Participation in panel at the 2005 College Art Association conference in Atlanta, February 2005; Self-Taught Art in the Old and New South

Charles Russell, Dept. of English, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102 and Susan Crawley,Interim Curator of Folk Art, High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street, N.E. Atlanta, GA 30309.

Throughout the twentieth century no region of this country has offered a more fertile ground for self-taught art than the South. In part this is because Southern culture both embodies and challenges the dominant social and aesthetic values of the nation. Even more so, folk, self-taught, and, “Outsider” artists of the South often embody and challenge the values of both Southern and American visual culture. This session will explore specific expressions of Southern vernacular art, both during the first half of the twentieth century when the “Old” South lagged economically and enforced Jim Crow laws and in the modernized, “New” South that seems in many ways indistinguishable from the rest of the nation, yet still fosters singular creative visions. Papers should address individual artists of the first or second halves of the past century or theoretical issues delineating the contexts of Southern self-taught art.

Abstracts should be sent to Charles Russell, preferably by March 15. Participants will have to be members of the CAA in 2005.

Participation in a book on Southern Self-Taught Art:

Charles Russell and Professor Carol Crown, of the Department of Art at the University of Memphis, are editing a book on southern self-taught artists to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. This collection of essays will focus primarily on individual artists, addressing the cultural and historical contexts from which their art has emerged. In addition to chapters about individual artists, however, we’re interested in essays that consider several artists within a larger framework, for instance: political expression; historical changes evident in the artists working under Jim Crow and after; religious sentiment; and particularly Southern cultural and aesthetic strategies. We seek essays that will expand the scholarship in this field and move discussions of the artists beyond the all too familiar soft biographical approaches.

2-3 page abstracts should be sent to Professor Russell by March 15 at the Rutgers address or at crr@andromeda.rutgers.edu.