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Lot Essay
In an accompanying note, Winfred Rembert remembers, “This is one form of cleaning cotton rows before they bloom its called chopping on weading which means getting all the grass before it gets big enough to kill the cotton. W.R.”
Cleaning Cotton recalls Rembert’s childhood when he and his mother worked on a plantation in Cuthbert. He describes their days of picking cotton from sunup to sundown, “It’s called From Cain’t to Cain’t. You can’t see when you go, and you can’t see when you come back.” (Winfred Rembert, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South (New York, 2021), p. 17). The present work departs from his scenes of bright white cotton plants. Instead, he uses varying shades of green to capture the younger cotton plants. In the background, homes of the workers are fenced off and set back in the distance; they are inaccessible until the day’s work is complete. In the foreground, the figures lean prominently into their work, and the repetitive colors and patterns of their clothes further intertwine the group. Rembert masterfully captures the force with which they work to create a powerful, dynamic scene of the oppression they faced.
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Winfred Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. Rembert was born into the Jim Crow South where he grew up picking cotton and peanuts. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Rembert’s biography Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.
Cleaning Cotton recalls Rembert’s childhood when he and his mother worked on a plantation in Cuthbert. He describes their days of picking cotton from sunup to sundown, “It’s called From Cain’t to Cain’t. You can’t see when you go, and you can’t see when you come back.” (Winfred Rembert, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South (New York, 2021), p. 17). The present work departs from his scenes of bright white cotton plants. Instead, he uses varying shades of green to capture the younger cotton plants. In the background, homes of the workers are fenced off and set back in the distance; they are inaccessible until the day’s work is complete. In the foreground, the figures lean prominently into their work, and the repetitive colors and patterns of their clothes further intertwine the group. Rembert masterfully captures the force with which they work to create a powerful, dynamic scene of the oppression they faced.
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Winfred Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. Rembert was born into the Jim Crow South where he grew up picking cotton and peanuts. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Rembert’s biography Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.