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(return
to part 1)
Sudduth himself still spends most of his days
in a pre-fab, air-conditioned shed next to his modest Fayette
home. A meals-on-wheels-type outfit delivers his lunch ("Three
dollars a week. That's pretty good, ain't it?") while he
concentrates on putting his vision onto the primed black squares
of plywood that are his canvases. One friend, who claims Sudduth
would rather paint than eat, said the artist can "drive
down a highway 60 miles an hour, see a house and when he gets
back home, paint everything about it."
Sudduth is more matter-of-fact about his vocation: "I just
look at it and paint it." His subjects include local houses
and the skyscrapers of New York, horses, alligators, and a succession
of pet dogs named Toto.
There's been much debate about what to call the paintings, sculptures,
and backyard monuments created by untrained artists like Jimmy
Lee Sudduth. Of the various names used in coffee-table books
and fine arts journals - Visionary Art, Self-Taught Art, Vernacular
Art - the term Outsider Art (coined by Englishman Roger Cardinal)
is, for better or worse, the one that's stuck. Many object to
putting this label on art work created in large part by African-Americans.
But at least one well-known disseminator of blues to the public
has drawn parallels between this "creative expression of
the common man" and blues music: Los Angeles-based House
of Blues Entertainment, Inc., which owns a large collection of
contemporary American folk art. "Outsider Art," wrote
Carol Crittenden, curator of the House of Blues collection, in
1998, "should be thought of as 'visual blues,' since it
shares the same derivatives as blues music, such as free spirit
expression, craft traditions, and themes from daily life experience."
HOB's charitable division sees exhibiting this art in the expanding
chain of House of Blues nightclubs as one way of "promoting
racial harmony and furthering multicultural awareness."
Not everyone buys this argument. One musician, speaking off the
record, dismissed the company's folksy image as "manufactured"
and compared their nightclubs to a popular chain of family-style
restaurants.
The paintings of outsider artists past and present are also turning
up as CD booklet art. The cave painting-like silhouettes of Alabama-born
Bill Traylor (c.1854-1949) graced the front of Omar and the Howlers'
The Screamin' Cat; Lamar Sorrento did the cover of the
Junkyardmen's Keep On Workin' and HOB's Road Trip Blues
compilation, while recent releases by Tinsley Ellis (Kingpin)
and John Mooney (Dealing With the Devil) each used primitive
art in place of the literal photography we're used to seeing
on blues albums. Both Jimmy Lee Sudduth and Lamar Sorrento -
a contemporary musician and painter from Memphis who claims to
have started the movement - have by now attained cult figure
status. Left-leaning Hollywood stars Tommy Lee Jones and Tim
Robbins and musician collectors like Keith Richards and Jimmie
Vaughan are among those reportedly having purchased their work.
(continue
to part 3)
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