Above: Carroll Cloar’s 1976 ‘Kudzu’ — I photographed this at the Mississippi Museum of Art, in their permanent collection.
The Carroll Cloar exhibit organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and the Arkansas Arts Center, ‘The Crossroads of Memory,’ opens at the Georgia Museum of Art October 5 and runs through January 5, 2014. As the Athens Herald-Banner put it:
Brittle barn skeletons withering under the spooky creep of kudzu — it’s a scene folks living in the South know all too well. As Southern states served as vanguards of late 20th-century suburbanization, they’ve also been the last guards of old, weird America — that honest, scary netherworld known now only through sepia-toned photographs.
Through new works, the rest of the country is becoming acquainted the wild beasts that roam our swamps and backwoods. Such a rise in attention marks the perfect occasion to revisit the artists who first actualized the faithful and dark magic that permeates the region.
Unless any works have been taken out of the exhibit since it appeared at the Brooks this summer, it includes 85 works which come from both public and privately-held collections. The works include MoMA’s Autumn Conversion (1953) and the Brooks’ Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog (1964) along with others from the Met, the Whitney, Crystal Bridges, and the Hirshhorn.
Others, all appear here with media usage permission via Memphis Brooks Museum of Art:
Carroll Cloar, American 1913-1993
The Baptizing of Charlie Mae, 1978
Acrylic on Masonite
Private Collection
Copyright Estate of Carroll Cloar
Carroll Cloar, American 1913-1993
Wedding Party, 1971
Acrylic on Masonite
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art
Eugenia Buxton Whitnel Funds 73.24
Copyright Estate of Carroll Cloar
Carroll Cloar, American 1913-1993
Gibson Bayou Anthology, 1956
Casein Tempera on Masonite
Collection of Dianne and Bobby Tucker
Copyright Estate of Carroll Cloar
Carroll Cloar, American 1913-1993
My Father Was Big As A Tree, 1955
Casein Tempera on Masonite
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art;
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morrie A. Moss 55.24
Copyright Estate of Carroll Cloar
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Interestingly, his “The Little Girl from Nashville” was in Sotheby’s “American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture” auction this week and while Sotheby’s estimated the work for $12-18k, it sold at $46875.