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Artist Statement:
ARTIST'S STATEMENT MADE IN
1989
As a child in the churches,
the schools and the
com-munity, I dreamed of a
destiny. My search became a
single purpose for the dignity
of Black people instead of
attempting to solve the
concerns of all humanity.
Early on I was convinced that
a creative spirit must soar
beyond compartments of
religion and politics. It was
through the roots of African
Art that I learned of the
creative source of most
Western art. As I stood near
the Nile at Cairo and looked
toward the Mediterranean in
awe, I envisioned how the
Greeks, Persians, Romans,
etc., had sailed up the Nile,
taking away the fine arts,
sciences, history and other
disciplines. There were
records on paper, on stone, on
walls in the temples that
rivaled anything produced
later in the Renaissance....
Over the years, I have painted
representative and figurative
subiects. About thirty years
ago, I was introduced to
Non-Objective Expressionism. I
didn't attempt abstract art in
the 1930s, nor did I try
during my years at the Barnes
Foundation. Dr. Barnes not
only has the world's finest
collection of Modern Art, but
presents the theory in his
book, "...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Galleries:
SELLA JONES GALLERY
First NBC Center
201 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70170
504 568-9050
888-400-9100 Toll Free
...
Further Information
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Reviews for Claude Clark:
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BRENDA JOYSMITH GALLERY
Born in 1915, Claude Clark, Sr. was an active Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist for three years. His early works from the 1940s reveal aspects of the good life from an era overlapping the Harlem Renaissance. His dance scenes explore a fresh and vibrant new world of ceaseless energy and expression of young Blacks in the big cities. His bold knife strokes create exaggerated movement and playful exploration of compositions. In the 1950s and 60s, Clark's themes began to change as a result of his many travels abroad to Africa and the Caribbean Islands. However, the boldness remained in his pallet knife strokes. Black American themes, African masks and everyday events became the principal subjects in his work.
CLAUDE CLARK: "ON MY JOURNEY NOW"
by
Dr. David C. Driskell -Art Historian
Claude Clark, Sr. remains in the eyes of many of the students he has taught over the past fifty years, benevolent teacher, cultural mentor and importantly, one of the fine models for artists of all generations. Most remember him for being a person whose interest in the welfare of Black artists throughout the African diaspora predated even the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Clark's interest in African art goes back to the formative years in his career when he studied art under the tutelage of renown collector and art enthusiast, Dr. Albert C. Barnes from 1939 through 1944. Few practicing artists had such a long and productive association with the venerable Dr. Barnes at his school of art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. to middle
Clark's study at the Barnes Foundation helped inform his knowledge of the role that African art played in the development of modern art in Europe. It was at the Barnes Foundation that Clark first saw African art as an important place to begin his own aesthetic development as a painter, an interest he has genuinely maintained over the years. While few of the works in this exhibition note the artist's long standing interest in the subject of African art, nearly all show the love affair he has carried on over the years with African American themes, particularly those that show life in the deep south and the Caribbean.
But there are times when other themes are equally important in the artist's oeuvre. EXPULSION is a highly political composition that shows Uncle Sam being expelled from what was at one time colonial Africa. SHAKE A LEG communicates the exuberance of Black dance while RAISING THE CROSS, painted nearly twenty years ago, show the irony of the Christian cross being used by the Klu Klux Klan as a symbol of racial hate. To the top
Some of the paintings in this exhibition document important places in the artist's work and travels over the years. ON SUNDAY MORNING is a handsomely rendered study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Manayunk, Pennsylvania community where Clark spent many of his childhood years. WINDY HILL shows two African inspired buildings with hip roofs, once a dairy and in later years the campus laundry at Talladega College in Talladega. Alabama. STONE HALL was painted in 1949. The building, a freshman dUnnitory for mcn atlalladega ('ollegc, was destroycd by tire in the mid- 1970s. Clark painted both WINDY HILL and STONE HALL, while he served as Associate Professor of Art at Talladega College in the 1940s and '50s.
Over the years, Clark has painted an odyssey showing Black people and their journey in the African diaspora. There are times when Clark's odyssey takes us to Haiti, Egypt; Mobile, Alabama; Nigeria and nearby suburbs of the city of Philadelphia, among others. Yet there are times when we are presented by the artist with personal tokens of love; the joyous beauty of a bouquet of flowers as is the case with IRIS and GLADIOLAS -- reminding us of the artist's sensibility to ad of the fonms of nature in its convincing ways. Importantly, in an of the accounts that we witness Clark's art in its varying forms, there is indeed an undimensioning expression of the creative urge to explore form and communicate a vision of the world that he alone has been given. Claude Clark loves this odyssey of artistry and he remains steadfast on his journey now.
David C. Driskell
Distinguished University of Professor of Art
University of Maryland at College Park
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