Photograph: Tenant House Near Havana, Alabama, William Christenberry
WORDS Caroline Taylor
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1936, the life and career of William Christenberry traces not only the development of an influential artist but also a period of historical change and evolution. Raised in a strong Southern family with value placed on religion and work ethic, the Christenberrys struggled for a middle-class life. A young William grew up in Tuscaloosa, close to the campus of the University of Alabama - where he often watched the football team practice in the fields near his home. Summers were spent in Hale County, where his grandparents lived (the Christenberry side near Stewart, and his maternal side, the Smiths, near Akron).
1954 marked a year of change in the South, with Brown vs. Board of Education integrating the schools and Martin Luther King Jr. taking his post at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On a national scale, plans for a new interstate system were unveiled. Urban sprawl followed with more powerful cars produced, affordable homes, and the rise of a suburban and shopping center culture. City centers and downtowns declined as populations spread into developing rural areas.
In this same year, William Christenberry began his undergraduate studies in Studio Art at the University of Alabama. The early 1950s were marked by the Abstract Expressionist movement - a voice rampant in New York, and strong enough to reach throughout the nation. Artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko dominated – yet younger artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg and Cy Twombly were on the rise. Theories and practices of these artists were taught at the university level – giving students exposure to cutting edge theories and concepts. Christenberry was no exception, in 1955 beginning a practice of abstract painting. Pop Art would soon follow – a movement that embraced the signage and commercial elements in Christenberry’s later photographs.
By 1958 the country was becoming prosperous: Explorer 1 launched the year before kicking off the Space Race, and television and evening news became part of family life. Christenberry began his graduate studies at the University of Alabama, and one teacher, Mel Price, a transplant from New York, became a strong influence. Price recommended Christenberry read James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – a book that grew out of a 1936 assignment for Fortune magazine to capture the desolate state of sharecroppers and their families in the rural deep South. The book, originally published in 1941, would forever change Christenberry’s view on his native state - one passage in particular by Agee summarizes the essence of Christenberry’s work from this point forward:
“If I could do it, I’d do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and excrement… A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.””
In the same year Price introduced Christenberry to the artist Marcel Duchamp – whose practice of appropriation of the readymade is arguably the most influential development on artistic process. Also in this year, William turned to his childhood gift of a Kodak Brownie camera to capture the light and color of the Alabama he now saw as subject matter worthy of national attention (images he would appropriate as his artworks).
In 1961 William Christenberry moved to New York City for one year. Working multiple jobs to make ends meet, he faced a dry-spell in which he made no artwork. However, this period marked one of development as he became a student of the New York art world - frequenting museums and galleries (as well as West Village jazz clubs). He developed a friendship with Walker Evans, then the senior editor at Fortune, who told Christenberry on their first meeting “Young man, if you ever have any desire to do anything with this material that you possess in your head, I would hope that you would consult with me first.” The two remained close friends until Evans’ death in 1975.
Christenberry moved to Memphis in 1962 for a position as a professor at Memphis State University. In Memphis he met William Eggleston – another Southern photographer marked by a discovery of Walker Evans’ work (Eggleston also was known to carry a copy of Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment). The two were instant friends and remained influential to each other throughout their careers. Eggleston’s 1976 solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, confirmed color “snapshot-like” photography as a respected art form.
In 1968 Christenberry moved to Washington, DC with his wife, and they would soon after have children. By the time of his move, he had developed a clear vision of his subject matter and strong understanding of its history.
William Christenberry is the recipient of numerous awards including the Lyndhurst Foundation Prize (1982); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984); the Alabama Prize (1989) and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa (1998). He is included in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Commonplace opens October 8 and runs through October 31, 2014 at Triumph & Disaster Gallery. For information, visit www.triumphdisastergallery.com or the gallery located at 505 Cloverdale Road, Unit 102 at The A&P in Old Cloverdale.