Sam Gilliam
Biography
Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and was the seventh of eight children to Sam and Estery Gilliam. The Gilliams moved to Louisville, Kentucky shortly after Sam was born. His father worked on the railroad, and his mother cared for the large family. Gilliam began painting in elementary school and received much encouragement from teachers. In 1951, Gilliam graduated from Central High School in Louisville. Gilliam served in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958. He received his Bachelor and Masters degree of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville. In 1955, Gilliam had his first solo exhibition at the University of Louisville. He initially taught art for a year in the Louisville public schools. In 1962, he married Dorothy Butler, a Louisville native and a well-known journalist. That same year, Gilliam moved to Washington, D.C., where he has lived ever since.
Career in the 1960s, early 1970s
Gilliam is internationally recognized as the foremost contemporary African-American Color Field Painter and Lyrical Abstractionist. In the 1960s, as the political and social front of America began to explode in all directions, the black artist began to take bold declarative initiatives, making definitive imagery, inspired by the specific conditions of the African American experience. Abstraction remained a critical issue for artists like Sam Gilliam. Gilliam sense of color is modulated by his study of light, color, and its transformative and changing dynamics. He is most widely known for the large color-stained canvases he draped and suspended from the walls and ceilings during the late 1960s and early 1970s. he background for Gilliam art was the 1950s, which witnessed the emergence of abstract expressionism and the New York School followed by Color Field painting. Gilliam early style developed from brooding figural abstractions into large paintings of flatly applied color pushed Gilliam to eventually remove the easel aspect of painting by eliminating the stretcher. Gilliam was influenced by German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde, Paul Klee and the American Bay Area Figurative School artist Nathan Oliveira. He states that he found lots of clues on how to go about his work from Tatlin, Frank Stella, Hans Hofmann, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Cezanne. In 1963, Thomas Downing, an artist who identified himself with the Washington Color School, introduced Gilliam to this new school of thought. Around 1965 Gilliam became the first painter to introduce the idea of the unsupported canvas. He was inspired to do this by observing laundry hanging outside his Washington studio. This was the first of its kind and was of huge influence throughout the art world. His drape paintings were suspended from ceilings, arranged on walls or floors, and they represent a sculptural, third dimension in painting. Gilliam states that his paintings are based on the fact that the framework of the painting is in real space. He is attracted to its power and the way it functions. Gilliam draped canvases change in each environment they are arranged in and frequently he embellishes the works with metal, rocks, and wooden beams.
Career in the 1970s and 1980s
In 1975, Gilliam veered away from the draped canvases and became influenced by jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He started producing dynamic geometric collages, which he called lack Paintings due to the hue. Again, in the 1980s Gilliam style changed dramatically to quilted paintings reminiscent of African patchwork quilts from his childhood. His most recent works are textured paintings that incorporate metal forms. Gilliam ability to move beyond the draped canvas, coupled with his ability to adopt new series keeps the viewers interested and engaged. This has assured his prominence in the art world as an exciting and innovative contemporary painter.
Gilliam is also one of the few successful, self-supporting African American artists who views the teaching of art as a mission. His love of teaching developed during the one year he spent in Louisville public schools. He taught for nearly a decade in the Washington public schools, and then at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and the University of Maryland, and for several years at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. In addition, Gilliam still devotes time to conducting workshops, participating in panels, and delivering lectures in this country and abroad.
Controversy
Gilliam was arrested and indicted in 1975 for causing a major disturbance while on board a plane. The following is a summary of the incident as recounted by the United States Tax Court in Gilliam v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1986-81 :
“Gilliam accepted an invitation to lecture and teach for a week at the Memphis Academy of Arts in Memphis, Tennessee. On Sunday, February 23, 1975, he flew to Memphis to fulfill this business obligation.
Gilliam had a history of hospitalizations for mental and emotional disturbances and continued to be under psychiatric care until the time of his trip to Memphis. In December 1963, Gilliam was hospitalized in Louisville; Gilliam had anxieties about his work as an artist. For periods of time in both 1965 and 1966, Gilliam suffered from depression and was unable to work. In 1970, Gilliam was again hospitalized. In 1973, while Gilliam was a visiting artist at a number of university campuses in California, he found it necessary to consult an airport physician; however, when he returned to Washington, D.C., Gilliam did not require hospitalization.
Before his Memphis trip, Gilliam created a 225-foot painting for the Thirty-fourth Biennial Exhibition of American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “the Exhibition”). The Exhibition opened on Friday evening, February 21, 1975. In addition, Gilliam was in the process of preparing a giant mural for an outside wall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the 1975 Spring Festival in Philadelphia. The budget plans for this mural were due on Monday, February 24, 1975.
On the night before his Memphis trip, Gilliam felt anxious and unable to rest. On Sunday morning, Gilliam contacted Ranville Clark (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “Clark”), a doctor Gilliam had been consulting intermittently over the years, and asked Clark to prescribe some medication to relieve his anxiety. Clark arranged for Gilliam to pick up a prescription of the drug Dalmane on the way to the airport. Gilliam had taken medication frequently during the preceding 10 years. Clark had never before prescribed Dalmane for Gilliam.
On Sunday, February 23, 1975, Gilliam got the prescription and at about 3:25 p.m., he boarded American Airlines flight 395 at Washington National Airport, Washington, D.C., bound for Memphis. Gilliam occupied a window seat. He took the Dalmane for the first time shortly after boarding the airplane.
About one and one-half hours after the airplane departed Washington National Airport, Gilliam began to act in an irrational manner. He talked of bizarre events and had difficulty in speaking. According to some witnesses, he appeared to be airsick and held his head. Gilliam began to feel trapped, anxious, disoriented, and very agitated. Gilliam said that the plane was going to crash and that he wanted a life raft. Gilliam entered the aisle and, while going from one end of the airplane to the other, he tried to exit from three different doors. Then Gilliam struck Seiji Nakamura (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “Nakamura”), another passenger, several times with a telephone receiver. Nakamura was seated toward the rear of the airplane, near one of the exits. Gilliam also threatened the navigator and a stewardess, called for help, and cried. As a result of the attack, Nakamura sustained a one-inch laceration above his left eyebrow which required four sutures. Nakamura also suffered ecchymosis of the left arm and pains in his left wrist. Nakamura was treated for these injuries at Methodist Hospital in Memphis.
On arriving in Memphis, Gilliam was arrested by Federal officials. On March 10, 1975, Gilliam was indicted. He was brought to trial in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Western Division, on one count of violation of 49 U.S.C. 1472 (k) (relating to certain crimes aboard in aircraft in flight) and two counts of violation 49 U.S.C. 1472(j) (relating to interference with flight crew members or flight attendants). Gilliam entered a plea of not guilty to the criminal charges. The trial began on September 8, 1975, and ended on September 10, 1975. After Gilliam presented all of his evidence, the district court granted Gilliam’s motion for a judgment of acquittal by reason of temporary insanity.”
The Tax Court’s Memorandum Decision is studied by law students in Federal Income Tax because Gilliam sought to deduct his legal fees in defending against the indictment as an ordinary and necessary business expense, see 26 U.S.C. 162(a). The Tax Court denied the deduction because his expenses were not “ordinary.”
Quotes
These are direct quotes from the artist help describe him and/or his work; am a better artist today in that I am obviously a better teacher. Whether I am teaching or making art, the process is fundamentally the same: I am creating. nly when making the work can I determine the many languages that form the planes on which it is to exist. Like abstract phrases the many intentions of the work (before an audience) passes through an intuitive sieve The work was not planned, there are ploys, however, to the way it was laid out and then put together. 1996 am Gilliam.
Education
Gilliam received his B.A. in fine art and his M.A. in painting from the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He has taught at the Corcoran School of Art, the Maryland Institute College of Art and Carnegie Mellon University.
Recognition
He has had many commissions, grants, awards, exhibitions and honorary doctorates. A major retrospective of Gilliam’s work was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2005. He was named the 2006 University of Louisville Alumnus of the Year.
In 1987 he was selected by the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program to produce a print to celebrate the opening of the S. Dylan Ripley Center in the National Mall. He donated his talent to produce In Celebration, a 35-color limited-edition serigraph that highlighted his trademark use of color, and the sale of which benefitted the Smithsonian Associates, the continuing education branch of the larger Smithsonian Institution. “In Celebration, 1987 by Sam Gilliam”. The Smithsonian Associates. https://residentassociates.org/ArtCollectors/gallery.aspx?index=619&artwork=217550. Retrieved 2009-07-02.
In early 2009, he again donated his talents to the Smithsonian Associates to produce a 90-color serigraph entitled Museum Moment, which he describes as “a celebration of art” “Museum Moment, 2009 by Sam Gilliam”. The Smithsonian Associates. https://residentassociates.org/ArtCollectors/gallery.aspx?artwork=218124. Retrieved 2009-07-02.
He lives in Washington D.C. and has a studio in the historical Shaw neighborhood.
Notes
^ The full text of the opinion is available online at http://kanhom.com/2009/02/03/gilliam-v-commissioner/
References
Washington Art, catalog of exhibitions at State University College at Potsdam, NY & State University of New York at Albany, 1971 [no copyright or LCCC # listed], Introduction by Renato G. Danese, printed by Regal Art Press, Troy NY.
Sam Gilliam: a retrospective, 10/15/2005 to 1/22/2006, Corcoran Gallery of Art
Sam Gilliam: a retrospective, the catalog, text by Jonanthan Binstock
Relative, 1969. National Gallery of Art
Sam Gilliam papers, 1958-1989 Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
AskArt lists 52 references to Sam Gilliam,
“In Celebration, 1987 by Sam Gilliam,” Information about In Celebration in connection with The Smithsonian Associates,
“Museum Moment, 2009 by Sam Gilliam,” Information about Museum Moment in connection with The Smithsonian Associates,
External links
Washingtonian Magazine – Gilliam’s Newest Work Inspires Dickstein Shapiro
Categories: 1933 births | University of Louisville alumni | African American artists | American painters | American printmakers | Guggenheim Fellows | Living people | Artists from Mississippi | Modern painters | Artists from Kentucky
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