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Lot Essay
Everybody’s Got a Right to the Tree of Life is an striking work by Thornton Dial that impresses in its composition, scale and message. The present work directly relates to another Dial by the same title, now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (acc. no. 1993-150-1). Each title and composition references the African American spiritual “Run, Mary, Run”. A spiritual is a tradition of song born from enslaved peoples in an expression of religion, shared experience, trauma and fight for freedom, and as Rachel Elizabeth Harding explains, “This tension – between the suffering body and the sacred body; the despised body and the cherished body – is lived out in the creation and perpetuation of the spirituals” (“You Got a Right to the Tree of Life: African American Spirituals and Religions in the Diaspora”, Crosscurrents, vol. 57, no. 2 (2007), p. 279).
The two works, in their similarities and differences, describe this tension and are a validation of the Black person’s struggles. They may also signify a transition in Dial’s oeuvre, which Thomas McEvilley explains as “first, that of the oppressed colonial artist feeling he lacked the license that gives access to the means of representation, and then that of the self-liberating postcolonial remaking the image-realm for his own purposes” (Thomas McEvilley, “Proud-Stepping Tiger: History as Struggle in the Work of Thornton Dial”, Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger, eds. Harriet Whelchel, Margaret Donovan (New York, 1993), p. 16). In Philadelphia’s work, Dial presents an “ungraceful tiger”, a rather plain woman, and a horse against a background of trees speckled with faces and eyes. The present work focuses in on the trees, bold against a dense background of faces. In the absence of the figures and the tiger, a self-reflective figure loosely based on the artist's own life and the challenges facing African American men in the South, Dial expresses a stronger and more confident message of validation. Three fully realized figures can be found in the trunks of the purple, red and blue trees. Here, Dial presents the Black person as an integral part of the Tree of Life – a celebration and confirmation of the sacred Black body.
With thanks to The Fine Art Group for their collaboration on Things Grow in the United States: Works from the Collection of Jane Fonda.
The two works, in their similarities and differences, describe this tension and are a validation of the Black person’s struggles. They may also signify a transition in Dial’s oeuvre, which Thomas McEvilley explains as “first, that of the oppressed colonial artist feeling he lacked the license that gives access to the means of representation, and then that of the self-liberating postcolonial remaking the image-realm for his own purposes” (Thomas McEvilley, “Proud-Stepping Tiger: History as Struggle in the Work of Thornton Dial”, Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger, eds. Harriet Whelchel, Margaret Donovan (New York, 1993), p. 16). In Philadelphia’s work, Dial presents an “ungraceful tiger”, a rather plain woman, and a horse against a background of trees speckled with faces and eyes. The present work focuses in on the trees, bold against a dense background of faces. In the absence of the figures and the tiger, a self-reflective figure loosely based on the artist's own life and the challenges facing African American men in the South, Dial expresses a stronger and more confident message of validation. Three fully realized figures can be found in the trunks of the purple, red and blue trees. Here, Dial presents the Black person as an integral part of the Tree of Life – a celebration and confirmation of the sacred Black body.
With thanks to The Fine Art Group for their collaboration on Things Grow in the United States: Works from the Collection of Jane Fonda.