Artworks

William Hawkins: Paintings

Authors: Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

First Edition: 1997

Hardcover: 127 pages

This is the first book ever published to chronicle the life and work of the African American artist William Hawkins. The volume includes 121 full-color illustrations.

***

"William Hawkins was the first self-taught artist our gallery represented, and he changed our lives profoundly. A brilliant painter, he was the catalyst for a whole new focus in the world of folk art. In the nine years that we knew him, he drew us-none too gently-into his world, challenging our capacity for surprise and joy. We don't be­lieve that Hawkins ever really knew our names. He referred to us simply as 'the boys with the museum in New York.'

Every major movement in art has a few key linchpin artists who are instrumental in defining it. When one meets such an artist, one knows that things will never be the same again. Hawkins was that artist for us. The power and clarity of his art helped us to dis­cover exactly what we were al I about.

As dealers, collectors, and lovers of the impossible, we had, in the early phase of our partnership, focused our attention on what has come to be considered traditional (but certainly not conservative) folk art. We favored an edgy aesthetic that is difficult to define, falling for rare works that combined a strong sense of magic, mystery, and de­sign. Hawkins' paintings had all of those things; we recognized that the minute we saw them piled up against the wall of his cluttered Columbus apartment in 1983. He made us realize that the same classic qualities we had come to value in art from an earliertime might be found in work by a contemporary artist. This was a revelation, but also an intimidating challenge.

Like the other great self-taught artists-such as William Edmondson and Bill Traylor, whose work was recognized somewhat earlier—Hawkins has proved that great art can emerge in the most unlikely circumstances. Yet unlike that elite group of folk 'masters,' Hawkins responded to a modern, media-driven environment. While he was connected, if only by his age, to an earlier craft tradition, he was in fact most inspired by the vernacular of popular culture and the reproductions of great art that he came across in discarded magazines fished out of Dumpsters. Although he was completely removed from the intellectual milieu of art history, he was engaged in a joyful battle with it. Outdated myths of folk purity aside, we firmly believe that these cultural cir­cumstances which influenced his work by no means compromised his status as a true master."