The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments, and Stonework Paperback – September 15, 2021 by Marin R. Sullivan

Description

Author: Sullivan Marin R.

Package Dimensions: 13x302x914

Number Of Pages: 168

Release Date: 15-09-2021

Details: Product Description
William Edmondson (1874-1951) was the first African American sculptor to have a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Edmondson started sculpting in his late fifties, after the Nashville Women’s Hospital, where he worked as a janitor, closed. During his life he was well known for his yard art, such as whimsical birdbaths and “critters” of real and imaginary provenance, and the grave markers he carved for African American families. His sculptures are now highly sought after by collectors.

The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments, and Stonework is the first large-scale museum examination of artist William Edmondson’s career in over twenty years. Organized by Cheekwood Curator-at-Large Marin R. Sullivan, the exhibition draws upon new scholarship and methodologies to contextualize Edmondson’s sculpture, both within the histories of Nashville during the Interwar years and the art histories of modern art in the United States.

Edmondson has largely been confined to narratives that focus on his artistic discovery by white patrons in the 1930s, his work’s formal resonance with so-called primitivism and direct carving techniques, and his place in the traditions of African American “outsider” art. This exhibition revisits Edmondson’s work within these frameworks, but also seeks to reevaluate his sculpture on its own terms and as part of a comprehensive practice that included the creation of commercial objects rather than strictly fine art.

The exhibition’s title references the sign that hung on the outside of Edmondson’s studio, advertising what was for sale and on view to the public in his yard, including tombstones, birdbaths, and statuary meant to be used and intended for outdoor rather than gallery display.
Review
“One of the greatest stone carvers of Modernism.”
—
New York Times
About the Author

Learotha Williams Jr. is a professor of African American, Civil War and Reconstruction, and Public History at Tennessee State University and coordinator of the North Nashville Heritage Project.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
William Edmondson was and remains Nashville’s most renowned sculptor. He was born in 1874 in Davidson County, Tennessee, to Jane Brown and Orange Edmondson, who had been enslaved at the Edmondson and Compton Plantations and at the time of their son’s birth still worked that land as fieldhands. In 1890, following the death of his father, Edmondson moved to Nashville with his mother and siblings, where he would remain the rest of his life. He held a number of jobs, working for the Nashville-Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad, for example, before a leg injury led him to seek employment as an orderly and janitor at the Woman’s Hospital. He purchased property on Fourteenth Avenue South in the Nashville’s Edgehill neighborhood. His sister Sarah lived with him and he remained close to his family, though he himself never married. In 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, he lost his job at the hospital, worked briefly as a stonemason’s assistant, and then turned his attention to stonework fulltime. Within a few years, his yard would be full of sculptures and sculptural objects, with a sign hanging above the porch he often carved on that read:

TOMB-STONES. FOR SALE. GARDEN. ORNAMENTS. STONEWORK Wm Edmonson 1434 14th S.