usually chose symmetrical balance in which the left side appears equal in visual weight to the right, with the focal point placed directly in the center. The early mural Sharecroppers (see fig. 1.9) is a good example of symmetrical balance. The sculpture just mentioned is an example of the way in which the African artists used symmetrical balance while providing great variety, as Biggers does. Further, to lend a feeling of solidity, the most significant forms were arranged in an isosceles triangle, with the broad base covering the bottom, and the peak touching the top edge. 7 A good example of that is shown in Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education (see fig. 2.11) and History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas. (see fig. 01.4) Although these devices are less evident in his later works, they still will be utilized. Gradually though, the quilt structure of vertical and horizontal lines and rectilinear shapes began to dominate his mural compositions, bringing with it the skillful use of rhythmic pattern, textural contrasts, repeated motifs, and adroit and varied use of light and dark, as well as colors warm and cool. His later mural compositions seem to suggest a tug of war between light and dark, especially the Hampton murals, House of the Turtle and Tree House (see figs. 6.13, 6.14). Of the struggle between light and darkness, a thought expressed by Grandma

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Hager about her grandson in Langston Hughes’s Not Without Laughter says it all: “I ain’t never raised no boy o’ ma own yet, so I wants this one … to mount to something. I wants him to know all they is to know, so’s he can help this black race o’ our’n to come up and see de light and take they places in de world.” 8

u  u  u Literary sources: Biggers’s cosmic universe On March 1, 1979, 9 the New York Times published an article called “Nubian Monarchy Called Oldest” which noted that recently 10 discovered archeological objects have shown that civilization of ancient Nubia may have preceded the Egyptian by 3000 years. Almost twenty years later, another archeological discovery brought new attention to the ancient kingdoms of Nubia (located approximately where Sudan is today) and Egypt. A headline in the New York Times article read: “Nubia, Not Egypt, May Have Been The First True African Civilization.” 11 Interested, Biggers began to delve into the writings of some little-known and diverse authors who had focused on ancient African, Nubian, and Egyptian studies, such as Ivan von Sertima, Eva Meyerowitz, anthropologists, Yosef ben Jochannan, Egyptologist, Cheikh Anta Diop, who wrote about African origins of Egyptian civilization, and Charles Finch III, former Director of International Health at Morehouse School of Medicine. John Biggers was included in conversations with this diverse group of anthropologists, Egyptologists, scientists, and others. The readings and discussions with them stimulated Biggers’s imagination to envision a cosmos that would integrate his own black Southern background and his understanding of the ancient past of the African. He became very interested in the creation myths of Egyptian/Nubian antiquity. In those stories, Biggers found a way of infusing his art with symbolic meanings and visual archetypes, thus developing deepening levels of meaning in his works.

u  u  u A pantheon of ancient deities Listing some of the Egyptian/Nubian deities is no simple matter: there are hundreds, and the names and functions have changed back and forth over time (at least 3000 years). However, here are deities that John Biggers brought into his murals with some descriptions that may be helpful in interpreting the images the artist has created. The reader should be advised that Biggers did interpret these mythological deities freely and for his own purposes. I have assembled a composite picture from a variety of sources but it is by no means exhaustive or necessarily definitive.12 Atum – creation god, setting sun (sun disk on head) Hathor – sun goddess, mother of the universe (often depicted as a cow with horns and sun disk), mother of Set Horus – rising sun, rebirth of the earth (falcon-headed), consort of Hathor Isis – magical power, healing, wife of Osiris (throne on head or holding baby) Ma’at – personification of truth, justice, balance, order, brings order out of primal chaos (feather in hair)

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Mut – (pronounced “moot”) mother from which the cosmos emerged, sometimes shown with wings Nephthys – goddess of death, night, darkness, sister to Isis and nursing mother to Horus Nut – (pronounced “noot”) goddess of heaven and sky, sun, moon and stars (blue with gold stars). One ancient story tells that each day Nut gives birth to the sun at dawn, swallows it again at night.13 Osiris – god of the underworld, brother and husband of Isis. Killed by his brother Set but was reborn. A symbol of rebirth, regeneration (his face the green of vegetation or black with mud). “Osiris is linked with lunar imagery … by various iconographic forms depicting him with the lunar crescent carrying the full moon on his head.”14 Set – god of evil and darkness, son of Hathor and Horus, killer of Osiris

u  u  u Development of visual metaphoric language As Biggers’s murals began to reveal evidence of African objects, and knowledge of ancient mythologies, his visual vocabulary expanded. He eventually constructed a framework of metaphoric images as complex as the quilts that underlay his murals. Biographer Alvia Wardlaw and museum director Barry Gaither in the catalog for Biggers’s 1995–1997 retrospective, View from the Upper Room, discussed his oftused terms, cosmic principles, and sacred geometry. 15 Wardlaw reported that in his “comprehensive collection of maternity figures from Africa, Biggers ultimately found in the black woman/mother a symbol of cosmic energy, traditional knowledge and creative power.” Further, she noted that the ancient African civilizations of Egypt, Benin, and the Dogon had created a “sacred geometry” which brought order to the universe. Gaither, in the same text, referred to “sacred geometry” as “knowledge of the ancient meaning of mathematical measures … generative energy of the universe and its inseparability from all creative and imaginative endeavors.” Symbols of Biggers’s Southern heritage: Objects Animals Home, Earth Washtub birds railroad tracks rub board turtle shotgun house iron cook pot dog front porch below the horizon quilt, quilt patterns bare feet bib overalls anvil

Cosmos light darkness

Biggers’s mother took in laundry and made quilts, washing clothes in large iron pots over open outdoor fires. His father, a man of many talents, cobbled shoes using an anvil—shoes were a rare luxury. Home was the segregated community “on the other side of the tracks” where as a child he always felt safe. Biggers selected and combined these objects to signify a range of related meanings: for example, the open iron kettle might symbolize the cleansing power of water or it may be understood as the representation of a woman’s womb and new life. 68  u

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Symbols of African heritage derived from Egyptian/Nubian mythology: Objects Animals Earth//Home Cosmos Golden stool Fish Ancestors Day and night Calabash-gourd Hippopotamus King and Queen Sun and moon Ceremonial comb Crocodile Great mother Stars Turtle-Tortoise Primal water Hare-Rabbit Tree Serpent eating tail, eternity Ananse, the Spider Elephant Bird (Sankofa ) Lion These entities were derived from Biggers’s studies of ancient African/Egyptian mythology. Sometimes there was a specific meaning from antiquity and at other times, Biggers assigned a particular interpretation. For example, the turtle may symbolize endurance but also the sun or moon. Throughout these pages we’ve seen a variety of animal and natural forms used in African sculpture. In the next chapters you will see John Biggers integrate these figures with the artifacts of his own rural southern reality in a series of extraordinary murals.

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Chapter 5 INTEGRATING PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE: 1974–1983

u  u  u Houston, Texas How does one introduce the positive African American image? One has to like oneself— one can reject the old images, but without a new image, one is lost, in chaos. — John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. During a nearly decade-long hiatus from mural painting, John Biggers continued to draw, paint, teach, and build the art department at Texas Southern University. Most significantly, he continued his artistic struggle to integrate African, European, and Regionalist influences into his own visual language. Throughout his career, one of Biggers’s goals had been to create heroic visual images—archetypes—that would provide a sense of identification for people of African descent. (fig. 5.1) Biggers noted that his mentor at Hampton Institute, Viktor Lowenfeld, had studied with psychologist Carl Jung, and had infused his teaching with Jungian archetypal concepts. (In a primer of Jungian Psychology, an archetype is defined as “an original model after which other things are patterned, such as birth ... hero … earth mother … trees, the sun, the moon … Archetypes are universal.” 1) Biggers believed that his unique archetypes could have a positive effect on the self-concept

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Fig. 5.1 Family Unity, 1974–1978. Detail, three women

integrating past, present, future: 1974–1983

of African Americans. “My concern was how to create an archetype for people who didn’t have one of their own, but hated what they did have.”2 This view, as relevant today as it was in the years of segregation, is echoed by author Cornel West: “[A] major contemporary strategy for holding that nihilistic threat at bay is a direct attack on the sense of worthlessness and self-loathing in black America.”3 It became apparent to Biggers that if his art were to speak to his chosen audience, his work would have to change. For Biggers, as for many artists, the process of change was pure agony. His struggle culminated in the creation of the mural Family Unity, which he began in 1974 and finally finished four years later. Biggers says of the work: “Family Unity was the turning point in my work. It was the hardest mural I’d ever done. I had a literal physical illness trying to change my work to incorporate the meaning of Africa in my life.” 4 In a state of nervous exhaustion, trying to handle the problems of the art department while working on the mural and producing a book on the art department, Biggers drank too much, lost weight, suffered problems with his eyes and other disorders related to his diabetes, and was eventually hospitalized. Out of my frustrations over the years, I had become a weekend alcoholic. Over and over I dreamt of myself in a coffin. The worst argument Hazel and I ever had been over what kind of a coffin I should be buried in. I wanted a tree trunk hollowed out. She did not. Finally one morning, I awoke hungry, knew that I had solved my problem. I asked for hamburgers, ate and went home. My illness was a result of changing myself. When I realized that I had finally changed, I came out of it. I stopped drinking, smoking and honky-tonking and went back to work on the wall. After that I became more peaceful and more accepting because I knew that my struggle was over. My confidence came back after Family Unity was finished. I knew that I could dematerialize form as I thought I should. I said that I’ve got to do it better, till I could satisfy myself. Hazel and my love of art kept me going.5 Biggers consciously broke away from the European pictorial-realist conventions of his early work and the influences of his mentors over the next decade. As he began to incorporate African influences into his work, it became more abstract, geometric, stylized, and symbolic. Dematerializing form, or breaking apart the images, using shallow space rather than pictorial, were descriptions sometimes used to explain the art of the early twentieth-century Cubists, such as Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. John Biggers too sought the dematerialization of form. Using textiles and quilts as references, Biggers developed quilt-like geometric patterns that later became a unifying element in his work. His drawing Migration, which he worked on from 1957–1988, depicts this stylistic transition. (fig. 5.2) The left side of the drawing is rounded and smooth, but on the far right side, the work becomes more geometric and strongly patterned, with harder-edged forms. And although storytelling remained at the heart of Biggers’s work, his narration became less linear and more circular, as in African fables. African art may at first seem remote to viewers more accustomed to Europeaninfluenced art, yet there are universal thematic connections. The apparent differences can be understood as contrasts in form—geometric patterning, simplification   u  71

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or exaggeration of shape, symbolic uses of animal shapes—rather than content. As the previous chapter described, John Biggers began to collect African sculpture while in Africa, and gradually acquired a remarkable collection. Placing shelves for these pieces throughout their home and studio, Hazel and John Biggers lived with their African art each day: works of clay, wood, ivory, and metal. Thus placed, Biggers daily studied, read, and contemplated each piece until its meaning or purpose became clear to him. According to Biggers, in order to read traditional African art, one must first recognize the language of its symbols. The husband and wife pair, facing each other, is often represented as twins (equal partners). The family unit extends to past generations, as well as to future family members. The stages of existence form major themes: birth, life and death. Death masks symbolize the triumph of life over death. Motherhood is regarded as the ultimate mystery, the life force. (fig. 5.3) The African creation tale depicts the moon as female, the sun as male, and other heavenly bodies as children. Certain animals signify key concepts: for example, the snake may represent eternity with its

Fig. 5.2 Migration, 1957–1988. Conté crayon. Private collection

Fig. 5.3 Family. Preliminary drawing for Family Unity

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tail in its mouth; or immortality in the shedding of its skin; or water in the perpetual motion of its body. As Biggers began to utilize African art symbolically, the familiar objects from his childhood also began to take on greater meaning—hence the development of the mother figure from the wash pot and the rub board, and the father figure from the anvil. By incorporating these images into his work, Biggers emphasized rural Southern roots, traditionally understood as the American Negro. The Regionalist approach had lost favor due, in part, from a failure to understand the connection between these Southern roots and contemporary black artists. A common perception was that the roots of black art emerged from Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the ’30s, following the great migration of African Americans from the South to the cities of the North, and should be urban in nature. But while a greater number of African American artists were living in urban settings by the 1970s, the South still claimed the hearts of many city dwellers. Some family members had remained in the South during migration, and there was always travel “back home.” As Biggers worked on Family Unity and his next two murals, Quilting Party and Cristia V. Adair, he began to achieve a synthesis in his language, incorporating the influences of his African ancestry and his Southern heritage.

Family Unity

The painting of this wall became my meaning, my religious expression. It was what kept me going, though I once threw up my hands and walked away. I could see the painters in the Lascaux caves and Pompeii struggling like this, but I kept asking myself, “How could a boy from the North Carolina farmland do it? What can turn the light on, turn it into some tradition?” These things kept me working. I asked if it was possible to really create, to innovate, to express a religious spirit. I said, “Can I take a tradition into which I was born, and mix it with the heritage I have learned, and make it mine?”6 In the late 1960s, when plans were made for the construction of a new student center at Texas Southern, the university students demanded a John Biggers mural as a centerpiece. There was architectural and administrative support for the project and Biggers was consulted as to wall construction and surface preparation. Because of the length of the mural (sixty feet) and the nature of the building process, the concrete wall was constructed to allow for the expansion and settling common in the Houston area. (fig. 5.4) Today, Family Unity (fig. 5.5) still dominates the bustling student center at Texas Southern, yet it balances the large open space. When the artist and his guest paid a visit, students were gathered at tables, laughing and talking. “Hi ya Doc,” said one with affection, extending a hand toward Professor Biggers. The mural is located on a long, narrow wall in the main passageway leading to the cafeteria. Two ramps at the base define the lower edge of the mural. Unfortunately, the ramps provide the only access to the room that functions as cafeteria and informal auditorium. Heavy student usage has taken its toll on the wall, and the risk of further damage by heavy equipment, such as pianos, food carts, and sound equipment is always present.   u  73

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Fig. 5.4 Artist at work

Fig. 5.5 Family Unity, 1974–1978. Casein and acrylic on prepared plaster. 180 x 720 in. Student Life Center, Texas Southern University

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Fig. 5.6 Preliminary drawing for Family Unity

A complex and richly symbolic work, Family Unity was by far the most ambitious of Biggers’s murals to this point, both in theme and scale. It documents the artist’s arduous journey to a change of aesthetic form: “Unlike my other murals, this was never conceived as a whole, but progressed from drawing to drawing as the images came (fig. 5.6). I had trouble trying to compose on the wall, but I felt that was what I needed to do.”7 In the past, Biggers had always painted his murals after completing a series of carefully prepared scale drawings, rendered in black and white. He found it extremely difficult to change his working method, no matter how determined he was to do so. I was bruised, like Jacob wrestling with the angels, while doing this. Over a period of several years, I tore up drawing after drawing, started over again and again, but nothing was right. Finally I did some ten-foot drawings, and felt that I was learning something. I rushed over, put that drawing on the wall, and left it there for a long time. Gradually, piece-by-piece, I worked out the rest of the images in a compositional structure directly on the wall … but with great difficulty.8 Seldom does one see in a single work an artist’s stylistic evolution from linear realism to geometric abstraction—or, as Biggers terms it, “dematerialization of form.” At the far left of Family Unity, the images are rendered in Biggers’s familiar naturalistic style; in the center, the figures are sculpturally geometric, the distilled essence of forms. At far right, for compositional balance, Biggers returns to more linear naturalistic forms while retaining the simplified, stylized figural motif. As   u  75

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Picasso did in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the artist incorporated into these powerful forms references from his own collection of African art and from African art he had seen in museum exhibitions. Images in the mural are no longer earthbound, but ascend skyward—suggesting perhaps, that the Houston-based NASA lunar missions that had reached their peak at that time, might have influenced the artist. Despite its dizzying complexity and grand scale, Family Unity has just three primary themes, reassembled and repeated with great invention and imagination. These three themes, to appear in endless variety in Biggers’s later works, were developed from drawings: “The far left image [see fig. 5.1], my first on the wall, came out of a drawing I was working on for a show. That was The Upper Room. (You know, I had to do lithographs and drawings—I sure couldn’t send in a whole wall.) I wanted to honor those marvelous women, our mothers and grandmothers, who had carried us through life by the sweat of their own physical labor and love. The second was the Metamorphosis [see fig. 01.1] series, which was about men and women, creation, birth and regeneration. The third was the family unit [see fig. 5.3]: the ancestors, our elders, and the descendants, our children, along with the initial pair.” 9 The three strong women at the far left of Family Unity bear the weight of home and family on their shoulders. Within the shotgun house are the supper table and birthing bed, sustaining the family. One of the women carries a ladder on her back, holding two children, that evolves into a rocket-like form. Biggers faced the three women inward, away from the viewer. “I wanted to get away from the ‘Hollywood’ frontal view; where people look as though they are posing for a camera. To accomplish this, I turned the figures inward so that the focus is on the strong body rather than facial characteristics.”10 To the right of the house are an anvil, wash pot and rub board—the first introduction of Biggers’s metaphors for mother and father, recalling his father’s work as a cobbler and his mother’s as a laundress. “I keep these things in my studio today, along with a quilt my mother made.”11 A tree beside the house supports a swing in which the spirits of the elders rest. In the sky above are representations of heavenly bodies signifying, for Biggers, the forces of creation. At the center of the mural is a remarkable image, referred to variously by Biggers as the morning star, the creation moment, and the human mind receiving knowledge of the past. To the immediate left and right of this image is the metaphoric family unit. Three generations are represented here as twins within twins, symmetrically balanced by another twin unit, another family. The center form is the morning star. The theme represents the biological birth as well as the birth of ideas. The huge skull represents the human mind. There are four Buddha-like figures in the womb, with the light of knowledge shining from the womb. The African masks suggest spirits coming from above. The masks come in to talk to the brain about creation, which is rising out of the water, as life emerges from the watery deep. The spirit of the ancestral pair is at the center. According to legend, God made eight people in twins, not just two. An African figurine, a child’s drawing and a cross form suggested the child with arms outstretched, and the family group is seen from both front and back, as if it were a sculptural form.12

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The far right sections of Family Unity include two forms: the serpent tree and the family grouping. The serpent tree is an African image symbolizing water, birth, and creation—the great mother. The transparent quilt represents the maternal American quilt form; at the same time, it is also the skin that the serpent has shed. The eye is a part of the serpent.13 The tree itself offers a place of protection from the burning sun. Biggers noted that in Africa, great trees are sometimes opened to bury the dead. The rural countryside reappears at the far right, with the geometrically abstract farm animals, church, and barn. The family figures, however, are now abstract geometric shapes. The figure of the child with outstretched arms seems to symbolize hope, openness, acceptance, and forgiveness. The entire mural rests on a base that suggests a gigantic ship floating in water. A sinuous form suggesting a serpent emphasizes the flowing water pattern at the very bottom. In Family Unity, a remarkable tour de force, John Biggers had begun to develop a metaphoric language that integrated black Americans’ rural Southern roots with their ancestral homeland across the ocean. In the process, he changed himself, his working methods and his artistic style. He had surely succeeded in originating his own unique form of aesthetic expression.

Quilting Party Quilting Party (fig. 5.7) is based on my remembrance of my mother and grandmother stitching a quilt. They would take our old clothing and transform it into these beautifully made quilts … And that is what I try to do with my work—take our past lives and try to weave it into something new. — John Biggers quoted by Dan Huntley, “Artist John Biggers Looks Homeward for Inspiration” In the early 1950s, Susan McAshan, the Houston art patron who had been influential in John Biggers coming to Texas Southern, had proposed to the Houston city council that John Biggers and his colleague Carroll Simms create a mural and sculpture for the city. The city council rejected the idea. McAshan again made the proposal to the city council in the late ’70s, and this time the city commissioned a Biggers mural and a Simms sculpture for the Houston Music Hall. Quilting Party was created for the main lobby of the Music Hall. “Susan and Maurice McAshan donated the mural to the city of Houston. They have done so much for the art department at Texas Southern.”14 The mood of Quilting Party is one of celebration and great joy. Like a party, it is filled with people and activity; one can almost hear the sounds of the music. As Biggers discussed this mural, he compared the pulsating beat of gospel music and jazz to the visual effect he was after in the work. He spoke of his early love of gospel music: “On Saturday and Sunday, music was our recreation. Every Sunday morning a radio program called Wings Over Jordan came on at 10:30. The whole family loved that music, so we’d sit listening until the very last minute, and then rush off to church. We were always late.”15

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Fig. 5.7 Quilting Party, 1980–1981. Acrylic on commercially gessoed canvas. 84 x 252 in. Houston Music Hall

Fig. 5.8 Quilting Party in progress. Detail, balaphon Fig. 5.9 Dog Star. Drawing by the artist. Private collection

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Fig. 5.10 Dog Star, artist’s sculpture collection

During his visit to Africa, Biggers had opportunities to hear and see a variety of musical instruments. He was particularly interested in the balaphon, an African xylophone. “Balaphons have different forms in different regions. The gourd is a part of the instrument. The basic keyboard (varying lengths of a resonant wood) has attached long straight gourds, while the curved ones have very rounded gourd forms. Each one has a different sound. I did get to bang on them, but couldn’t make music, as musicians do. The sound of B. B. King on the guitar is like the sound of the balaphon.”16 In this intense and exuberant mural composition, balaphons form sky-borne bridges that link earthly celebrations with the heavens (fig. 5.8)—suggesting the power of music to transport the spirit, truly “wings over Jordan.” The centerpiece of the mural is a large circular form that Biggers calls the morning star (fig. 5.9). “The queen of heaven is the morning star. She is seen from the back, facing inwards so that we understand her as a sculptural form. Her plaited hair forms ears, as the dogstar. She is the guardian, like the great tree of life, with the serpent in it. This star is a reference point in the heaven for travelers. I have many drawings of her from an African piece that I own.” (figs. 5.10, 5.11) Biggers continued: Fig. 5.11 Quilting Party in progress. Detail, evening star

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“To the far right is the evening star, with grandma, grandpa and grandchildren. To the immediate right are the three kings, African tribal chiefs. To the far left is a young couple with a child, and on the immediate right, three Marys with looms making a quilt pattern. Field laborers, hunched over, are at work under the balaphon.”17 The festive figures situated on the rich brown earth—the kings with their large umbrellas, the dancing women—are derived from Ananse, John Biggers’s 1962 book of drawings from Africa. The pecking hens and the flying crows are reminiscent of the rural farmyard in Family Unity, and also suggest upward movement. Creeping onto the scene is a new creature, the turtle. In the legend of the tortoise and the hare, a story both African and American, the slower steadier tortoise wins the race against the faster, more erratic hare. Biggers, however, had begun to invest his own meanings into this humble creature. “The turtle, in some African stories, represents the sun, the source of all energy. It also reminds us of living waters: ponds, lakes and oceans, the source of life itself.” 18 Although the colors of Quilting Party are still earth tones—black, umber, and sienna, accented with bright golds, creams, and yellows—the mood is more that of a carnival at night. The composition of the mural is symmetrical, with color and light placed to direct the eye to the triple focal points of the morning star, evening star, and the family unit. Here, Biggers began to depart from the guidelines of Viktor Lowenfeld and Diego Rivera. Although there is still a requisite flatness to the spatial imagery, the work takes on an aerial perspective, as though the viewers were no longer earthbound. Biggers’s linear regularity had given way to the swirling feel of motion.

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Fig. 5.12 The artist at work

integrating past, present, future: 1974–1983

Underlying the entire work is a new structural element. The quilt pattern has become a grid, with images woven in that serve to unify the complex mural. The quilt with the star pattern in the far right corner has the distinctive look of an early American quilt, while the triangular motif elsewhere is common throughout Africa on textiles, carvings, and metal work. In later murals, John Biggers will begin with a quilt pattern and build upon that structure. Quilting Party is the first of Biggers’s murals to be painted entirely with acrylic paint on a commercially prepared gessoed canvas (fig. 5.12).19 Using thin water and acrylic washes, Biggers achieved a luminous transparency with the acrylic paint that is difficult to distinguish from oil glazing. I was beginning to experiment with oil overglazes in my easel paintings, but I liked the matte quality of the acrylic and water washes for the mural. I never did like that polymer medium. I liked water. When I finished the painting, I mixed a tiny bit of umber color into flat damar varnish, and overpainted the whole canvas with that mixture. That toned it down and gave a unity that brought everything together.20 In 1983, John Biggers was named a recipient of the Creativity Award sponsored by the Texas Arts Alliance and the Texas Commission on the Arts. He was cited “for his accomplishments as one of America’s major black artists and specifically for the completion in 1981 of the major mural for the Houston Music Hall, the Quilting Party.”21

Christia V. Adair

The Mexican muralist Diego Rivera believed that the placement of a mural should, where possible, help to relate the content of the work to the exterior world. 22 Christia V. Adair (fig. 5.13) offered Biggers his first opportunity to put Rivera’s idea into practice.

Fig. 5.13 Christia V. Adair, 1983. Acrylic on prepared plaster panels. 72 x 384 in. Christia V. Adair Park, Harris County, Texas

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Fig. 5. 14 John Biggers presenting preliminary studies to Mrs. Adair (seated)

Fig. 5. 15 The artist at work

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In 1983, the commissioners of Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, asked the artist to create a mural honoring Christia V. Adair, one of Houston’s most important civil rights leaders. The mural was to be located in the new Christia V. Adair Park just south of the city. Biggers would have control over the design, location, and directional orientation of the building that would house the mural, as well as the mural itself. Biggers selected an African tribal design, the Dogon house, as an inspiration for the octagonal park pavilion housing Christia V. Adair. Dogon houses are laid out in a special pattern corresponding to the tribe’s cosmogony; the structure and location of the houses have spiritual and symbolic significance. The pavilion in Adair Park may be entered from the west, north, or east. The effect is that of entering a small temple in a woodland setting. The Christia V. Adair mural fills the south end of the pavilion, much like an altar screen. It is shaped as a gently curved, freestanding wall, with two end panels set at 90-degree angles to the main portion of the mural wall. These panels are called East Gate and West Gate, corresponding to their directional orientation. The scale of the work is well suited to its site. Biggers’s initial excitement about the project soon turned to frustration as he struggled to reconcile Christia Adair’s wishes with his own ideas for the mural. As he recalled: “I walked through Mrs. Adair’s neighborhood a number of times, went to her house, trying to get a feel for her. I drew her, photographed her and listened to her life story, but her face never held any meaning for me. I had really lost interest in portraiture since Family Unity. I should have left the whole thing abstract, like the end gates.” 23 When he presented her with the preliminary studies (fig. 5.14) she was displeased. “She fussed that I was making her look ‘ugly.’ Her friends would say, ‘Now, Mrs. Adair, why are you being so naughty? He’s trying to honor you.’ I should have just done my research and said, ‘Now it’s mine to do—you can see it when it’s finished.’ That’s when I realized I’d done the wrong thing. You shouldn’t ever do art you don’t feel right about. I was always yielding to her wishes about this mural. Christia took over and I lost control of the plastic values.”24 As with Family Unity and Quilting Party, in Christia V. Adair Biggers again broke away from his earlier working method of transferring a scale drawing to the wall. Instead, he painted the composition directly on the wall surface of prepared plaster panels. (fig. 5.15) The completed mural depicts the whole story of Mrs. Adair’s life, rather than only her civil rights activities: her birth, parents, childhood memories, the godparents who made her education possible, her career in music, her marriage, and her devotion to the church. In the mural, Biggers’s dematerialized iconography battles for dominance against the linear realism of his earlier murals. The foreground of the curved wall is dominated by the representational depictions of Adair’s life. Although the colors of the mural—black, umber, sienna, and gray—seem appropriate for the woodsy setting of the building, some of the images carry a distinctly urban feel that is somewhat disconcerting. “I was trying to show how she moved from a warm, rural atmosphere into a mechanized society,” Biggers explained. 25   u  83

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Fig. 5. 16 Detail, East gate

Fig. 5.17 Detail, West gate

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At the far left is a well, introducing the water theme, together with a wagon wheel studded with cook pots. Next to this configuration is the male-female family unit that Biggers created by assembling seemingly unrelated images from his developing iconography; together, the shotgun roof, rub board, anvil and quilt-patterned moon became the maternal ancestor. Viewed closely, each element is clearly identifiable, yet at a distance, the elements are transformed into a new whole. The railroad tracks are placed horizontally here, rather than diagonally; the camel and three kings on the tracks were based on Adair’s childhood nativity figures, but were also a reference to Africa. Over at the far left, under the floating assemblage of ancestor figures, a mule becomes a rabbit, and a beetle becomes a ball of dough, alluding to the creation story. These forms suggest African masks and sculptures. The family unit on one panel and the star configuration on the other dominate the East and West gates of the mural. (fig. 5.16, 5.17) We have seen similar images in Family Unity and Quilting Party. In retrospect, Biggers was disappointed with this mural, but recognized its value to his later works. “This is the worst composition I’ve ever done, but it was an important mural because of the images it gave birth to. I got the ‘shotguns’ from that, and a way of handling flat space that allowed me to create the illusion of depth, and yet keep the flatness of the wall. In the painting, I went too far and lost something. I was happiest when doing the end gates, my star foundation.” 26 Especially noteworthy, as Biggers indicated, is the introduction of the triangleshaped roofs of the shotgun house, suggesting quilt patterns, integrated with the waiting women on the porches. This metaphoric icon pays homage to the maternal figure. The repeated image recalls the sculpted figures inset on the outer walls of the great cathedrals and the caryatids of the Greek Erectheum. Biggers acknowledged the importance of the medieval images when he was asked by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to identify the works in the museum’s collection that had most influenced him: he immediately selected a small Gothic altarpiece reminiscent of the image of a woman standing on a shotgun porch. Christia V. Adair, dedicated on June 12, 1983, was the last mural Biggers completed while teaching and chairing the art department at Texas Southern University. Although he had successfully balanced a career as an artist with teaching and administrative responsibilities, after thirty-four years Biggers was ready to devote all his time to his art.

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CHAPTER 6 MATURE YEARS: 1983–1993

Now I want to paint murals and draw … I want to be an artist. I’ve had thirtyfour years of apprenticeship and I’m in love with art—with the spiritual aspirations of people, of African Americans. My job is now to reach the universal through the black art experience. — Quoted in Thad Martin, “John Biggers: Artist Who Influenced a Generation”

u  u  u Houston, 1983–1989 After his early retirement from Texas Southern University in 1983, John Biggers’s production was astounding. In addition to his painting and drawings, he participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions and traveled to Europe, South America, and Africa. In the years between 1987 and 1992, he completed two murals in Texas and four major murals: two at Winston-Salem State University in

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Fig. 6.1 Song of the Drinking Gourds, 1987

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Fig. 6.2 Song of the Drinking Gourds, 1987. Exterior-quality acrylic on prepared plaster over concrete. 360 x 480 in. Tom Bass Regional Park Craft House, Harris County, Texas

North Carolina and two at his alma mater, Hampton University in Virginia. In all of his work, he continued to develop universal symbols that transcended regional and ethnic boundaries, affirming the common humanity of all people. This may be the enduring legacy of John Biggers’s art.

Song of the Drinking Gourds

Song of the Drinking Gourds (fig. 6.1) is another outdoor mural, painted on the main exterior wall of the Senior Citizen Craft House in Tom Bass Regional Park outside of Houston. The building, designed by James Marshall, is set on a grassy knoll so that the mural can easily be seen from many points in the park. It has the effect of a large quilt hanging in the open air.1 Tom Bass was a Harris County commissioner who brought a sense of humanism to politics in the county. The park was named in his honor, a sign of the high regard people had for him. It was Mr. Bass who had suggested me earlier for the Adair mural. I’d always hoped to find an architect that I could work with, because I knew that’s how you get to the essence. I had pledged to do no more murals, but when I saw that pure, clean space waiting for me, I knew I had to do it. I liked the architect and his building. He used this building as a way of saying what his beliefs were about architecture. As always, finding sufficient funding for the project was a problem, so I ended up doing it for about half of what I should have charged for a project of that size. In Africa I would have painted a mural for nothing, just to paint on those African clay walls. The setting and the building and the wall filled me with thoughts of Mexico and the murals of Rivera. I would get out there at daybreak to begin work. At that hour, the deer would sometimes pass through to look. The earlier I could get down there, the longer time to paint before the heat of the day came, so I worked from 6 a.m. to noon every day.   u  87

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This was the largest mural I’d painted so far, but I finished it in the shortest time. Teachers brought their classes to the park to watch me paint. It was truly a joyful experience.2 Coming upon this mural, surrounded by a lush green meadow, the viewer is taken by the light and airy quality of the palette. (fig. 6.2) In contrast to so many of Biggers’s earlier murals, the colors of the warm orange earth and the blue sky mix on this wall without blackened tones. Biggers said: “I was afraid that I’d make it too dark—you know my palette—I go all the way to black.”3 The result is a freshness of color unlike anything seen in the artist’s previous work. Texture and pattern predominate in Song of the Drinking Gourds. It almost appears that Biggers painted directly onto the concrete block surface—so successfully did he incorporate the building texture into the smooth prepared plaster wall. The architect gave me about twelve to fifteen of the adobe-colored concrete blocks that were used in the construction of the building. I kept them with me at all times when I was designing, so that those bricks became an integral part of the mural design. I kept the brick texture visually for internal consistency, although the wall was actually a smooth plaster surface. (fig. 6.3) Every day I had to make a commitment to the brick. I felt as though I was dealing with mother earth. I couldn’t wait to get out there each day.4 Creating an underlying quilt-like pattern, Biggers divided the entire wall into tiny triangular shapes, just as a quilt maker might when working with scraps of fabric, making every piece count. Bold shapes emerge from this painted quilt. At the center is a large blackbird hovering over a balaphon with gourds fastened below for resonance and tone. These are the only shapes not fragmented by the quilt pattern, and thus they form the natural focal point of the mural.

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Fig. 6.3 Artist at work on platform

mature years: 1983–1993

Fig. 6.4 Detail, ascending blackbird with gourds

To the left and the right, balanced symmetrically, are window-like forms that evolve first into quilt patterns and finally into a figure composed of an anvil and a wash pot. To the far left and far right are figures of a king atop a lion and a queen atop an elephant. There are connecting threads between the king and queen, and veiled forms within the window frames. Biggers described the symbolic images used in the mural: “The king’s stool is the back of the lion, whose tail has turned into a serpent. He is fire—the sun— and above his head is the crown. The queen’s stool is the elephant, the symbol of water. She is the moon, with a red bird above her and a pot on her head. The cool color carries from left to right, connecting the king and queen. At the center is the blackbird, and there are birds, ducks and crows flying upwards to the sun. (fig. 6.4) The windows are the doorways to the soul, the interior person. Within the breast are birds, like Magritte, symbolizing the spirit. The ascending angel figures are composed of the wash pot and rub board, as the female, and the anvil as the male. Behind the windows, gourd vines grow.” 5 What is the tale told on this orange wall, standing against the blue sky? John Biggers said that he learned from his African friends that art does not need to be explained—that when one is in the mood to understand, one will. Perhaps if the wall is approached in the right way, it will reveal itself. Consider the gourd: it is a container of a most beautiful shape. Makers of pottery vessels over the centuries have appropriated gourd shapes as their own. And for thousands of years, the dried and hollowed gourd has been used as a water   u  89

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dipper. In Biggers’s imagery, water is a symbol of the life force, and the gourd a metaphor for the soul. 6 It may be then, that the Song of the Drinking Gourds reflects John Biggers’s belief in the universality of the human spirit and the unique qualities of the individual soul.

East Texas Patchwork

In creating East Texas Patchwork (fig. 6.5), a visually mysterious work, John Biggers began to address his most ambitious thematic challenge: portraying the cycle of life and the nature of the universe in his distinctive metaphoric imagery. The title is descriptive, as Biggers noted: “Life itself is a patchwork of each person’s experiences and perceptions.”7 Biggers was commissioned to paint the mural for a new wing of the public library in Paris, Texas. The library houses a collection of works by artist Jerry Bywaters, one of the “Texas Nine” Regionalists active in the 1930s and ’40s. Bywaters, a native of Texas, had been director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and was one of Biggers’s earliest supporters. Because of the Bywaters connection, Biggers agreed to do the work for less than a third of the commission he might have received. (The project was partially supported by a grant that the Lamar County Arts Development Council had secured from the Texas Commission on the Arts, matched by donations from the local community.) As with Song of the Drinking Gourds, Biggers found great pleasure in creating East Texas Patchwork:

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Fig. 6.5 East Texas Patchwork, preliminary pencil drawing

mature years: 1983–1993

Fig. 6.6 East Texas Patchwork, 1987. Acrylic on linen canvas, earth-toned damar varnish overglazes. Paris Public Library, Paris, Texas

This was a joy to do. I worked on it at the same time as the Bass Park mural. My ideas evolved in my head as I was working on that large wall. I presented a small sketch of those ideas to the Paris group. The ideas expanded as I worked on it. I couldn’t work out the concepts on that little sketch. I wanted to continue to work out my ideas in paint as Viktor [Lowenfeld] had urged me to do so many years ago. I decided I could do that directly on the canvas.8 When the mural was delivered to the Paris library for installation, the commissioning group expressed concern because the final work was so different from the original sketch. (fig. 6.6) But in their approval of the mural, the group must have come to understand what Viktor Lowenfeld had once said to Charles White: “An artist must let the painting lead the way. What will be left to do, Charlie, if your mural is nothing but a copy of your drawing?”9 East Texas Patchwork is divided into three segments, with an underlying quilt pattern used as a unifying element. Each of the three segments contains a figure of indeterminate gender, facing inward, within a diamond-shaped frame. These figures present a puzzling image: each has broad shoulders, large arms and hands, and a straight body, suggesting maleness; yet they wear the patterned garments, headcloths, and earrings of the female. Each figure’s outstretched arms are in a different position, communicating gestures of greeting and invitation. Over the heads of the three figures are draped kettles in progressive stages of ascension from left to right. The shotgun houses from Christia V. Adair appear once again in this mural. The houses are contained within the diamond-shaped frames: three in the left frame, six in the middle, and ten in the right. The numbers are symbolic: the geometric progression from three to six to ten appears to be a metaphor for the growth of all organisms receiving the spark of life. On either side of the houses in each frame are large iron pots. On the left, the pots simmer over a glowing flame, covered by a rub board. The center pot simmers uncovered. On the right, a washtub, rub board, draped pot and anvil suggest a human figure.   u  91

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At the base of the mural is a dark watery image suggesting a murky pond, containing turtles, fish, and tadpoles. The three female figures emerge from the darkness of this pond into the light. The light areas at the top of the mural are marked by a pattern of the moon in different phases. East Texas Patchwork marks an important step in the development of Biggers’s metaphoric language, as the artist explained: “This is the dance of creation, as we move from darkness into light. Women are the light bringers, manipulating hot water, washpots—forces of creation, both male and female. The figures are facing the shrines, which they need to create to produce light. They have released winged creatures from their bandanas, symbolizing the spirit of life. The diamond shape is symbolic of the female, open as a receiving space. The solidity and straightness of the figures suggest maleness, rather than the curved sensuousness of the female. Together form is created, as with the bowl and handle of a spoon.”10 The colors in East Texas Patchwork are predominantly sienna and umber with details in blue, red, and green. Biggers created spatial depth through the skillful use of value gradation, rather than through the use of multiple perspectives, scale contrast, or placement. In that way he maintained the sense of the flat wall and the ascending form. The unveiling ceremony for East Texas Patchwork was held on November 14, 1987. On that day, the Paris, Texas, newspaper published an article that further elucidated Biggers’s metaphoric imagery: Houses symbolize “community.” The kettle is frequently used by Biggers to symbolize “transformation.” In the kettle, raw food is transformed into cooked, dirty clothes are transformed into clean, and symbolically, knowledge is transformed into growth. The combination of the kettles and tubs … depicts the various phases of transformation, closed pots simmering representing the gestation of the spirit or the accumulation of knowledge … the uncovered pot showing the phase of the initial emergence of knowledge … The draped kettle/ anvil/tub/ washboard signifies the full strength of the emerged spirit and mature growth.11 East Texas Patchwork is one of Biggers’s smallest murals, but it contains one of his most ambitious themes: in it, he has offered his symbolic interpretations of the moment of conception. From the tadpoles swimming in the murky pond, suggesting the instant when sperm meets egg, to the women with their kettles, Biggers has praised with elegant imagery the wonder and mystery of the gift of life.

u  u  u Gastonia, North Carolina, 1990–1993 While John Biggers was working on his outdoor murals in Houston—Christia V. Adair and Song of the Drinking Gourds—he began to feel a need to leave the city for a setting closer to nature. His recurring memories of childhood in Gastonia, together with family concerns, led him to consider a move back to the countryside of North Carolina. Early in 1989, Biggers traveled to his home state to participate in a retrospective exhibition of his work by Delta Fine Arts, Inc. of Winston-Salem. (fig. 6.7) After that visit, he and Hazel began to plan a permanent return to Gastonia. 92  u

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Fig. 6.7 John and nephew James Biggers in front of James’s 1994 mural North Carolina Belongs to Children, Raleigh, N.C

Because of friends and professional obligations in Houston, however, the couple continued to travel between their country and city homes. During that visit to North Carolina, Biggers received commissions to create murals for Winston-Salem State University and Hampton University. To meet these challenges during his “retirement” years, Biggers turned to his nephew, James Biggers (son of his brother James) for assistance. Biggers invited James to work with him as a partner on the mural projects. The younger Biggers, a working artist, was the art cocoordinator for the Gaston County public school system in North Carolina. His style was more geometric and abstract than his uncle’s, so together the two had to develop a mutually satisfying method of designing and working on the murals. We flew to Raleigh one weekend, pushed tables together in a motel room, and worked out our ideas. The problem was to orient his abstract drawings to my realism, but it was a natural merger. James’s work has always been more celestial than mine, so he began to draw from the heavens downward. Mine always has been rooted in earth and water, so worked from the bottom upwards. I think of growth as seeds bursting while James thinks of stars bursting. When we got together, we slid our drawings together, much like the way my first mural at Hampton had been put together so many years ago. Between 1990 and 1992, we finished four major murals: two in WinstonSalem and the other two at Hampton. I worked on both projects at the same time, spending three days at one site and four at the other, traveling four hours between. Circumstances caused me to have to work that way, but I kept thinking that throughout history other artists had worked simultaneously on several major works, so I should be able to do it too. But at the end, I was exhausted. I finally learned that while you’re involved in one thing, don’t take on another.12

Origins and Ascension

Biggers’s commission for Winston-Salem State University called for him to create two vertically oriented, 30-by-15-foot murals for the atrium of the university’s C.G. O’Kelley Library. The three-story atrium is defined by a free-standing staircase; the two murals, Origins (fig.6.8) and Ascension (fig. 6.9) are located on either side of the staircase.   u  93

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To support the project, Delta Fine Arts secured partial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. The project was expected to cost about $70,000, including the Biggerses’ commission.13 Delta gave no specifics to the artist as to subject matter for the mural project, but according to spokesperson Annette Scippio, “We wanted it to be representative of all that he feels important in terms of symbols of African American heritage and of North Carolina and America. We also thought it should have universality, so anyone seeing it can feel that it speaks to them.” 14 The technical challenges of the project were immense. As the murals were to be painted on a three-story surface, the matter of proper scaffolding assumed great importance, and it was not without some serious complications. For his work on the Bass Park mural in Houston, Biggers had

Fig. 6.9 Ascension, 1990–1992. Acrylic on canvas stretched over plaster panels. 360 x 180 in. Winston-Salem State University

Fig. 6.8 Origins, 1990–1992. Acrylic on canvas stretched over plaster panels. 360 x 180 in. Winston-Salem State University

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been provided with an excellent scaffolding unit that was secure and yet responsive to his needs, and he recommended the system to those making the arrangements at Winston-Salem. But Biggers found upon his arrival that a campus-made system had been put in place. It took several months and the collapse of the system before the matter was satisfactorily resolved so that painting could begin in earnest.15 Since both Biggers and his nephew were occupied elsewhere as well as at Winston-Salem—John with the Hampton mural and James with his job for the Gaston County schools—the team had to develop a workable painting schedule. The Biggers team painted through the weekend in Winston-Salem and on Mondays John returned to Virginia and James to Gastonia. This routine continued for a year, with the exception of several summer months when James was available more often. Because of the scale and placement of the murals, very careful preliminary planning was necessary. This was not a project that would allow for “on the wall” solutions. Biggers said at the time, “Painting a mural is a lot like building a building. We just don’t get three-dimensional. This is too big a project for spontaneity.”16 John and James worked out their composite drawing on a scale of one inch to every foot of wall space, in preparation for transfer to the wall. Biggers never used an image projection system in transferring his drawings to the wall, but rather drew a grid on the wall and transferred the drawing, square by square. To create the mural surfaces, the university arranged to have special wall panels constructed of plaster over plywood, and ordered custom-made canvas to be stretched over the prepared panels. These steps were taken to preserve the works, which were to be hung in an accessible, unprotected space in the library atrium. Like the twin steeples of a Gothic cathedral, Origins and Ascension thrust upward with a message of transcendence. Biggers wanted the university’s students, who would view the works as they entered the library, to be “inspired always to ascend, to rise above what has gone before.”17 Although created on a much grander scale, Origins was the next logical step from East Texas Patchwork, with the artist again exploring the concept of creation told by African myth. Here, Biggers dealt specifically with the creation of day and night. In the top half of the mural, a large phoenix-like form bursts forth, illuminating the darkness in pools of reflected light—much as the sunlight conquers the darkness every morning. The form suggests fluttering bird wings, unfolding petals, and ascending spirits. Its wings shelter the animals guarding the cleansing waters below. John Biggers described it as a metaphor for Wings Over Jordan, that best-loved radio program of his youth; Jim Biggers calls it the beetle-sun triumphant. Two African women in profile dominate the lower half of the mural. Each figure faces the central ascending form. These figures, nearly two stories high, represent Isis and Nephthys, principal female deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Isis (righthand figure, fig. 6. 10) is the great mother goddess associated with fertility and the sun—the day. Nephthys, mother goddess of the dead, is associated with the moon— the night. The goddesses each hold a luminous, transparent sphere.18 Streams of light flow from these orbs, suggesting that night and day will appear or disappear as the goddesses raise or lower their hands. In speaking of female figures of similar mythic proportion in traditional Western art, Biggers sighed with regret: “Oh, when the Romantic period ended, how could artists ever have given up those great figures?”19   u  95

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Fig. 6.10 Origins. Detail, Isis

Alongside the female figures are males, facing inward, and ascending and descending ladders pointing skyward. They suggest the unity of heaven and earth. “These images came from the biblical story of Jacob’s vision of heaven.”20At the center of the mural are two smaller female goddess figures. One is nearly obscured by the brilliant ascending form; the other is emerging from a cave, holding a child atop a sun-form, suggesting the emergence of the sun from the darkness of the night, the birth of day. Animal forms are at the base of Origins. Two quilt-patterned lions in profile guard the cave opening above. A large pot filled with water and swimming fish sits beneath the lions. To either side of the lions are patterned animals, an elephant and a ram, also in profile. These animals first made their appearance in the Christia V. Adair mural, and first assumed importance in Song of the Drinking Gourds. Here they represent polarities: night and day, life and death, light and darkness. An interlocking quilt structure underlies the entire mural, shimmering beneath many layers of enigmatic forms. These geometric shapes are cosmic symbols rooted in traditional African art. As noted by Winston-Salem art critic Tom Patterson: “The circles represent the sun, the planets, and the concept of wholeness and the ideal form; the squares, perfection and the earth as life’s foundation; and the triangles, physical stability and fundamental trinities such as birth, life and death.”21 96  u

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Fig. 6.11 Ascension. Detail, matriarchs before shotgun houses

Fig. 6.12 Ascension. Detail, family “feet”

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The colors are Biggers’s soft siennas, umbers, and blues, with a luminous glow that gives the appearance of deep and mysterious depths below the surface. The rich subdued colors and the repeated quilt patterning provide a unifying network for this complex mural. Biggers succeeded in blending geometrically abstract shapes with naturalistic forms in a surprising harmony that emphasizes the mural’s vertical linearity. In contrast to Origins, which draws its imagery from African mythology, Ascension looks to the African American experience. Here, the family metaphor that evolved through Family Unity, Quilting Party, and the Adair mural has now achieved heroic proportions and sparkling clarity. Biggers noted: “I was flown into Winston-Salem to meet with the president of the university and the Delta committee. I told them of my concept of the family emerging from Dante’s hell, and how we would climb the stairs, ascend towards the light and never fall. The president was very pleased and I saw many possibilities.”22 A large circular shape, intersected by three overlapping circular shapes, dominates the top half of Ascension. That form resembles an opening flower or unfolding butterfly. Bright oranges and yellows glow from this form, contrasting with the more subdued earth tones in the rest of the mural. Two of the other circles are filled with smaller, regularly placed circles; the third contains a repeated motif composed of a rub board, anvil, and upside-down washpot. This motif, first suggested in Family Unity and Quilting Party, was refined into a sophisticated symbolic image in Song of the Drinking Gourds, representing the ancestral spirits. A new image balances the circles—the ceremonial African headpiece, the comb—which seems to symbolize ascending spirits. Rows of shotgun houses form the central background of Ascension, matriarchal figures in varying headdresses standing in front of each shotgun. (fig. 6.11) This metaphoric image was first introduced in the Christia V. Adair mural and following that, celebrated woman as creator in East Texas Patchwork. In that mural the iconography is repeated, with ascending doves on the roof peaks signifying eternal hope. Above the shotgun houses is a row of “angels.” A faint image of male figures appears behind the matriarchs. Silvery threads in the hands of the women connect them to the family below. The family dominates the bottom half of the mural. The family is composed of seven members: grandparents, parents, and grandchildren. The seven figures face inward, their heads raised upwards. (Numerical relationships are significant in some African mythologies, and in West Africa, the number seven recalls the sevenfires ceremony celebrating each year’s harvest, as well as the seven polar stars that provided astrological reference points for the earliest African calendar. Notably, seven wash pots surround the seven-member family.23) The focal point of the family group is the child in the center, whose arms extend outward as in a child’s drawing. (fig. 6.12) The child, with feet unfettered, represents hope for the future. The family members support that child. The other children, a boy and a girl, hover above iron pots and rub boards; they carry the weight of the past with them and do not ascend freely. All rise above the tracks. The two adult figures extend open hands in gestures of peace and welcome. One female holds a white dove; the other, a turtle. The male child holds what

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appears to be an olive branch. The family’s garments are patterned so as to integrate with the overall quilt pattern of the work. One of the male figures wears a hat in the red, green, and black colors of African nationalism. The soles of all feet are bare, giving the impression that the figures are rising above, rather than resting on the railroad tracks at the base of the mural. The railroad tracks are an important metaphor, which Biggers has used since his earliest works to symbolize, variously, the Industrial Revolution, the Underground Railroad, and the barrier that the African American crossed to live in an integrated society. Repeatedly, John Biggers challenged himself to create the illusion of space in his murals, while simultaneously retaining the flat quality of the wall. In Ascension and Origins, it appears that the artist met this goal. The figures rise upward over the symbols of the past: railroad tracks, washpots, rub boards, and shotgun houses. There is the sense that the matriarchal figures, though linked to the past, are pulling the family upward. Biggers manipulated space according to Rivera’s principles, but did so in his unique way. As in all of Biggers’s murals since Family Unity, the spatial and formal properties of the wall surface are now distinctively those of the artist. Biggers also achieved mastery in his painting technique with the shimmering luminosity of these two murals. According to his principles, “The paint has to be transparent enough to reveal layers of images, to feel the depths of meaning and understanding … Some things are on the surface. Others you have to investigate.”24 In the summer of 1995, John Biggers returned to Winston-Salem to participate in a film documentary sponsored by the North Carolina Historical Commission. He excitedly recalled his reaction on seeing his work again: When I climbed up to the third floor in that open stairwell, I was really afraid. I’d never had the opportunity to look down into the mural before. It was like looking down into the Grand Canyon. The many transparent layers of paint and the forms have taken on their own life. It seemed like magic to me. What I’d painted on a flat wall now had four or five layers of depth. I was looking down into great honey-colored liquid depths with one form several feet behind another, almost like sculpture underwater. And I didn’t paint it from that point of view. I realized that the passage of time makes a lot of difference in how things look. 25 With the completion of Origins and Ascension, Biggers surely entered the ranks of America’s master muralists. Using all the power of the past, he called forth what some called the most amazing images to be seen in public art in this country. As art critic Tom Patterson wrote in the Winston-Salem Journal: “They are astonishing works that are at the same time aesthetically rich and immensely educational in mythology and African American history … They will no doubt hold up as two of this prolific artist’s most important and lasting contributions to American art and culture.”26

House of the Turtle and Tree House W. E. B. DuBois’s book, The Souls of Black Folk, was the first book I bought at Hampton as a student. It has taken me fifty years to give visual expression to his words. They are a part of these murals. — John Biggers, telephone interview, 1993   u  99

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When Hampton University began planning a new library in the late 1980s, President William R. Harvey expressed his desire that the new building be more than a research facility— that it serve as a source of inspiration for generations of students to come. 27 To achieve that aim, the institution turned to one of its most distinguished alumni, John Biggers. President Harvey asked Biggers to come to the Hampton campus as an artistin-residence to create a pair of murals for the foyer of the new William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library. Biggers began work on the murals in 1990. That year, the university also honored him with an honorary doctorate of humane letters. For the Hampton murals, House of the Turtle and Tree House (figs. 6.13, 6.14), Biggers continued the partnership with his nephew James, as the pair worked simultaneously on these and the Winston-Salem murals. As they had done previously, the two men decided on theme and scale, working separately at first. They developed their ideas in hundreds of preliminary sketches, assembled into a final composite drawing. Biggers expressed great pleasure in being able to work so closely with his nephew: “I think my work has become more universal because of his contribution.” 28 As in Winston-Salem, the artist encountered a number of problems as he began work on the Hampton murals. First was locating a workspace large enough to accommodate the height of the murals. The only facility on campus with a twenty-foot ceiling was not available. By a twist of fate, Biggers ended up working in the building where he had taken art classes as a student fifty years earlier. Unfortunately, its ceiling was only eighteen feet high. Biggers solved that problem by dividing the canvas into two parts. Time constraints created additional problems, as Biggers recalled: “Because of the scaffolding problems with the Winston-Salem murals, I was behind in my work time for beginning the Hampton murals. I had hoped for a postponement at Hampton, but that was not feasible. I’d say to myself, ‘Why can’t you do this, John? After all you’re over sixty years old. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing.”29 The working procedure of the Biggers team was the same for both murals. Once the preliminary drawing was approved, John began transferring the drawing to a chalk grid on the canvases, while James tested paint colors on a small-scale painting of the large mural. About House of the Turtle, Biggers said: We wanted a checkerboard structure of orange, burnt sienna and bluegreen, suggesting fire and water. Like my mother’s quilt, the grid was a structure for the mural, the engineering part of it. The transfer technique had now become integral to the work itself. After the squares, and after drawing, we turned the canvases sideways, painting on our knees. That’s when my knee first started going. Michelangelo never got the crook out of his neck, and he lived till he was eighty-four. 30

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Fig. 6.13 House of the Turtle, 1990–1992. Acrylic on canvas. 240 x 120 in. William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library, Hampton University

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Fig. 6.14 Tree House, 1990–1992. Acrylic on canvas. 240 x 120 in. William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library, Hampton University

Finally, a year and a half after they were begun, the Hampton murals were ready for installation, and the formal dedication ceremony took place on January 26, 1992. (The entire creative endeavor was recorded for a video documentary commissioned by Hampton University Museum.31) House of the Turtle was hung to the left and Tree House to the right in the entrance foyer of the new Harvey Library. “The same company that installed the Winston-Salem murals did this job. The museum staff pitched in. That was some parade to the new library! Engineers did a wonderful job. There was a natural frame for the murals, and they were a perfect fit. We didn’t need to use a plaster backing to protect the murals because they were hung so high.”32 In House of the Turtle, John Biggers addressed the birth and growth of an institution, just as he had addressed the creation and transformation of the human spirit in earlier murals. The mural has been described as “an ever-changing dance of life, from child to adult, into wisdom and harmony with the universe.” 33 The dominant figures in the mural are the young male and female at the top center (fig. 6.15) These students of African heritage face each other, standing proudly atop a central column that symbolizes Hampton’s origins. In their hands they hold a lamp and a flower, symbols of growth leading to illumination— the goal of a Hampton education. Between the pair is the glowing geometric shape first introduced in the Quilting Party that Biggers called the queen of heaven, the morning star. It has come to represent growth, ascension, and transformation. Vertical lines descend from this shape to the feet of the two figures, which are in a position reminiscent of an Egyptian wall painting. In the background is the pitched-roof shape associated with the shotgun icon; over it hangs transparent veiling in a quilt pattern. Within that veiling is a complex pattern of animals and other African motifs. Abstract birds in silhouette are at the top, to the right and left of the figures. A composite of the historical buildings on the Hampton University campus is at the mural center (clockwise from top right): Turner Hall, Bemis Hall, VirginiaCleveland Hall, Armstrong-Slater Hall, Mansion House (under the arches of the chapel), Memorial Chapel (in the arms of the seated figure behind the other buildings), Mansion House repeated, Academy Building, Ogden Hall, and Huntington Building. All of these buildings were built by Hampton student craftsmen. They felled the timbers, made and laid the bricks. I think [the university administrators] were giving the students an education in architecture as they built these buildings. There are examples of Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Oriental—all in marvelous proportions. The chapel is Romanesque—a magnificent, smaller, perfectly proportioned replica of the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi in Italy. All of the buildings are red brick, made out of the red clay of the earth here. They were marvelous buildings, just marvelous. They should be a part of all black education.34   u  101

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Fig. 6.15 House of the Turtle. Detail, pair, top panel

Fig. 6.16 Tree House. Detail, Great Mother tree

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The bottom third of the mural tells of Hampton’s origins as a school for the children of freed slaves and, soon afterward in 1878, for Native Americans. At right angles to the base of the mural are two large-scale figures, seated and facing inward. The figure on the left is a young black woman; the one on the right, a Native American. Each woman has a large ceremonial comb placed directly over her head. This type of comb can be heavy, and is embellished with intricate carvings. Because of the size and weight of the comb, elaborate hair arrangements support it, as depicted here. Both of the female figures carry children on their backs. Both children appear ready to fly away in the inevitable growth from childhood to adulthood. The young women face a motif related to their ancestral heritage that includes a shotgun house, a tepee, and plantation houses. A pool of water with lily pads is at the center between the two female figures. A column of vertical lines rises from the pond, leading to a form suggestive of the African ceremonial comb. A female figure sits on a large turtle, legs folded in Buddha-like fashion, behind that form. She holds Hampton’s Memorial Chapel in her arms. (fig. 6.16) “She is the church mother … a metaphor for consistency and endurance. The turtle rises from the pool of water, the source of all life.”35 This woman represents the ancestral earth-mother figures in African and Native American legend. Yet by holding the chapel in her arms, she creates a link to Hampton’s founder, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, and his Christian missionary roots. Taken together, these forces represent the soul of Hampton University. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois wrote of the Negro as “born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world … [that] only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation— this double-consciousness—this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others … two souls; two thoughts; two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body; whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”36 We might associate the veil in the DuBois reference above with the veil John Biggers has hung between the viewer and the inner forms of this mural. Behind the quilted veiling are references to Hampton students’ African and Native American origins, and metaphoric images referring to life’s origins. Biggers’s work serves as a reminder that it is through education of the heart and mind that we reach the authentic self, discovering the ability to sense wholeness. Why is this mural entitled House of the Turtle? The turtle, we recall, is the slow and steady creature that won the race against the clever, fast-moving hare. The turtle is a sign of constancy and endurance. And so the growth from childhood to adulthood, and from ignorance to wisdom comes not from brilliance and speed but from steadfast endurance. While House of the Turtle makes reference to the manmade structures on the Hampton University campus, natural forms define Tree House. An abstract form of the university’s Emancipation Oak provides the formal organization for the mural. This ancient oak sheltered local residents who gathered to hear the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Legend has it that the ground beneath the oak served as Hampton’s first classroom. (fig. 6.17)   u  103

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In many of his murals, Biggers used the tree and its branches as a metaphor for life—a symbol of the striving of the human spirit. In the artist’s earliest murals, tree branches served as spatial dividers; in later works, abstract branches suggested growth. In this mural, the tree is the major focus, with all the activity centered in or around the massive form. Within its branches rest a number of symbolic forms. The tree grows from a deep pool at the base of the mural, in which one can see birds, fish, and other pond creatures. The surface is defined by a transparent, horizontal pattern. Hampton University is located at the confluence of several rivers at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Here, Biggers depicted the tree rising from those waters. “We are born in water. Out of the flood comes new life; in the mural it is not a visual tree but a conceptual tree, in which we are transformed to the celestial.”37 Hampton University’s early history was a meld of three cultures: the African, the Native American, and the European Christian. Each culture has in its heritage an all-nurturing Mother figure. In Tree House, three goddess figures suggest the “great mothers”38 of the three cultures. Two of the figures kneel in the water from which the tree rises. As with the kneeling women in House of the Turtle, these figures are of African and Native American heritage. Each holds an illuminated sphere, symbolizing the sun and the moon. Within the trunk of the tree one can see, vaguely defined, a female figure with eyes peering out at the viewer. This is the third goddess, the “church mother,” suggesting Hampton’s Christian roots. Above the hidden figure is a large serpent—symbolic of eternity and perpetual movement—wrapped around the tree trunk. The serpent forms a spatial divider; sitting atop the divider is a group of people gathered in the embrace of a large maternal figure reaching out her arms in proclamation, like P. Y. Gray in The History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas. This vignette refers to the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation at Hampton. A row of spherical and winged forms crowns this scene: Biggers spoke of them as the seven planets and as a celestial choir. The choir reference is specific to the Hampton University choir, which over the years has achieved a national reputation. “The choir ‘sung up’ the performance hall,” Biggers recalled, “raising money for the building by concert performances.”39 At the center of the tree branches, nestled like a child’s tree house, is an illuminated scene in which a young woman from House of the Turtle now kneels on

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Fig. 6.17 Tree House. Detail, combs and mothers, Emancipation Oak

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a balaphon, facing the male figure who has become an elder. Holding the lamp of knowledge, he stands beside a drum, a symbol of communication. Directly behind this scene is a figure formed of a wash pot, anvil and rub board—a symbol for the maternal ancestral spirit. This figure serves as a reminder to the young student that she must remember the struggles of her parents and grandparents in the quest for knowledge. Three luminous, quilt-patterned spheres at the top of the tree trunk suggest the tree’s leafy foliage. (A connection can be drawn between these spheres and the goddesses: the Egyptian goddess of the heavens was depicted as a sphere, the moon.) As a tree grows, it reaches ever upward and outward, just as the human spirit reaches for the heavens. The birds in flight at the top of the mural suggest that ascending flight of the spirit. African ceremonial combs are placed to the left and right of the tree house. (see fig. 6.17) In Tree House, these combs assume a position of greater importance than in any of Biggers’s earlier murals. Reaching to the heavenly domes and resting in the living pool below, these combs represent, in Biggers’s metaphoric language, the physical self, the shadow and the personality. 40 In these images lies a reference to the Jungian concepts of the personality archetypes: persona, anima/animus, the shadow, and the self. Unique to Biggers’s allusion to personality theory in art is the representative use of forms drawn from actual objects of African origin from Biggers’s personal collection. The forms at the top of the left comb suggest the outside forces that have invaded Africa: the cross and the heart (Christian missions); the rifle (European colonialism); and the scimitar (Muslim expansion). At the top of the right comb, a carving of two chairs and a table in profile suggests home and the ceremonial meal. From the tips of the comb, falling to the sun and moon and the pool below, is transparent veiling, the perceptual veil to which W. E. B. DuBois so eloquently referred. House of the Turtle and Tree House are expressive statements of the heart and soul of Hampton University that reach far beyond their original parameters. They are narratives of the rising of a people whose history and heritage had been denied for hundreds of years. They tell of the unquenchable human spirit, which will aspire to the greatest heights. And they are stories of the transformation of the self, from fragmentation into wholeness, from the darkness of unawareness to the illumination of learning. When John Biggers determined that his aesthetic purpose was to visualize and communicate archetypal forms with which African Americans might closely connect, he did not know where that calling would lead him. Viewers of this pair of murals have seen the light of that striving and are richer for it. The master storyteller has created moving allegorical tales.

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CHAPTER 7 The Last Years: 1994–2001

I think we have to show the human condition and what happens to it. To me that is what art is all about—showing the spirit of man struggling above the mundane, above the material, above suffering. This is the whole story of art. — John Biggers, quoted in Felts and Moon, “An Interview with John Biggers” The years 1994 to 1997 were exciting but tiring ones for John and Hazel Biggers. Upon completion of the murals at Hampton University and WinstonSalem State University, Biggers experienced some serious health problems caused by diabetes and exhaustion. They planned to rest for a good long time in their Houston home.

Celebration of Life

In late 1993, Biggers had been approached by a group of artists from Minneapolis, Minnesota, led by Ta’Coumba Aitkin, Seitu Jones, and Patricia Phillips, who asked him to design a mural that they would paint collaboratively. The mural was to be painted on concrete sound barrier walls 16 feet high and 160 feet long alongside a major highway. Biggers was intrigued. To work with a community of artists as Diego Rivera had done long ago had always been his dream. John Biggers knew that he could not personally oversee the project but he could design a series of panels for them. He accepted the project and planned that the mural should tell the story of creation through his selected African symbols. After phone discussion and various drawings, Biggers was satisfied that his ideas were understood and accepted by the group. The seventeen artists were agreed on their common objective. Each artist was assigned and the work began. At the same time, the major retrospective of his work was prepared to open in 1995 with over 100 works, including several of his murals. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Hampton University Museum collaborated on the exhibition. View from the Upper Room was a huge success, drawing record crowds at every stop. John Biggers was asked to be available at each opening as it traveled from venue to venue from 1995 to 1997. Consequently, Hazel and John Biggers traveled regularly with a portable dialysis machine to treat his diabetes.

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Fig. 7.1 Celebration of Life, 1996. Acrylic on concrete panels. 192 x 1920 in. Former location: Minneapolis, Minnesota (mural now demolished)

After several years, the mural in Minneapolis was complete. On a cold and frosty morning, October 19, 1996, I attended the dedication of the mural wall, Celebration of Life. Hazel and John Biggers flew up from Houston for the opening ceremony, at which the mayor of Minneapolis was to speak. The dedication took place with great fanfare. (fig.7.1) Drums rolled and dancers gyrated in joy. The mayor spoke on behalf of the city. John Biggers applauded the work of the group. There was a feel of pride in the air. The wall depicted colorful symbols from African folklore selected from Biggers’s iconographic language to tell the story of creation. Perhaps not all viewers understood the metaphorical meaning of the symbols as well as did the painters, but it was clearly an exciting landmark for the whole north Minneapolis community. Biggers was so pleased with the success and spoke to the assembled crowd: “I was thrilled because a community effort paid off. If art can bring people together and make them realize their spiritual values, what a wonderful thing that is.”1 For five years, this impressive wall stood as a landmark in north Minneapolis. People drove miles out of their way to see the popular wall. However, just five months after Biggers’s death on January 25, 2001, a construction crane pulled that wall down. There were massive protests by supporters hoping to stop demolition. However city officials stated that the wall needed to come down for long-planned construction, and could not be moved without damaging the artwork. Supporters were assured that it would be replaced with new work influenced by the mural and the work of John Biggers. 2 And four years later, on June 13, 2005, the Dayton Daily News (OH) announced the selection of Bing Davis and Jon Onye Lockard to construct a new public artwork in Minneapolis that would celebrate the life and vision of John Biggers, the John Biggers Seed Project. The artists from the Celebration of Life were to work on the construction of the new work. Said Davis of Biggers: “He was one of the most inspiring people you’d ever meet. Plus, he was fun … He was a giant, but he walked on the ground.”3

Salt Marsh

As the chronicler of his murals and aware of his declining health, I thought that Celebration of Life would the last of John Biggers’s murals. It seemed to me that he was due for a good long rest. But to my surprise, one morning in the mail I received a copy of his sketch for a new mural and a brief note about his new project, Salt Marsh. He had been invited to submit a mural proposal for the University of Houston Student Life Center and had submitted a drawing. He was excited about

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the invitation because he’d never done a mural at the University of Houston and appreciated the recognition from that institution. But when he learned that an old friend, a sculptor, had been also asked to submit, he withdrew from the competition. “I got myself in a jam with the University of Houston mural. I went to the committee and said I couldn’t do it. I told them that John Scott had been a friend of mine for thirty years, has a great reputation ... and I left. A week later they called me and said they were going to do both the mural and Scott’s sculpture. I got stuck!” He chuckled. “Had no choice but to go ahead with it.” 4 A major factor in Biggers’s hesitation was his health. More frequent dialysis treatments had become necessary but he found that he could work every other day, with treatments on the alternate days. Harvey Johnson, then art professor at Texas Southern University, a fine painter himself, agreed to serve as his collaborator. (fig. 7.2) Of Johnson, Biggers said at the time, “He has read my mind. When we are working on the mural, he comes, sits right there, says, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I say that I’m thinking about what can we do over there for continuity and he says ‘Yeah, I know’ and jumps right up on that ladder and goes to work on it.”5

Fig. 7.2 Harvey Johnson and Biggers taking a break from painting at Texas Southern

Fig. 7.3 Students working on drawings for their part of the mural painting

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Fig. 7.4 John Biggers and an assistant working on the expanded mural drawing

Fig. 7.5 Salt Marsh, 1998. Acrylic on canvas. Approx. 96 x 120 in. University of Houston Student Life Center, Houston

Biggers and Johnson assembled a crew of helpers. (fig. 7.3) The artists wanted University of Houston students to feel that this was truly their mural, and so they invited interested bystanders to join the project. (fig. 7.4) A young student approached Biggers and spoke. The following conversation between Biggers and the young woman ensued: “ ‘Oh, I think it’s wonderful what you all are doing. Could I help? Could you find something for me to do?’ I answered: ‘Sure you can. You’ll have to draw a catfish.’ I said: ‘See, catfish are all along the bottom of this mural, so we’ve got to have some.’ She hesitated but gamely agreed to give it a try so I said, ‘I’ll tell you what to do. You go to a Fiesta grocery store. They have tanks of catfish there. You go there and draw them.’ And she did. Her first drawings were unskilled, but she got better and better with each drawing ... and that’s expressive learning as Viktor [Lowenfeld] taught us.”6 Eventually all the creatures in the waters were painted by students. Biggers said: “We don’t mind the difference in style, because we’re going to bring them into the feeling of the whole thing. We didn’t offer any special instruction. We just told them there must be some red reflections and some blue reflections here and there.”7 And when Salt Marsh (fig. 7.5) was dedicated on February 19, 1998, I observed that those student painters were present as honored guests, along with John Biggers and Harvey Johnson. Biggers discussed his thinking on his theme: “The University of Houston sits over the bayou. This is a central location in Houston—the railroads; the highways and the river converge here, along with the fish and alligators. It is a salt marsh that is being poisoned by industrial pollution. This is one reason why we’re doing this— to make students aware of our location here. I ask students: ‘Do you live nearby? Do you ever look in the bayou? See the fish?’ They say, ‘no.’ That’s why we wanted to do this salt marsh, the incubator for the Gulf of Mexico.”8 Although this work utilized many of Biggers’s familiar symbols and metaphors, the overall appearance differs considerably from earlier works. While the artist has been known for his somber, muted palette, this work vibrates with color

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and intensity. Biggers added rich blues to his more muted reds, greens, and grays. Some of his earlier murals were so packed with objects of symbolic meaning that the effect was almost dizzying. Though complex, this work provides visual resting places and an underlying clarity of structure. Dark values predominate in a ground of mid-tones, yet there is a pleasing interplay of light, especially the center square where children are reaching upward. Biggers frequently built his compositions on a watery baseline, and Salt Marsh gave this device a thematic focus. This work bore some relationships to his 1990–1992 mural series (see figs. 6.13, 6.14) in Hampton, Virginia, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina (see figs. 6.8, 6.9). However, Salt Marsh reflected his concern for the survival of the ecosystem. Biggers’s earlier works had been related to African American issues in some way but in this he viewed the world through a broader lens. Said Biggers: “I started with these drawings of the Buffalo nickel (figs. 7.6, 7.7) to symbolize the Native American. Now we have put in some symbols for the ancient American—symbols of their cities, the stepped pyramids in Ohio, Indiana, they were all over. The top of the pyramid is a thatched hut where the chief lived.” 9 And as for the narrative tale in Salt Marsh, Biggers smiled quietly as he explained: “Well, it’s a very simple story, the story of the race of the hare and the turtle. You see on one side, the great rabbit. And on the other, the great tortoise. The rabbit is the moon. The turtle is the sun. It is the story of their race across the sky in a great orbit in which they reveal the seasons of the year. Metamorphosis. Transformation. Ascension. That’s what it’s all about.” 10 Biggers was delighted with the response that he received from young visitors. “Johnson did a marvelous job with that. The sunflower represents the sun, the harvest of corn. (fig. 7.8) You should have seen the kids from the elementary school. They knew right off that the horned circle represented eternity.”11 Fig. 7.6 Initial working pencil drawing

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Fig. 7.7 Detail: the great mothers

Fig. 7.8 Detail: children

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112  u Fig. 7.9 Salt Marsh Completed preparatory drawing in color pencil

last years: 1994–2001

Approaching the center section, the light-filled shape composed of eight boygirl pairs, Biggers pointed to the golden serpent, (fig. 7.9) a symbol of life and hope and remarked that the serpent formed the edge of the shotgun roofs, a reference to his “Shotgun House” motif. Biggers often used water and gourds as symbols of birth in his iconography, and turtles often represented the sun and moon. Gesturing to these familiar symbols, he remarked that “The college students that look at this never know what this means. But the little children that come from the elementary school, they know. They say that those children are reaching for the wisdom of the owls and that each child has his own growing blossom. The turtle’s head is almost touching the children. When the sun goes down, the moon gives light going up. It is a cycle. This mural is a children’s story.” 12 This little child’s story tells a tale of John Biggers’s confidence that the power of living nature in polluted waterways may contain the seeds of hope for its own survival.

Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce

It was a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. The wind blew vigorously across the Texas Southern University campus. I had been invited to see John Biggers’s latest mural. This remarkable artist, at seventy-six, was a little less spry and a little more fragile than he’d been on my last visit two years earlier. He hung onto my arm as we climbed the entry stairs. At the locked entrance to the new building, the Jesse H. Jones Business and Economics Building, the campus police had to be called to open the door. The location and surroundings of this new mural suggested a difference in status in contrast to the earlier two murals given to Texas Southern University by John Biggers. (fig. 7.10) This mural had been invited into a position of honor in a new building, placed in an open sunny atrium, lush and green with plants. The predominant colors were deep rich blues and gleaming golds and yellows. Both of Texas Southern University’s other Biggers murals are landmark pieces, valued for their potent imagery and the unique references to African American heritage. Each marked a significant turning point in Biggers’ artistic development. The earlier work Web of Life (1960) (see fig. 3.4), was completed just as he returned from his first visit to Africa in the late fifties, and depicted creation as an Afrocentric event, yet with reference to classical and Romantic Western themes. The second mural (1974–1978), Family Unity (see fig. 5.5), was painted directly on the wall of the Student Life Center and bore the marks of heavy student traffic passing by. Sixty feet wide, its scale was well suited to that immense space. Family Unity introduced Biggers’s new approach, using geometric abstraction, derived from his study of African sculpture. The initial idea for Nubia was suggested by then-TSU President Priscilla Slade. She wanted to see something about the contribution of the African civilization to the history of economics. Through research, the idea of Nubia and its gold took hold of the imagination of the artist and his continuing collaborator, Harvey Johnson. Biggers described their process: “We all knew about trade, selling salt in the desert, but we didn’t know that it was Nubia that first used gold. We began to search and found that gold was first used to suggest the soul because it did not tarnish. Gold remained as that and did not enter into trade for a long time. You gave   u  113

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gold to represent your soul. It was a point of view. If the soul was gold, you have to be fair. You can’t exploit anybody.” 13 Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce was unveiled on September 22, 1999. Biggers was greatly touched by Slade’s reaction to the completed work: “Her response was remarkable. She had tears in her eyes, and they weren’t Hollywood tears either. That was very impressive.”14 In their monograph, Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa, Biggers and Johnson described their mural as an expression of the balance between cosmic principles of the universe and the creation of business and commerce. 15 Nubian gold provided the connecting thread for these themes. The colors selected for this mural, deep blues and rich warm reds, were enhanced by a gleaming gold woven throughout the painting. The effect is almost jewel-like. Nubia is similar in format to Biggers’s other murals: symmetrically organized. There is a large center section balanced by two smaller sections on either side. Each of the five sections is filled with symbols, repeated in inventive ways. On one side the mining and refining of gold is depicted. On the other the market place and temple activity are shown. The central monoliths that suggest a temple are placed on either side of a ceremonial comb topped with a gleaming face of gold. Below the temple floor are still waters that seem to teem with life. Biggers had earlier adapted the ceremonial comb as a metaphor for the soul. He pointed to the center form: “Now here in the center we have the actual comb we reproduced. It represents, we are sure, Osiris, the sun god. We have used the comb to symbolize the sun.”16 I asked about the face behind the comb’s prongs. Biggers explained: “You see the two balance scales that make up the eyes. So the birth of gold is the birth of the great black mama ... she is night. And she gives you light to see by. The moon and stars, jewelry, diamonds, all give you light. The gold collar is the sun around her neck . . . you see, all of this is to give light ... that was the joy of doing this thing ... it really was—it was a joy.”17 John Biggers’s dark eyes sparkled with that same light as he talked about Nubia. Pointing to the temple monoliths, he explained: “Now this is the queen on the left, and the king on the right. The great mother is nursing the royal children, those who will come forth, and the king, the great lion serpent, is the symbol of maleness. There is more power in the king (coiled snake) than in the queen (woman with child) but she’s the symbol of state, not him. That’s the meaning of those stools. They symbolize her, and that symbolizes the family. It is the mother and the child that is important. They called her the wife of God.”18 Gesturing to the young maidens emerging from the temple waters, Biggers smiled and remarked: “I am so proud of Harvey. He came up with the sketch for this. On the upper level, the girls are going back to the temple. It is a cycle. These figures lead to the right lower panel, as though they are entering life. In the upper right panel, they are returning to the temple, carrying animals in their arms. The women and children, they represent the true meaning of the transformation, so out of this they come, and there they go. The women are carrying boats on their heads. The boat is significant because spirits travel on the great boats.”19 Biggers pointed to the baseline pool, and drew my attention to the creature in the right foreground. His eyes twinkled as he told this story: “Here is the great

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mother, the great animal mother of the waters, and she is up there. She is the buzzard too. The animal here—the hippo—she is called Mut, the mother of the waters, the mother of life and death. She doesn’t only bless you but she’d eat you!”20 In the center pool, tiny bird and animal forms float on the surface. Biggers reminded me that these were gold weights, originally used for balance in weighing gold powder in varying amounts. Drawn from Biggers’s personal collection of gold weights, he remarked, “You know I started collecting these back in 1957 in Ghana, when I couldn’t afford anything else.”21 As noted in Chapter 4, these small figures were often associated with ancient proverbs and folklore. He pointed toward a small golden spider in the center of a circular web (see fig. 4.2). There was Ananse, the trickster spider of African folklore. In the mural, I also located the sacred ibis, the rabbit, the cow, the lion, the turtle, the double crocodile, the frog and many others—all gold weights. These little “bargains” had played a significant part in the imagery of John Biggers’s most recent mural. As we know, John Biggers had spent a lifetime collecting African art and artifacts. Through his travels, research, and personal collections, he had become a serious student of African history, legend, and art. He had developed a spiritual passion and interest in the deeper meanings surrounding the art of Africa and had shared that interest with his students, especially Harvey Johnson. That love resonated with depth and intensity in Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce. A luminescent surface gleams with an inner light, evoking a spirit of mystery and wonder. The ancient East African civilization of Nubia has been depicted through the mining, refining, forging, and forming the precious metal for the gold exchange in the marketplace. There is freshness, a sense of action and immediacy that gives dynamic life to what could have been a ponderous subject. Rich color, vibrant imagery, a glowing painterly surface—a dramatic work by a master storyteller. In their mural monographs, Biggers and Johnson listed some of the ways natural forms were used symbolically in their murals Salt Marsh (see fig. 7.5) and Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce (see fig. 7.10): Mother and child: The green earth corn mother of vegetation brought forth her harvest, birth of the (son) sun Ceremonial combs: From water (representing birth) to spirit as combs emerged from the bayous Rabbit (hare): Represents the transforming rebirth of the moon in changing cycles from new moon to full moon Turtle (tortoise): Represents the journey of the sun as it completes its cycle of the celestial and seasonal constellations Dog: Guards the gateways to the heaven Lotus flower: Symbol of the rising sun at dawn and setting sun at sundown Serpent ring of fire: Eternity – (far upper right, held by mother vulture) Gold: Divinity, the thread of stability and energy of the sun Primal waters: Matter responsible for the creation and nursing of life

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Fig. 7.10 Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce, 1999. Acrylic on canvas. Approx. 42 x 96 in. Jesse H. Jones Business and Economics Building, Texas Southern University

Conclusion

Each mural that John Biggers completed provided him an opportunity to further develop his story of the African American in the context of the universe. Themes of the pre-Africa, pre-1960 murals dealt with the life and history of ordinary and extraordinary persons of the segregated world into which John Biggers was born. As the reader has learned, travel to Africa in 1957 dramatically changed his focus and direction, most notably his years-long development of the massive 60-foot mural, Family Unity 1974–1978 [fig.5.4]. This work first combined two themes intertwining the realities of the African American experience and the universality of African heritage drawn from pre-historical Egyptian/Nubian mythology. By the time that he had completed The Song of the Drinking Gourds in 1987 [fig. 6.1], Biggers had developed his visualization of a cosmos derived from antiquity: the mythological origins of the heavens, sun, moon, and stars. Both of the Winston-Salem murals, 1990–1992, Origins and Ascension, dealt with the place of the African American family in the universe. Origins [fig. 6.8] considered the origins of night and day, the birth of the human in ancient Africa, and the necessary elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Ascension [fig. 6.9] told the story of the ascending struggle of the African American family rising from the depths of despair and the degradation of slavery, overcoming hardship and rising to experience transformation into wholeness. The Hampton murals, 1990–1992 [fig. 6.13, 6.14] dealt more specifically with the accomplishments of the African American culture in the immediate past and present: the value of education in the struggle, the founding and development of Hampton University, and the development of upward movement towards freedom in the life of African American. The subsequent mural, Salt Marsh, 1998 [fig.7.5] was directed towards an integration of the family and nature in the universe. In the words of Biggers and Johnson, Salt Marsh expressed “the spiritual transformations, relationships between the family, nature and the cosmic environment.”1 Through the ancient tale of the race between the tortoise and the hare, the artists suggested that the polluted areas of the earth could be healed through the changing of the seasons, the daily transformation and renewal of the sun and the moon, and the care of the greeneducated young. Ancient Nubia was previously mentioned as one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Its history has always been intermingled with that of Egypt. Nubia has been the source of such writers as Joyce Haynes, Yosef Ben Jochannan, and Robert Steven Bianchi. Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce, 1999 [fig.7.10] is “about the historical and symbolic expressions of the spiritual balancing scale between the   u  117

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human family and the cosmic principles of our universe. Nubian gold … expresses a permanence of the soul of the people … through the children, our posterity.”2 John Biggers’s murals, in his words, have indeed visualized “the triumph of the human spirit over the mundane, the material.”3 Through a process that he called birth, rebirth and ascension, life does move forward. These are concepts found in ancient Egyptian cosmology. As his health began to decline, John Biggers emphasized the dimension of ascension: the overcoming, the rising above life’s struggle, towards a new, more just, reality. Although John Biggers’s charismatic personality has lent such authenticity to this Egyptian/Nubian cosmos, occasionally it became difficult to separate myth from reality. It sometimes appeared to others that the struggles of contemporary Africa were of little interest to the artist so engrossed in the study of the past. In some ways, the myth became his reality. This world has changed dramatically since John Biggers’s childhood. The planet is now so interconnected by Internet communication, finance, and trade that the election of an American president in 2008 with one grandmother in Kenya and another in Hawaii seemed almost unremarkable. Perhaps younger artists will build upon John Biggers’s tapestry of history and future hopes, weaving their own stories from the rich heritage of their diverse backgrounds, as did the spider Ananse with its golden web. [fig. 4.2] Artists who have persevered into their seventies and eighties, continuing to produce works of great feeling and intensity, have been universally admired. Painters Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Georgia O’Keeffe, potters Beatrice Wood and Shoji Hamada all come to mind. John Biggers’ talent and love of art, his creative drive, and dogged determination kept him going until his death on January 25, 2001. In his last decade, despite very serious impediments to his health, his work grew in strength, clarity, and meaning. With each new work he demonstrated his power to delight the eye, stimulate the imagination and bring wonder to the spirit. He will be missed.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are so many individuals to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for contributions in the production of this book. Had it not been for the initial strong encouragement of Dr. D. Jack Davis, Professor of Art and Director of the North Texas Institute for Educators in the Visual Arts, and the perceptive conversations of Dr. William McCarter, Emeritus Professor of Art, University of North Texas, this would likely have remained just a “bee in my bonnet.” I have so enjoyed their professional interest and personal friendship over these many years. Above all, I have such admiration and appreciation for the interest and support that Hazel Biggers has given to this lengthy enterprise. We’ve all grown a little older together. And without the assembled collection of photographs generously shared, the richness of this text would be lacking. I am especially grateful to Harvey Johnson who responded so promptly to my call for help by digging through his own slides for images of John Biggers’s African sculptures. Nancy Walkup, Editor, SchoolArts Magazine, generously lent her photos recording our visit to the Biggers’s home in Houston. The photos of Earlie Hudnall, Jr. have filled out the collection as have John Biggers’s own slides. Hudnall’s work has documented many of Biggers’s murals. Additional mural photos were by Ron Barker and Sherri Fisher Staples. Special thanks go to Mary Altman, Public Arts Administrator, Minneapolis, Minnesota, who located the photographers of the collaborative mural, Celebration of Life: Petronella Ytsma, Kristen Cheronis, Seitu Jones, Tacoumba Aiken, and Roderic Southall. The Dallas Museum of Art permitted the use of the acua’ba figure pictured in their recent publication, The Arts of Africa (2009) by Roslyn Adele Walker. Thank you all. And finally, I wish to thank the UNT Press team that is really responsible for the production of this book: especially Dr. Karen DeVinney, Managing Editor of the University of North Texas Press. She caught my mistakes, smoothed out my words, and brought her office to my home—it has been a pleasure to work with Dr. DeVinney and the entire production staff. And last, but certainly not least, I’d like to gratefully thank the Houston Endowment Foundation for the fiscal support that transformed Walls That Speak into a reality. Olive Jensen Theisen, PhD. Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Northeast Texas Community College

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Fig. 8.1 Dr. William McCarter, Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas, Dr. John Biggers, Professor Emeritus, Texas Southern University, and the author 1997





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Notes

Notes to Introduction

1. Bernard Rosenberg and Norris Fliegel, The Vanguard Artist: Portrait and Self Portrait (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), 281. 2. John Biggers, conversation with the author, Mt. Pleasant, Texas, October 27, 1989. 3. Francis V. O’Connor, “Influence of Diego Rivera on the Art of the United States During the 1930s and After,” Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: The Detroit Institute of Arts in association with W.W. Norton and Co., 1986), 171–73. 4. Rachel Davis, Americans at Work: Realism Between the World Wars, exhibition catalog (Houston: Transco Energy Company, 1985), 15. 5. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 6. Cedric Dover, American Negro Art (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1960), 40, 91–96. 7. O’Connor, Diego Rivera, 178. 8. Dover, American Negro Art, 40. 9. Alan W. Barnett, Community Murals: The People’s Art (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1984), 24. 10. Ibid. 11. John Biggers, conversation with the author, November 19, 1993. 12. William Rubin, ed., “Primitivsm” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exhibition catalog (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984). 13. Nathan Irwin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 79–80. 14. David Driskell, Two Centuries of Black American Art, exhibition catalog (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art with Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 62. 15. Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 80. 16. Robert V. Rozelle, Alvia J. Wardlaw, and Maureen A. McKenna, eds. Black Art-Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art, exhibition catalog (Dallas: The Dallas Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1989). 17. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993.

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Notes to Chapter 1

1. John Biggers, conversation with author, Mt. Pleasant, Texas, October 27, 1989. 2. Rebecca Felts and Marvin Moon, “Artists Series: An Interview with John Biggers,” Texas Trends in Art Education (Fall 1983): 15. 3. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 4. Ibid. 5. Felts and Moon, “An Interview with John Biggers,” 11. 6. Ibid. 7. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Gastonia, November 3, 1993. 8. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 9. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 10. Rebecca Ritter, Five Decades: John Biggers and the Hampton Art Tradition, exhibition catalog (Hampton, VA: Hampton University Museum, 1990), 9–10. 11. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, July 5–8, 1993. 12. Ritter, Five Decades, 15–17. 13. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Felts and Moon, “An Interview with John Biggers,” 15. 17. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 18. Two Murals by John T. Biggers, program (Chicago: UTSE-CIO Center, 1946) non-paginated. 19. Ritter, Five Decades, 19. 20. Anne Felder, “History of the Negro Church,” term paper, New York University, 1956. 21. Two Murals by John T. Biggers. 22. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 23. Ibid. 24. Viktor Lowenfeld, Creative and Mental Growth, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1952), 301–2. 25. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 26. Ritter, Five Decades. 27. John Biggers, telephone interview, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 3, 1993. 28. John Biggers, interview on tape, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Lowenfeld, Creative and Mental Growth, 304. 35. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, August 14, 1995. 36. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Gastonia, N.C., Aug. 14, 1995; interview on tape, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 37. Letter to author from Mary Lou Hultgren, Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Va., Jan. 28, 1994. Hultgren graciously provided exact dimensions for Baptism. 124  u

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38. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 39. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 40. Stephen Carpenter, telephone interview with author, University City, PA, July 29, 1995. Carpenter graciously provided exact dimensions for the two murals and side panels. He noted that some slight damage is apparent on both Day of the Harvest and Night of the Poor. 41. John Biggers, interview on tape, Houston, Nov. 12, 1993. 42. John Biggers, Day of the Harvest panel commentary, 9 1/2 X 71 inches. 43. Carlos Pellicer and Raphael Carillo Azpetia, Mural Painting of the Mexican Revolution (Mexico: Fondo Editorial de la Plastica Mexicana, 1985), 296–97. 44. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. Notes to Chapter 2

1. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 18, 1993. 2. John Biggers and Carroll Simms, with John Edward Weems, Black Art in Houston: The Texas Southern Experience (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978), 15. 3. Ibid., 16. 4. Margaret Just Butcher, The Negro in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 233. 5. Biggers, et al., Black Art in Houston, 15. 6. Martin Dreyer, “Houston Turns to Murals,” Houston Chronicle Rotogravure Magazine, Dec. 13, 1953, p. 14. 7. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 19, 1993. 8. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 9. John Biggers, group discussion, Dallas Museum of Art, Jan. 21, 1990. Biggers’s drawing, Sleeping Boy, won the Neiman-Marcus Purchase Prize at the fifth annual Southwest Exhibition of Prints and Drawings in 1952, sponsored by the Dallas Print Society at the Dallas Museum of Art (then called the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts). Cradle won the Purchase Prize, given by the Houston Friends of Art for the 25th annual celebration of the Texas Creative Arts Festival, held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 10. Black Art in Houston, 60. 11. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, July 5–8, 1993. 12. Black Art in Houston, 60. 13. Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 156–207. 14. Mary Scholz Guedon, Regionalist Art: Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1982), 3–4. 15. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, July 5–8, 1993. 16. Ibid. 17. Leann Davis Alspaugh, “The Storyteller: The Work of Dr. John Biggers,” Museum and Arts, Houston (November 1992), 20–25; Invitation to the Biggers Reception, Blue Triangle YWCA, Nov. 15, 1992. 18. John Biggers, “The Negro Woman in American Life and Education: A Mural Presentation,” Ed.D dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1954, p. 13.   u  125

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19. Ibid. 20. Biggers, “The Negro Woman,” p. 55. 21. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 22. Verlyn Klinkenberg, “Thomas Hart Benton’s Appetite for America,” Smithsonian (April 1989), 82–101; John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 23. Lillian Harvey Jackson, executive director, Blue Triangle Branch, YWCA, to John Biggers, April 22, 1953. 24. “Contribution of the Negro Woman to American Life and Education,” Dedication program, Blue Triangle Branch YWCA, April 22, 1953. 25. Biggers, “The Negro Woman,” 63. 26. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Aug. 14, 1995. 27. Viktor Lowenfeld to Pres. R. O’Hara Lanier, Jan. 26, 1954 ( John Biggers’s personal copy). 28. “Celebrating the Biggers Gift,” Blue Triangle Branch, YWCA, Nov. 15, 1992. 29. John Biggers, interview with author, Mt. Pleasant, TX, Oct. 27, 1989. 30. Black Art in Houston, 63–65. 31. Olive Jensen Theisen, “Rediscovering Forgotten Images: A Mural by Dr. John Biggers,” Texas Trends in Art Education (Fall 1989), 4–7. 32. Kathy Zwerneman, “John Biggers: A Master at His Craft,” Mt. Pleasant (Tx.) Daily Tribune, Nov. 1, 1989. 33. Ibid. 34. John Biggers, mural re-dedication ceremony, Paul Pewitt ISD (OmahaNaples, Tx.), Oct. 27, 1989. 35. Theisen, “Rediscovering Forgotten Images,” 4-7. 36. Ibid. 37. Black Art in Houston, 65. 38. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 39. Rachel Davis, Americans at Work: Realism Between the World Wars, exhibition catalog (Houston: Transco Energy Company, 1985), 15. Notes to Chapter 3

1. John Biggers, Ananse: The Web of Life in Africa (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 4. 2. Ibid. 28. 3. John Biggers and Carroll Simms, with John Edward Weems, Black Art in Houston: The Texas Southern University Experience (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978), 66. 4. Mimi Crossley, “Keeping Alive a Humanistic Tradition,” Houston Post, July 25, 1976. 5. Black Art in Houston, 75. 6. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 7. Black Art in Houston, 75. 8. Founders Society, Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: The Detroit Institute of Arts in association with W.W. Norton and Co., 1986), 65, 252–56.

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9. H. W. Janson, History of Art, vol. 2 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991), 500. 10. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 11. Ibid. 12. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 13. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 14. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, July 29, 1993. 15. Black Art in Houston, 76. 16. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 17. Ibid. 18. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 19. Black Art in Houston, 76. 20. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. Notes to Chapter 4

1. http://www.marshall.edu/akanart/abramobe.html 2. John Biggers and Harvey Johnson, Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa, unpublished monograph, January, 2000. 3. John Biggers, conversation with the author, March 12, 2000. 4. Ibid. 5. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/clemons/RMC/exhib/93.ray.aa/Exhibition.html 6. John Biggers, Harvey Johnson, Salt Marsh. Unpublished monograph, Houston,Texas, 2000. Non-paginated. 7. John Biggers, Mural rededication videotape, Paul Pewitt ISD, October 29, 1989. 8. Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter (1930; rept. New York: Macmillan Books, 1969), 136. 9. “Nubian Monarchy Called Oldest,” New York Times, March 1, 1979, p. 1, A 16. 10. http://google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.homestead.com/w… eDOlaW96L8nA29A=&ol=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image&cd=1 11. “Nubia, not Egypt May Have Been First True African Civilization,” New York Times, September 15, 1997, Vol. 150. No. 11. 12. British Museum,http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/gods/explore/main.html, http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/egypt/index.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pantheon 13. http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/goddesses.php?god_id=00026 14. Charles S. Finch, Echoes of the Old Darkland (NP: Khebti Press, 1992), 81. 15. Alvia Wardlaw, The Art of John Biggers, View from the Upper Room (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995), 58, 63, 95.

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Notes to Chapter 5

1. Calvin S. Hall and Vernon J. Nordby, A Primer of Jungian Psychology (New York: New American Library, 1973), 38–53. In Jungian psychology, specific archetypes that shape personality and behavior include the persona (the mask or façade one exhibits publicly), anima or animus (the inward face of the personality); shadow (a human being’s basic animal instinctual nature); and self (the organizing principle of personality). 2. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 3. Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 17. 4. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 8. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 9. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 10. Ibid. 11. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 12. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5-8, 1993. 13. Ibid. 14. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 15. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Gastonia, N.C., Nov. 18, 1993. 16. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 29, 1993. 17. Ibid. 18. John Biggers, telephone interview with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 19. Biggers started Family Unity in casein paint, but later switched to acrylic paint. 20. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 4, 1995. 21. “TSU Art Head…Honored,” Houston Chronicle, April 28, 1983. 22. Francis V. O’Connor, “The Influence of Diego Rivera on the Art of the United States During the 1930s and After” in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: The Detroit Institute of Arts in association with W. W. Norton and Co.), 173. 23. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 24. Ibid. 25. Rebecca N. Felts and Marvin Moon, “Artists Series: An Interview with John Biggers,” Texas Trends in Art Education (Fall 1983), 10, 14. 26. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. Notes to Chapter 6

1. Song of the Drinking Gourds is an outdoor mural, unprotected from the elements. Although Biggers used exterior-quality acrylic paint, the color is weakening, and the mural is in need of professional restoration. 2. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 128  u

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6. Some scholars have also noted the connection of the gourd as a water dipper and the Big Dipper, the constellation of stars that served as a navigational marker for slaves escaping to the North via the Underground Railroad. 7. “Mural Will Be in New Library Wing,” The Paris (Texas) News, Nov. 14, 1987. 8. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. “Mural,” The Paris (Texas) News. 12. Stories of Illumination and Growth: John Biggers’s Hampton Murals. Videotape produced for Hampton University Museum by Cinebar Production, Newport News, Va., 1992; John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 13. Genie Carr, “Synthesis: Artist Is Painting Murals at Winston-Salem State,” Winston-Salem Journal, July 22, 1990. 14. Ibid. 15. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 16. “Synthesis,” Winston-Salem Journal. 17. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 18. Tom Patterson, “Rich Homage: Biggers Murals Are Astonishing Works,” Winston-Salem Journal, July 22, 1991. 19. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 20. “Synthesis,” Winston-Salem Journal. 21. “Rich Homage,” Winston-Salem Journal. 22. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 23. “Rich Homage,” Winston-Salem Journal. 24. “Synthesis,” Winston-Salem Journal. 25. John Biggers telephone interview with author, Gastonia, July 4, 1995. 26. “Rich Homage,” Winston-Salem Journal. 27. Stories of Illumination, videotape, 1992. 28. Ibid. 29. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 30. Ibid. 31. Stories of Illumination, videotape, 1992. 32. John Biggers, interview on tape, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 33. Stories of Illumination, videotape, 1992. 34. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Houston, July 5–8, 1993. 35. Stories of Illumination, videotape, 1992. 36. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1973), 3. 37. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, July 5–8, 1993. 38. In The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday Books, 1988), 5, Joseph Campbell writes: “Myths of the great Goddess teach compassion for all living beings. There you come to appreciate the real sanctity of the earth itself, because it is the body of the Goddess … A mother is really a more immediate parent than the father because one is born of the mother … We talk of

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Mother Earth … in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere.” 39. Stories of Illumination, videotape, 1992. 40. John Biggers, interview on tape with author, Nov. 15, 1992. Notes to Chapter 7

1. Quoted in Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sunday, October 20, 1996. 2. Mike Kasuba, “Tears for a Lost Landmark,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 1, 2002, Section B. 3. Pam Dillon, “Davis to lead public arts project in Minneapolis to honor muralist,” Dayton [Ohio] Daily News, June 13, 2005, Local Section, p. 81. 4. John Biggers, conversation with the author, February 19–20, 1998. 5. John Biggers, conversation with the author, February 19–20, 1998. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. John Biggers, conversation with the author, March 12, 2000. 14. Ibid. 15. John Biggers and Harvey Johnson, Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa, unpublished monograph, January 2000. 16. John Biggers, conversation with the author, March 12, 2000. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. Notes to Conclusion

1. Biggers and Johnson, Salt Marsh. 2. Biggers and Johnson, Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa. 3. Felts and Moon, “Artist Series: An Interview with John Biggers,” Texas Trends in Art Education (Fall 1983), 10.

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John Biggers’s Personal Selected Bibliography

Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Trans. Mercer Cook. New York: Lawrence Cook and Co., 1974. Finch, Charles S. III, Echoes of the Old Darkland: Themes from the African Eden. Decatur, GA: Khenti Press, 1992. Garrard, Timothy F. Gold of Africa: Jewellry and Ornaments from Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal. Munich: Prestel, 1989. Haynes, Joyce L. Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1992. Hintze, Fritz, et al. Civilizations of the Old Sudan-Kermu Kush Christian Nubia. Amsterdam: Np, 1968. Johnson, James Weldon, and Rosamund Johnson. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York:The Viking Press, 1925. Meyerowitz, Eva L. The Sacred State of Akan. London: Faber and Faber, 1995. Ross, Doran H. Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity. Hong Kong: South Seas International Press, 1998. Sagay, Esi. African Hairstyles: Styles of Yesterday and Today. Oxford: Heinemann International, 1983. Somé, Malidoma Patrice. Ritual Power, Healing and Community. Oregon: Swan Raven and Company, 1993. Somé, M. P. Of Water and the Spirit Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994. Tompkins, Peter. The Magic of Obelisks. New York: Harper and Row, 1981. Van Sertima, Ivan, ed. Egypt, Child of Africa. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994. Walker, Roslyn Adele. The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Author’s insert. West, John Anthony. Serpent in the Sky, the High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Wilkinson, Richard. Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd. 1992. Williams, Chancellor. The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. Illinois: Third World Press, 1974.

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index Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.

A abstraction, geometric, 66, 71, 75 abstractionism, 66 Adair, Christia V., 81, 82, 83 Africa (drawing), 5 African art, 62–69; influence on Biggers, 4–7, 51, 62–69, 71–73, 75– 76, 85, 96, 98, 106, 107, 113, 115; influence on Modernism, 4, 6, 71 African culture and legends, 62–69; creation, 52, 57, 59, 61, 67, 72, 76, 85, 92, 95, 106, 107, 113; influence on Biggers, 6, 16–17, 51–53, 61, 80, 83, 98, 107, 115 African musical instruments, 77–78 Akua’ba (doll figure), 64 Alston, Charles, 3 Americans at Work: Realism Between the World Wars, 48 Anamabu, Ghana, 61 Ananse, trickster character, 48, 52, 55, 63, 69, 115 Ananse: The Web of Life in Africa, 1, 51, 52, 54, 61, 80 anvil, symbolism of, 68, 73, 76, 85, 88–89, 91, 92, 98, 105 archetypes, 67, 70–71, 105, 128n1 architecture, relationship with murals, 2, 8, 17, 23, 30, 87 Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 10 Art Digest, 15 Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room, 58, 68, 106 Art News, 15 Ascension, 93–95, 97, 98–99, 117 Atum, 67

B balaphon, 78, 79, 88, 105 baptism, symbolism of, 21, 22, 23, 30, 32, 59 Baptism, 22–23, 27, 59 Barthé, Richmond, 3, 6, 47 Bass, Tom, 87 Benin (Dahomey), 51, 68 ben Jochannan, Yosef, 67 Benton, Thomas Hart, 3, 25, 31, 36 Biggers, Cora (mother), 8, 9, 10, 68, 76, 77 Biggers, Hazel (wife), 29, 41, 48, 51, 64, 71, 92, 106 Biggers, James (nephew), 93, 93–95, 100 Biggers, Jim (brother), 8, 9, 93 Biggers, Joe (brother), 8, 9 Biggers, John Thomas: birth and childhood, 8–9; at Hampton Institute/University, 9–17; in Navy, 13–14, 17–18; at Pennsylvania State University, 19–26; and music, 11, 77; preference for drawing over painting, 12–13; and religion, 22–23; moves to Texas Southern, 27–29; studies lithography at Southern California, 33; awarded doctorates, 39–40, 100; trip to West Africa, 51–52; as administrator at TSU, 54, 70, 85–86; concern for the environment, 55, 110; aesthetic struggles, 70–73; personal art collection, 62–65, 72; begins more abstract style, 66–69; personal symbol system, 68–69, 72; changes compositional technique   u  133

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with Family Unity, 75; changes to acrylic paint, 81; beginning of early health problems, 106; death of, 107, 118; legacy, 117–18; photos of, 7, 9, 10, 12, 27, 29, 35, 36, 63, 64, 74, 80, 82, 88, 93, 108, 109, 121 Biggers, Paul (father), 8, 9, 68, 76 Biggers, Sylvester, 8, 9 Birth of Venus (Botticelli), 59 Birth from the Sea, 54, 59–61 Black Art-Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art (DMA exhibit), 6 Black Art in Houston: The Texas Southern University Experience, 41, 55, 59, 60 Blue Triangle Branch YWCA, 32, 37, 40 boat symbolism, 60, 61, 114 Botticelli, Sandro, 59, 61 Brown, Elmer, 3 Burial, 19, 20 Burrowes Hall, Penn State, 23–25 Butcher, Margaret Just, 28 Bywaters, Jerry, 90 C Carpenter, Stephen, 125n40 catfish, in Salt Marsh, 109 Catlett, Elizabeth, 12, 17 Celebration of Life, 106–7 Chillman, James, 29 Christia V. Adair, 64, 81–85 combs, African ceremonial, 65, 69; in Ascension, 98; in House of the Turtle, 103; in Tree House, 105; in Nubia, 114, 115 Community Artist movement, 3 Community Preacher (Country Preacher), 6, 13, 15–17 Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education, 23, 29, 32–40, 66 cook pot, symbolism of, 68, 83 Country Preacher. See Community Preacher

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Cradle (drawing), 29, 125n9 creation myths, 52, 57, 59, 61, 67, 72, 76, 85, 92, 95, 106, 107, 113 Creative and Mental Growth (Lowenfeld), 18 crocodile, 65–66, 69; two-headed, 62, 115 Crossley, Mimi, 52 D Dacus, Alton, 41 Dahomey (Benin), 51, 68 Dallas Museum of Art, 6 Davis, Bing, 107 Day of the Harvest (Harvest Song), 23–26 dematerialization of form, 71, 75, 83 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 67 Dogon houses, 83 Dog Star, 79, 80 Douglas, Aaron, 6 Dungan, Randy, 46 DuBois, W.E.B., 99, 103 Dying Soldier, 13, 14–15 E earth mother figures, 55, 57, 70, 103 East Texas Patchwork (42 1/2” X 96 1/8”), 41, 66, 90–92, 95, 98 Echoes of the Old Darkland, 62 eggs: in paint formula, 11, 21; symbolism of, 60, 61 Egyptian deities, 67–68 elephant, symbolism of, 69, 89, 96 El Greco, 23 Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes, 30, 31, 32. See also Harvesters and Gleaners Ella Lyman Cabot Trust, 33 Ellison, Ralph, 28 Emancipation Proclamation, 103, 104 Esi Mansi, 65 F family groupings, 76, 85

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Family Unity, x, 64, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73–77, 80, 83, 98, 113, 117 Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP), 3 Finch, Charles III, 67 G Gaither, Barry, 68 Gastonia, North Carolina, 8–9, 92–93, 102–5 geometric abstraction, 66, 71, 75 Ghana, 47, 51–52, 61, 65, 115 Give Me Two Wings to Fly Away, 32, 53, 54 gold, symbolism of, 113, 115 gold weights, 62, 63, 115 gourd, symbolism of, 69, 89, 113 Gray, P. Y., 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 104 great mothers, 65, 69, 111, 114 H Hampton, Phillip, 3 Hampton Institute/University, 4, 9–13, 17, 86, 101, 103, 104, 117. See also Baptism, House of the Turtle, Tree House Hampton University Museum, v, 58, 101, 106 hands, symbolism of, 22, 23, 39 hare/rabbit, 65, 69, 80, 103, 115; in Salt Marsh, 110 Harlem Renaissance, 6 Harvest Song. See Day of the Harvest Harvesters and Gleaners (Negro Folkways), 29–32, 59 Harvey, William R., 99, 100 Hathor, 67 History of the International Longshoremen’s Union Local 872, 47–50 History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas, 5, 23, 40–46, 66, 104 Home Life (sketch), 13 Horus, 67 House of the Turtle, 66, 99–105 Houston, 28–30. See also Texas Southern University

Houston Music Hall, 77, 81 Houston Public Library, W. L. Johnson Branch, 59 Huggins, Nathan Irwin, 6 Hughes, Langston, 67 I Isis, 67, 95, 96 J Jacob (biblical figure), 95 John Biggers Seed Project, 107 Johnson, Harvey, 108, 113, 114, 119. See also Salt Marsh; Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce Jones, Lois Mailou, 3 Jung, Carl, 70, 128n1 K kettle, symbolism of. See washtub, symbolism of L Lanier, R. O’Hara, 10, 27, 39 Lawrence, Jacob, 3 Lee, Fred T., 32, 40 Lincoln Academy, 9 lion, symbolism of, 69, 89, 96 Lockard, Jon Onye, 107 Locke, Alain, 6 longshoremen, 47, 48 Lowenfeld, Viktor, 4, 6, 10, 11–12, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 29, 33, 39–40, 51, 91, 109; inspires Biggers to become an artist, 10; paint formula, 11, 21; moves to Penn State, 19; and Nazi persecution, 4, 11, 19; Sharecroppers in his office, 22; studied with Jung, 11, 70 M Ma’at, 67 Mack, Joe, 12, 28, 29, 30 McAshan, Susan, 27, 58, 77 McCarter, William, 121 McWilliams, Dr. and Mrs. Ford B., 58   u  135

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Metamorphosis, x, 66, 76 Meyerowitz, Eva, 67 Michelangelo (Michelangelo Buonarroti), 57, 100 Migration, 71, 72 morning star, 76, 79, 80, 101 Mother and Child at Durbar (drawing), 53 mothers: as creators, 52, 55, 61, 68, 72, 76, 103, 104, 129n38; as heroes, 33; and child figures, 64, 65, 66, 114, 115; “Great mothers,” 65, 111, 114–15 murals: Rivera’s guidelines for, 2–3; as community works, 3–4, 106–7; Lowenfeld’s guidelines for, 17 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 29, 58, 85, 106 Mut, 68, 115 N Nabrit, Samuel, 54–55 Nabrit Hall, 54, 57 Naples, Texas, 40–46 Nature of Creative Activity, 11 Negro Folkways. See Harvesters and Gleaners Nephthys, 68, 95 Nigeria, 51 Night of the Poor, 23–26, 32 North Carolina Belongs to Children ( James Biggers mural), 93 Not Without Laughter, 67 Nubia, 67–68, 113–15 Nubia, Ancient Kingdoms of Africa, 114 Nubia, the Origins of Business and Commerce, 113–15, 117–18 Nut, 68 O O’Connor, Francis V., 2–3 Origins, 93–96, 99, 117 Orozco, José Clemente, 13 Osiris, 68, 114

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P Paris, Texas, Public Library, 90–91 Parks, James, 3 Patterson, Tom, 96, 99 Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on, 13–14 Pennsylvania State University, 19–26 Picasso, Pablo, 6, 15, 71, 75 preachers, importance to community, 15–16, 42 Priests Before a Shrine, 4 “Primitivism” in the Twentieth Century, 4 Q quilt motif, 32, 38, 39, 39, 45, 66, 68, 71, 76–77, 81 Quilting Party, 7, 77–81 R railroad track motif, 38, 39, 44, 45, 68, 85, 98–99 Red Barn Farm, 32, 58–59 Reynolds, Harriet, 59–60 Rivera, Diego, 13, 18, 25, 39, 44–45, 55–57, 59, 81, 106; guidelines for murals, 2–3, 14, 81; use of wall for white, 61; Biggers departs from, 80, 99 Robeson, Paul, 21 rub board motif, 68, 73, 76, 85, 89, 91, 98, 99, 105 S Salt Marsh, 107–13, 117 Sankofa birds, 62, 65, 69 scaffolding, 94 Scott, John, 108 Seabees, 3, 18 segregation: in Gastonia, 8, 68; in military, 13; in Houston, 28; in museums, 29 serpent, symbolism of, 69, 72, 76–77, 104, 113, 114, 115 Set (Egyptian god), 68 seven (number), significance in African mythologies, 98

index

Sharecroppers, 19–22, 25, 59, 66 shotgun houses, used in Biggers’s works, 6, 18, 22, 32, 38, 39, 40, 45, 68, 99, 101, 103, 113; in Community Preacher, 17; in Sharecroppers, 21; in Family Unity, 76; in Christia V. Adair, 85; in East Texas Patchwork, 91; in Ascension, 97, 98 Simms, Carroll, 28, 29–30, 47, 58, 77 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 13, 25 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, bombing of, 54 Slade, Priscilla, 113, 114 Sleeping Boy (drawing), 29, 125n9 snake, symbolism of, 69, 72, 76–77, 104, 113, 114, 115 Song of the Drinking Gourds, 86, 87–90, 117, 128n1 Souls of Black Folk, 99, 103 spider web symbolism, 61, 63, 115. See also Ananse, trickster character Stevedore (Barthé), 47 Stewart, Marge, 61 stool, ceremonial king’s, 65, 69, 89 T Tamayo, Russell, 29 Texas Southern University, 27–29, 41, 52, 54–55, 73, 85; Biggers retires from, 85–86; Nubia at, 113. See also Web of Life, Family Unity Theisen, Olive Jensen: rediscovers Biggers mural, 40–41; photos of 47, 121 Togo, 51 Tree House, 66, 99–105 tree of life, 38, 45, 79, 104–105. See also Tree House Truth, Sojourner, 33, 38 Tubman, Harriet, 33, 34, 38 turtle, symbolism of, 68, 69, 80, 113, 115; in House of the Turtle, 103; in Salt Marsh, 110

Tom Bass Regional Park, 87 tortoise. See turtle, symbolism of Two People of Ghana (drawing), 52 U University of Houston, 107, 109. See also Salt Marsh Upper Room, 76 U. S. Navy Mural, 17–18 V Vanguard Artist, 1 View from the Upper Room (retrospective exhibit), 106 von Sertima, Ivan, 67 W Wardlaw, Alvia, 68 washtub, symbolism of, 6, 68, 73, 76, 88–89, 91, 92, 98, 99, 105 water, symbolism of, 59, 61, 89, 104. See also baptism, symbolism of Web of Life, 32, 52, 54–58, 59, 113 West, Cornel, 71 Wheatley, Phillis, 38 White, Charles, 3, 12, 12, 17, 91 William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library, Hampton University, 100, 101 Wings Over Jordan (radio show), 77, 79, 95 Winston-Salem State University, 86, 92–93. See also Ascension, Origins Woman Waiting (drawing), 6 Woodruff, Hale, 3 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 3 Y Young Negro Art (exhibit at MOMA), 15

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