#sam gilliam
Norfolk KeelsbySam Gilliam, at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk Virginia.
The work comprises large panels of draped, unstretched canvas painted with acrylics. The panels are suspended from the skylight in the museum’s Huber Court. It was commissioned for the space in 1998.
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Color Color . Form Sashay. Love Sam Gilliam’s work full of Freedom..
“ I was free to try anything i wanted to do i was free to be easy or mysterious , free to be the artist I wanted to be” Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam is and lyrical abstractionist artist also a associate of the Washington Color School. “
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Sam Gilliam
10/27/69, 1969
For Gilliam, “the year 1968 was one of revelation … something was in the air, and it was in that spirit that I did the Drape paintings.” The works’ tension and free fall—subject to forces beyond the artist’s control—paralleled the social turmoil of the time.
As a Black artist Gilliam deliberately worked against what non-Black people deemed “Black art.”**** Unlike many of his peers, he refrained from literal depictions or messages in his art. He was committed to abstraction, stating, “the expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political. My work is as political as it is formal.” Gilliam’s titles refer to historical and artistic events alike: 10/27/69 marks the date he completed this painting, against the backdrop of mass demonstrations protesting the Vietnam War. Revised text (edits marked with ****) from MoMA NY.
