Foreword

Rondeau, James; Lowry, Glenn D.; Rabinow, Rebecca

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Foreword

James Rondeau and Glenn D. Lowry and Rebecca Rabinow

Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw

Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) was an “artist’s artist.” This rare and coveted designation, informally bestowed by art historians, critics, and members of a creative community, might have surprised him. Nevertheless, it reflects his foundational importance to the young artists and their teachers at the School of the Art Institute...

Author

Mark Pascale (Editor), Esther Adler (Editor), Édouard Kopp (Editor)

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100169

Foreword

Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) was an “artist’s artist.” This rare and coveted designation, informally bestowed by art historians, critics, and members of a creative community, might have surprised him. Nevertheless, it reflects his foundational importance to the young artists and their teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) who flocked to him as collectors, supporters, and friends. Yoakum was also an African American artist whose family claimed Native American heritage, and he had negotiated the shifting and treacherous boundaries of racial inequality for close to seventy years by the time he was embraced by a largely white, and generally much younger, artist cohort in 1968. These circumstances undoubtedly shaped the relationship and power dynamics between Yoakum and those who admired, championed, and also purchased his drawings in ways that were both subtle and obvious.

Acknowledging these truths is critical to a contemporary examination of Yoakum’s body of work—characterized by a distinctive style as a draftsman and an imaginative, spiritual vision of the land—but so, too, is appreciating the details of the exceptional life that inspired him. His drawings reflect a rich history of travel and various professional experiences that brought him, he said, to every continent except Antarctica. As the title of this volume suggests, Yoakum’s most consistent subject matter was what he saw over the course of his life. Recognizing his agency in transforming his visual memories into extraordinary works of art has been a main goal of this project.

The artists who befriended Yoakum—Roger Brown, Cynthia Carlson, Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg and Philip Hanson, Karl Wirsum and Lorri Gunn, and Ray Yoshida—collected, exhibited, and helped promote his drawings during and after his lifetime, and they are largely responsible for what we know about the man and his work today. Whitney Halstead, an art historian and professor at the SAIC, was the first scholar to turn a critical eye on Yoakum’s oeuvre, and his foundational text on the artist—published here, in its entirety, for the first time—is a necessary resource for any study of Yoakum’s work. This publication and the exhibition it accompanies would not have been possible without their dedication to the artist.

Even with all of his travels, Yoakum’s artistic life was rooted in Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago proudly houses the largest collection of his drawings, with more than two hundred sheets, four sketchbooks, and miscellaneous archival materials. The Museum of Modern Art was the first New York institution to exhibit Yoakum’s work, in May 1971, in its Penthouse Gallery; several of the pieces from its collection were previously owned by Chicago artist and SAIC professor Ray Yoshida. The Menil Collection has a similarly long history of celebrating work by self-taught artists active in the twentieth century. The collaboration of these three museums will allow Yoakum’s work to be seen across the United States, and we are grateful to Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute; Esther Adler, Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art; and Édouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator at the Menil Drawing Institute, for making this possible.

This volume is the first museum publication dedicated to new scholarship on the artist. Pascale has meticulously tracked and confirmed Yoakum’s connections in Chicago to provide the most accurate account of his career there and the significance of his influence on other artists working in that city. Kopp assesses the formal and compositional strategies that make Yoakum’s drawings so compelling, and Adler considers the roles religion and race played in his claiming of the landscape as his subject matter. Kathleen Ash-Milby examines Yoakum’s complicated relationship to his Indigenous identity. Faheem Majeed discusses Yoakum’s portraiture, which comprises a smaller portion of his output but is important to understanding how Yoakum navigated racial lines in the United States. Laura K. Minton decodes Yoakum’s late works, all drawn in mostly intact sketchbooks while he was in a nursing home at the end of his life. Emily Olek has carefully constructed a timeline of Yoakum’s life, using primary documents whenever possible while acknowledging Yoakum’s desire at times to create his own history. The essay by Mary Broadway, Ken Sutherland, and Clara Granzotto contributes immensely to our understanding of Yoakum’s materials and working process.

Support for the publication is provided by Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan. Major funding for the Art Institute presentation is provided by an anonymous donor. Additional funding for Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw is provided by Mary A. and David Q. Bell and Fred and Susan Novy. At the Menil Collection, the exhibition is generously supported by Diane and Michael Cannon; Cindy and David Fitch; Barbara and Michael Gamson; Caroline Huber; and the City of Houston through the Houston Art Alliance.

Though Yoakum’s artwork has been the principal focus of this project, a recognition of his remarkable life is unavoidably intertwined with it. The desire to balance both of these considerations is of profound importance to the curators and our institutions. We are proud to offer this exhibition and catalogue to the public with the hope of expanding the awareness and appreciation of Joseph E. Yoakum’s talent.

James Rondeau
President and Eloise W. Martin Director
The Art Institute of Chicago

Glenn D. Lowry
The David Rockefeller Director
The Museum of Modern Art

Rebecca Rabinow
Director
The Menil Collection

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