Note to the Reader

Pascale, Mark; Adler, Esther; Kopp, Édouard

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Note to the Reader

Mark Pascale and Esther Adler and Édouard Kopp

Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw

Note to the Reader

Author

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

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100171

Note to the Reader

Unless otherwise noted, all works are by Joseph E. Yoakum (American, 1891–1972).

Yoakum did not always date his drawings, and when he did, he used a variety of methods. The works in this volume were likely made between 1962 and 1972, but for works without inscriptions it is not possible to assign specific dates. For works without inscribed dates, we have used “n.d.” For rubber-stamped dates, which are unreliable due to Yoakum’s imprecise approach to stamping, we have used “stamped.” “By” precedes the dates that Yoakum copied a work.

The titles given for Yoakum’s drawings derive from his inscriptions, faithfully reproducing his at times unconventional spellings.

Yoakum’s self-identity reflected both his own complex racial background, which included African, European, and possibly Native American (likely Cherokee) ancestors, and the fluid nature of racial identities in America over his lifetime. With this in mind, in this volume the term black is lowercased when referring to people of African descent, in keeping with the artist’s nuanced attitudes toward skin color and identity and reflecting the authors’ resistance to the reification of a racialized power structure.

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BOOKJoseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw

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

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100167

Much of Joseph Elmer Yoakum’s story comes from the artist himself—and is almost too fantastic to believe. At a young age, Yoakum (1891–1972) traveled the globe with numerous circuses; he later served in a segregated noncombat regiment during World War I before settling in Chicago. There, inspired by a dream, he began his artistic career at age seventy-one, producing some two thousand drawings over a decade. How did Yoakum gain representation in major museum collections in Chicago and New York? What fueled his process, which he described as a “spiritual unfoldment”? This volume delves into the friendships Yoakum forged with the Chicago Imagists that secured his place in art history, explores the religious outlook that may have helped him cope with a racially fractured city, and examines his complicated relationship to African American and Native American identities. With hundreds of color reproductions of his dreamlike drawings, it offers the most comprehensive study of the artist’s work, illuminating his vivid and imaginative creativity and giving definition and dimension to his remarkable biography.

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Author

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

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Print publication date July 2021 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300257489

EISBN 9780300282191

Illustrations 193

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

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