In the autumn
of 1992, returning again from Atlanta, Riggs decided to stop in
the town of Centre, Alabama to look for Myrtice West. Though he
had read a brief biography of her in the booklet Outsider Artists
in Alabama published by the Alabama State Council on the Arts,
he knew nothing more about her, had not seen her artwork, and intended
to expend no great effort in the pursuit. He found her, and nine
hours later his life had changed, though he didn’t know how
much. Like visitors before him, Riggs offered to buy a painting
from the Revelations Series, and West, as always, refused. Nevertheless,
Riggs left with several of her other paintings in his car.
In the course
of many visits over the next year, West and Riggs became good friends.
Nothing in their lives had prepared these two, so far apart in background,
education, and age, for caring about each other, but they did. Riggs
had grown up in a respected Memphis family—the son and grandson
of prominent physicians, educated at the city’s best prep
school and a 1982 graduate of Yale. He had worked for 10 years as
a photojournalist for the New York Times and the Associated
Press, had co-authored four books, and owned a small, successful
publishing company. He was 32 years old. West, age 69, grew up in
poor, isolated northeast Alabama and had left school in the eighth
grade. She had never flown in an airplane and believed in an inerrant,
literal Bible.
Though
he had early hopes that she would
sell him at least one of the paintings from the Revelations Series,
Riggs came to agree with West that the thirteen paintings should
stay together. Even if she did decide to sell them, Riggs didn’t
have the money to purchase the whole group, but among the topics
they discussed was the idea of publishing a book on the paintings.
West knew that Riggs was a publisher, although he assured her that
art books were quite far from the quirky paperback titles on his
list. The prospect of a book, however, may have contributed to West’s
decision in the fall of 1993, when she called to tell him that she
wanted to sell the series. Her grandson had enrolled in college,
the family van was in danger of being repossessed, and the time
had come to let go of the paintings.
Although it
was a daunting fiscal consideration, Riggs had little time to think
about the transaction; West had a long-standing offer for the paintings
from an Alabama folk-art dealer. He advised West to contact an area
lawyer to arrange a sale by sealed bid. In November, West and her
attorney selected Riggs’ proposal, which included a best-efforts
clause to keep the series intact and to publish a book. Six years
later, Wonders to Behold fulfills that intention.
Meanwhile, in
the spring of 1993, students in museum studies at the University
of Memphis organized an exhibition of selections from unusual local
collections entitled Consuming Passions. Rollin Riggs first
came to light as a passionate collector of black velvet Elvis paintings,
but the students were more fascinated by his collection of works
by self-taught artists such as Finster, Jim Sudduth, B. F. Perkins,
Hawkins Bolden, Henry Speller, and two remarkable paintings by West—a
copy of a painting in the Revelations Series and the first painting
from her Ezekiel Series. In the exhibition at The University of
Memphis Art Museum, which was filled with all manner of strange
and wondrous things from Memphis collectors, these two paintings
attracted attention and admiration. Later that year, when Riggs
acquired the Revelations Series, he asked if the Art Museum would
be interested in a show.
The museum was
able to adjust its calendar for a show from December 1995 through
January 1996 entitled Revelation: The Paintings of Myrtice West.
One of Riggs’ primary objectives was to publish a catalog,
a goal shared by the Art Museum, but the main impediment was identifying
an essayist who could provide a credible scholarly interpretation
of the Revelations Series. From the museum’s perspective,
the standard-issue biographical sob story used to explicate self-taught
artists and their work was unacceptable. The subject matter—Revelation,
with its links to creation and recreation narratives throughout
the Old and New Testaments—should offer considerable scope
for scholarship and interpretation, we thought. But who could deal
with it?
Dr. Carol Crown,
a historian of medieval art in The University of Memphis Art Department,
was minimally flattered and mainly alarmed to discover that she
had been chosen, so to speak, to apply her expertise in Romanesque
iconography to contemporary folk-artistic production. She resisted.
But she did agree to meet Riggs and look at the paintings and the
video Riggs had made of West explaining them. Intrigued, she went
to Centre to interview West, whose religious beliefs Crown connected
to people and ideas dimly recalled from her childhood. Crown was
captivated. Delving into realms of theology heretofore unfamiliar,
she discovered such things as dispensational premillennialism at,
and more surprisingly, just below the surface of Southern life,
including life at the University and among friends and acquaintances
in Memphis. Working at a mad pace to identify and distinguish various
millennial philosophies in contemporary theology, Crown produced
an interpretive article, “Myrtice West, The Revelations Series,
and the End Times,” that intelligently and thoughtfully elucidated
a major theme in the work of self-taught artists. The project changed
her life.
Crown, now a
historian of religious iconography in the work of self-taught artists,
accepted Riggs’ offer to be the editor of Wonders to Behold.
She had, meanwhile, written and lectured at conferences across the
country on Myrtice West’s and Howard Finster’s religious
imagery, developed an exhibition project, and taught seminars on
self-taught artists. Riggs’ idea for the book was to find
thirteen or so essayists—folklorists, artists, religious scholars,
art critics, collectors—who would live with one of the paintings
for a few months and then write about it. This became Crown’s
project, and in the process, she met and worked with the pioneer
researchers of and writers on self-taught art, as well as newcomers
to the realm.
Chuck Rosenak,
author of essential guidebooks to American self-taught artists,
collaborated with Ann Oppenhimer, founder of the Folk Art Society
of America, on the biographical introduction
to Myrtice West. George Fowler, former Roman Catholic priest and
well-known writer on spiritual matters, addresses the first
painting emphasizing West’s approach to cosmic, archetypal
truths. Lee Kogan, director of the Folk Art Institute at New York’s
Museum of American Folk Art, compares the second
painting to part of Handel’s Messiah inspired by
the same biblical passages. Norman Girardot, a professor of
comparative religions and scholar of popular culture and contemporary
visionary art, focuses on West’s third
painting in relation to violent and cosmic cinematic confrontations
between good and evil.
Ben Apfelbaum, a folk art scholar, writer, curator, and appraiser,
discusses West’s fourth
painting in terms of an educational aid for the saving of souls,
describing the work as a charming but matter-of-fact visual transcription
of Revelation. Founder and director of the American Visionary Art
Museum in Baltimore, Rebecca Hoffberger offers a complex, gently
feminist interpretation of the fifth painting, Woman
on the Moon Giving Birth to Christ. Miriam Fowler, head
of Education, Outreach and Public Programs at the Birmingham Museum
of Art and one of the first “insiders” to discover West’s
“outsider” art, discusses the sixth
painting of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden
in terms of the artist’s experience of relations between husbands
and wives in her own marriage and in her daughter’s. Howard
Finster, in a tape-recorded discussion of West’s seventh
painting, emphasizes the terrifying responsibility for an artist
of being true to God’s word and talks about the fulfillment
of John’s prophecy in the twentieth century.
Folklorist,
curator, and writer Roger Manley selected West’s
most striking and original painting, Satan Takes Over,
in which the complicated narrative structure is contained within
the face of Satan as it came to West in a vivid, horrifying dream.
Tom Patterson, a writer and independent curator, offers a carefully
drawn visual comparison of West’s ninth painting, Song
of Moses, with the cinematic drama of chapters 14-16 of
Revelation. Visionary artist and biblical scholar Norbert Kox analyzes
the passages that inspired West’s tenth painting, Mother
of Harlots, and provides both a historical and a contemporary
interpretation that identifies New York as the secular Babylon and
the Vatican as the religious Babylon.
Benjamin G.
Wright, III, a scholar of early Christian and Judaic religion, explains
West’s Revelation paintings, grounded in dispensational Christianity,
as her personal method of “actualizing…the power of
the myth” of God’s deliverance. Appropriately, Charles
Reagan Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Southern
Culture at the University of Mississippi, discusses West’s
imagery in terms of the development of premillennial Christian thinking
in the post-Civil War South. Gary Schwindler, an artist, teacher,
and writer, takes an art critical approach to the final painting,
Christ
and Bride Coming into Wedding, discussing it in terms of
composition, color, and West’s use of the elements of earth,
air, fire, and water.
Wonders
to Behold: The Visionary Art of Myrtice West is itself the
realization of a vision shared by Myrtice West and Rollin Riggs
and shepherded by Carol Crown. Beyond the various fascinating perspectives
presented by the authors on West’s masterly artistic achievement,
the book provides proof that self-taught art is a rich field for
investigation and interpretation.
If Myrtice
West’s Revelations Series saves a single soul, beyond her
own, it will have achieved her objective. As a result of the recognition
afforded by this book and exhibitions of her work, the opportunities
are far greater than they might otherwise have been. Rollin Riggs,
with Carol Crown’s dedicated assistance and the insights of
over a dozen generous essayists, has brought Myrtice West’s
message and her artistry to a world that has often recognized the
power, but rarely understood the complexity, of religious self-taught
art.
Leslie
L. Luebbers, Director
Art Museum of the University of Memphis
Excerpted from Wonders to Behold: The Visionary Art of Myrtice
West. Copyright © Mustang Publishing Company, Inc.
Reproduced with permission.
