UNTITLED (BIRDS, DOG AND MAN WITH GREEN CONSTRUCTION)

Untitled (Birds, Dog and Man with Green Construction) is an exceptional work, revealing Bill Traylor’s mastery over space, his subject matter and his media. Traylor was born into slavery and after a lifetime on a plantation, moved to Montgomery, Alabama. There, from a doorstep on Monroe Street, he rendered starkly modernist images of lively animals, vibrant landscapes and animated interactions. With the figures’ reductive forms and the inclusion of an abstracted structural element, Untitled (Birds, Dog and Man with Green Construction) exhibits the classic trademarks of Traylor. This work is similar to a group of green pencil construction compositions by Traylor, all of which incorporate an abstracted structure likely inspired by the Court Square Fountain in Montgomery (see Leslie Umberger, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor Washington, D.C., 2018, pp. 192-3, pls. 44-46). The tiered element visually recalls the fountain, while the two birds perched above would have been a familiar sight. Historian Betty Kuyk draws similarities between Traylor’s composition and the ubanga nyama from the Lengola people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The ubanga nyama is a large structure erected after the death of an elder and it serves as a sacred place where the community can call upon spirits for support and guidance. Kuyk argues that the birds and dog are physically and spiritually connected with it, while the man at right is almost, but not quite a part of this transcendent ecosystem: “The ancestor figure must first receive the invocation from humankind” (Betty M. Kuyk, African Voices in the African American Heritage (Bloomington, 2003), p. 195).