“Beale Street,” 1964, by William Christenberry. Mixed media on canvas. Collection of C. Richard Belger.
In 1960, a young art instructor at the University of Alabama discovered a book that changed his life. The instructor was William Christenberry, now a national known artist as well as a professor of art at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. The book was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, first published in 1941. It combined the photographs of Walker Evans, along with the text of James Agee, to chronicle the lives of three tenant families in Hale County, Alabama. The text, Christenberry later said, affected him first. “I had never run into a writer who described so clearly, so beautifully, the things I had experienced as a child.” The photographer, Walker Evans, would later become “one of the greatest influences” in Christenberry’s life.
Born in Tuscaloosa in 1936, Christenberry studied art at the University of Alabama (1954-1959), where he came under the influence of a number of outstanding faculty artists, including Melville Price, Howard Goodson, and Richard Zoellner. Attracted to the Abstract Expressionist philosophies and techniques then taught at the university, Christenberry completed a number of abstract paintings. In 1958, at the urging of Price, he began taking photos of the countryside with his boyhood Brownie camera, as a way of recording colors to use in his paintings. Nearby Hale County, in particular, was an area of interest to Christenberry, for he had spent summers there as a child with his grandparents.
After graduation, Christenberry was invited to join the faculty, to reach drawing and design, and it was during this period chat he discovered Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In the spring of 1961, Christenberry moved to New York City. He remained there for a year, worked eight different jobs, and immersed himself in the art world. Although he describes this year as “a dry spell” in which he did not produce any artwork, he did manage to meet Bella Fishko, founder of Forum Gallery, and Walker Evans, who at the time was working at Fortune magazine. Christenberry and Evans became lifelong friends and, years later, they would travel back to Alabama together to visit some of the places Evans had photographed in 1936.
Returning to his native South in 1962, Christenberry accepted a reaching position at Memphis State University and began creating three-dimensional constructions using signs and found objects. His work was now profoundly affected by the sense of place and “the smell of that landscape” that he felt had been so well expressed in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Bound up in Christenberry’s interest in place was a related issue: his abhorrence of racism and violence. That year, in Memphis, he exhibited at a faculty show two large paintings, both titled Hate, which used images of the Ku Klux Klan. He was subsequently reprimanded by the dean, who had received numerous complaints about the subject matter of the paintings.
“Some people have told me that this subject is not the proper concern of an artist or art,” Christenberry said later. “On the contrary, I hold the position that there are times when an artist muse examine and reveal such
strange and secret brutality.”
After graduation, Christenberry was invited to join the faculty, to reach drawing and design, and it was during this period chat he discovered Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In the spring of 1961, Christenberry moved to New York City. He remained there for a year, worked eight different jobs, and immersed himself in the art world. Although he describes this year as “a dry spell” in which he did not produce any artwork, he did manage to meet Bella Fishko, founder of Forum Gallery, and Walker Evans, who at the time was working at Fortune magazine. Christenberry and Evans became lifelong friends and, years later, they would travel back to Alabama together to visit some of the places Evans had photographed in 1936.
Returning to his native South in 1962, Christenberry accepted a reaching position at Memphis State University and began creating three-dimensional constructions using signs and found objects. His work was now profoundly affected by the sense of place and “the smell of that landscape” that he felt had been so well expressed in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Bound up in Christenberry’s interest in place was a related issue: his abhorrence of racism and violence. That year, in Memphis, he exhibited at a faculty show two large paintings, both titled Hate, which used images of the Ku Klux Klan. He was subsequently reprimanded by the dean, who had received numerous complaints about the subject matter of the paintings.
“Some people have told me that this subject is not the proper concern of an artist or art,” Christenberry said later. “On the contrary, I hold the position that there are times when an artist muse examine and reveal such
strange and secret brutality.”
[I]n Memphis, he exhibited at a faculty show two large paintings, both titled Hate, which used images of the Ku Klux Klan. He was subsequently reprimanded by the dean, who had received numerous complaints about the subject matter of the paintings.
In 1968 Christenberry and his wife moved to Washington, DC, where he had accepted a position at the Corcoran School of Arc. His interest in Klan imagery continued, resulting in the creation of frighteningly macabre dolls tightly wrapped in satin--a series that has come to comprise “The Klan Room.” In 1979 Christenberry’s studio was burglarized, and all but one of his Klan dolls were stolen. The crime remains unsolved; yet, Christenberry has reproduced the pieces.
Not long after the robbery, Christenberry dreamed of strange, pointed, three-dimensional, triangular-shaped objects, heavily colored and layered with signs and paint. The dream was so vivid that he felt compelled to create a series of monuments, which will be included in an exhibition. Viewers were able to walk through an area of “Dream Buildings'” ranging from four to nine feet high and similar in shape to both a church steeple and the cone-shaped hat of a Klansman. Christenberry’s Tenant House series of paintings, photographs, and studies were also part of the “Early Years” exhibit.
Christenberry continues co receive both local and national acclaim. In May 1997, he was honored with the Distinguished Artist Award from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In Alabama, his works are in the permanent collections of the Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, and Mobile museums of art; nationally, his art is in the Morris Museum of Art, the Phillips Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of American Art.
The “Early Years” exhibition presents paintings and constructions from a crucial period in the artist’s development. For years, many of these canvases were largely forgotten in Christenberry’s attic. A few were exhibited in 1982 and were subsequently purchased by Richard Belger. The Belger Family Foundation later sponsored the framing, conservation, and photography for the exhibition’s catalogue.
This article was previously published in Alabama Heritage Issue #49, Summer 1998.
Not long after the robbery, Christenberry dreamed of strange, pointed, three-dimensional, triangular-shaped objects, heavily colored and layered with signs and paint. The dream was so vivid that he felt compelled to create a series of monuments, which will be included in an exhibition. Viewers were able to walk through an area of “Dream Buildings'” ranging from four to nine feet high and similar in shape to both a church steeple and the cone-shaped hat of a Klansman. Christenberry’s Tenant House series of paintings, photographs, and studies were also part of the “Early Years” exhibit.
Christenberry continues co receive both local and national acclaim. In May 1997, he was honored with the Distinguished Artist Award from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In Alabama, his works are in the permanent collections of the Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, and Mobile museums of art; nationally, his art is in the Morris Museum of Art, the Phillips Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of American Art.
The “Early Years” exhibition presents paintings and constructions from a crucial period in the artist’s development. For years, many of these canvases were largely forgotten in Christenberry’s attic. A few were exhibited in 1982 and were subsequently purchased by Richard Belger. The Belger Family Foundation later sponsored the framing, conservation, and photography for the exhibition’s catalogue.
This article was previously published in Alabama Heritage Issue #49, Summer 1998.
Author
Susan Sipple Elliott is the assistant curator of painting, sculpture, and works on paper at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
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