In Black America; Blacks In Art with John T. Biggers

That's my Life and see you later. I'm John Hansen, join me this week on In Black America when we examine Black art with noted artists John T. Biggers. And I can remember observing these as a very small child, I was my first experience, and then in the public schools, and then finally, noted artists John T. Biggers this week on In Black America. This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

He collects, he pushes the meaning of the art of what we call the folk artists, because out of the folk, out of the folk musician of Beethoven was born. Out of the folk, we all rise, this is the meaning of the earth, you see, this is how it takes place, through interested patrons who see the genius, the magnificence, the beauty and bring this forward. And that's how it has to be done. You can see the establishment has never done that. This is done by individual, we have strong convictions. Thirty-seven years ago, John Biggers arrived in Newton, Texas to found a department of art at what was then the Texas State University for Negroes, today known as Texas Southern University.

Now, three decades later, the impact of John Biggers is clear, and that Texas Southern University has produced some of the world's brightest artists. In May of 1983, John Biggers retired after 34 years of instilling his philosophy to the students. He now wants to devote the rest of his life to his love of art. I'm John Hanson, and this week, I focus on Blacks in art, with noted artists John Biggers in Black America. It was a matter of what we thought was opportunity. Texas Southern University was a new school, completely new from the ground up. They wanted to develop an art program. This gave a young man an opportunity to develop an art program from the ground. There were no traditions, there were no preliminaries. So I felt that a new school like this gave an opportunity that older schools would dare traditions and restrictions you wouldn't offer.

You see, that's why that's really what was the point. Artists John Biggers certainly ranks as a major black artist, the fact that he is black is significant, but definitely secondary. John Biggers is unquestionably the most important black artists to have lived in Texas. Born on April 13th, 1924 in Gastonia, North Carolina, John Biggers graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1954 with a doctor's degree in education. In August of 1949, he accepted the challenge of organizing a Department of Art at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. At Texas Southern University, there was little understanding among the administration and the faculty as to when an art department should be. The only member of the TSU Art Department that first year was Joseph Mack, a classmate of Biggers at Hamston Institute. The first problem for the new art department was getting students. Young black Texans in the early 1950s had seldom been exposed to any form of art.

And they segregated public schools. What type of tools did you bring to Texas Southern? I started a program. I brought the souls of my feet and hands. Well if you read a publication by Mr. Sam's who was our first sculptor, Mr. Sam's and our attempted to address these problems in this publication, and we faced a situation in which there was no equipment, there was really nothing, there was no buildings. And even though it was a state school at that time, they did not provide the fundamental and basic elements that was needed to carry on in our program. So it was a matter of two people inventing almost building from the ground up without anything. But that was an opportunity and it's time grow things changed.

I think we developed a rich program. Were there students interested in art and Texas Southern? Yes, we had ten students and actually you had to have a minimum of ten students to start a class, this was a state requirement and from the surrounding community to students came and we got started. We particularly got you interested in art. Oh, that's a real old story. As a very small child, I had, I was the life of seven children. The two older brothers, the boys could copy and paint the works. And I can remember observing these as a very small child, I was my first experiences. And then in the public schools and then finally, at Hampton Institute, I had my very first art experience now ran into an imminent calling teacher, Victor Lornfell, who gave us an attitude and a philosophy about what art was and how we should create out of our experiences.

We limiting ourselves and we think of art, we think of drawing in painters, we don't think of sculptures, ceramics, needlework. Actually, yeah, and I should have even answered that question in another way. My first real experience was actually to help cut out small triangles and squares of quilted material that we saw mothers and aunts and sisters make quilts of. This was bringing together many, many aspects and symbols into a unit, and that's what art is. It's bringing things together, bringing materials together, ideas to create a new entity. This is what art is about. And that really was some of the first experiences, living in an environment that we characterize as rural, all people who live that we have to put together things to make life go. This is art.

What this represents, that organization represents life and spirituality. This is art, you see what I mean? The whole community made up of people's great desire to produce a life with some merit, some spirituality, that quality to sow a bow just the material in the mundane, as we just heard the people of Staya singing. This kind of ensemble, where different people in the community came together and sang and they really created something like a living cathedral. This is art, and we are all familiar with this in our environments. This is a typical kind of expression of great beauty and pognency and portrait when we listened up Staya's and these people bringing the best that they had together to produce an organization and a unity, a concept that was unified to express the group spirit of

ascension. You see what I mean? So this was really the first kind of art experience. In 1960, black Americans became aware of their heritage. Before that time, was there an appreciation for African art in America? There's always been an appreciation, let us say, in terms of more specialized people. But this is also true with American art. This is true with European art. It was thought that art was created for the leisure class. This is a concept that comes down through the ages. You see, now, our African societies were very different. Art was more than just an aesthetic thing there. It was actually a hard-glyphical for information. The African art in an African community represents what a computer represents our society today. It was a storehouse of knowledge and information. And when it was used in different ceremonies, it was used to express different ideas and

to give information. You see what I mean? In American society, where art came out of European culture that had come down from the kings and queens and royalty when it reached America, we first thought it was far of the few, the rich, the powerful. So we had to grow and progress toward a common denominator where we want to give all people a higher quality of life and more spirituality. Is there a difference between art, general art, and black art? No, let us say the difference is this, that just as you have Japanese art, you have Mexican art here in Texas. You have African American art here in Texas.

But some of the things that you heard of today as has a uniqueness and originality that you wouldn't find in another kind of choir. If a Mexican choir or a German American choir would come together, they would not make music that way. It has some characteristics that identify ethnically with a culture that is evolved over many, many years. It deals with certain peculiarities, that deals with originality in that particular way. So it is the same when we use the term black art, it really isn't the best term that you can use to describe a people because it's much more complex than that. But if you think in terms of color, the characterized art movements and cultures, just as then we'd have to call American Indian art red art, you see what I mean, the red man. We're going to say, oh, Oriental art is yellow art because we characterize Oriental as

a yellow people. But you see how flimsy it is because. But nevertheless, these are labels that we live on, they live with every day. So the title black art, we can look at it positive or odd in there. And I look at it in a positive manner because as far as I'm concerned, there are only three colors anyway, red, black and white. And out of blackness comes the mystery and all colors come out of black, you see what I mean? So it's not a negative phrase for me, do you see? And I see not only the universe of characteristics in black art that is in all art, but I see it as the mother that all things have come out of it, just as we have in a sale, biologically speaking, out of that sale, it sells separates, breaks into two, then the four, you see, same thing. The institution of slavery prevented many blacks from becoming painters.

Scipio Morehead, generally regarded as a practitioner of history painting and Robert S. Duncan's son who painted landscapes, demonstrate the motif chosen by early black artists. Scott remains diverse, however. Some black artists joined the movement towards the left in art in the 1930s. Others looked to African art for their inspiration, while still others explored more deeply Native American scenes. John Bigger's did both. In the late 1950s, he was already an up and coming young artists on the black American art scene, before long his vision would broaden reaching to the African continent. As with most artists, Bigger's style has changed over the years. His art is simpler and more direct. It is filled with symbols and hidden meanings. The color he uses are basic, mute earth tones, white and black and reds, with some greens and blues thrown in here and there. John Bigger's national reputation as an artist educator is towering, and his achievements

are remarkable. He has written a number of periodicals and books. This has been commissioned to do a number of murals, and his work is on exhibition in a number of art galleries around this nation. When John Bigger's left Pennsylvania for youth in Texas in 1949 to find the art department of Texas Southern University, he was faced with familical obstacles, inadequate facilities and supplies, administrative indifference and a strong resistance from other blacks, even the students. What was particularly important to you for your instructors to be practicing artists? I don't believe a person could teach a medicine if he wasn't a doctor. I don't think a musician could teach people to play instruments that are deal with music in any way unless they can play music. I mean, you know, the question, I don't know what that is. Were your students more appreciative of the instructors since they knew they had someone

who was actually practicing their craft? I think so. I think you couldn't appreciate it, it's no good otherwise. Was it difficult in getting your students to appreciate their work since your problem with an infant program in Texas? But not, I'm sorry, I didn't get to last. An infant program, a Texas program. Oh, I think that the kids are simply were waiting for somebody to inspire them no matter where they came from, you know. So they accepted us and that was also, you always have the opposites, you know what I mean? You had a number of people who were enthusiastic and a lot of people who weren't. These we had to try to convince us, time went on. Being an educator is art still perceived as one of the major cultural forms in our public schools in your opinion? It's considered a major cultural form, I don't know what it is. How it's priority stacks up at others. That's, I mean, that's the point.

I think everybody would recognize that art is a cultural form, it's important for old people, but it's priority, I don't know how it falls and my experiences with typical traditional educators, it was not on the priorities. Being a Texas Southern for over three decades, are there any commission works in which you produce, that you particularly have a fondness for, bring back fond memories in doing that particular work? Could you tell us about some of them? Yes, I showed you something today, but my very first work in Houston was commissioned by Mrs. Dupre and she had people, the community to come together to put up an old folks home to take care of the Egypt and she asked our department to produce murals and sculptures for that home and we work with the architects and we design murals for the general work room in cafeteria where the elders spent most of their waking hours and our sculptor, Mr.

C.M.'s, he designed a sculpture or fountain to go in the front of the building on the lawns there and we felt that this was one of the truly greatest contributions we could make by doing this because this would bring a high quality of life to our old people and we're outstanding artists at that time, painted the mural in, oh I'm sorry I can't remember his name, I was a public building there in Houston but he spoke very highly of the work that we were doing and it's important because we did this art for people to give a truly qualitative meaning of life to these old people as they said in their last days so it was very serious with us. So the very first commission was an important one and maybe my most important one.

The second commission was an important one, it was about black women's contribution to American life and we did in the blue triangle branch of the YWCA building in Houston. The third full fifth one, I don't know any that I didn't really consider important, actually if they weren't important I couldn't have done them because I had to work out of my gut and spirit. I don't do anything mechanically, you see what I mean and I figure really I think all of them are very important, they were the most important thing for me to do at that particular time. Are there any artists today and why you were anticipating on becoming artists that particularly struck your fans of being good artists or something that you would like to try to create similar to theirs? Yes, there were many, Hale Woodruff who was a Atlanta University and started one of the national exhibits for, for we kids to participate in, Hale was a great mural painter. He painted murals of Talladega, University of Alabama that we all knew about.

This was an ideal in design also in narration that we all were inspired by. Charles White was a great painter. He painted murals at Hampton Institute in Chicago in the rest. Yeah, we idealized this man. We wanted to be like him, we wanted to be a technician like him. We wanted to try to deal with monumental forms like he did. And yes, and Betty Catlett and that was Joshua Johnston and that was all, there were many many artists. There are hundreds of artists that we emulated that we were at first we didn't know anything about and as we discovered that these artists were some of the greatest artists that America had produced. But we knew it was in the group, universal art, you see, you asked me a question a few minutes ago. And when David Driscoll put together 200 years of black art to travel to several major museums during the by Centennial in 1976, here America was shocked to know it had such a rich

heritage that our Afro-American artists had created monuments to American culture and civilization. And these things weren't created by anybody else. But here was another depth, another meaning to American life and civilization. Yeah, there were many, many idols and I still have many idols that inspired me daily. Do you recall any students that have gone on to gang recognition and achievement nationally from your studies at Texas something? We have a few and my attitude is that we only had one that would be enough. Coming all of us is a well-known painter throughout the United States and Europe. He came to attention over two decades ago when he finished college, one of the top galleries in Houston exhibited his work and has exhibited his work since.

And every exhibit he has, well, that's every year, every two years, he sells 99% of his work, collectors, a week to get his work. We've had a whole lot of great students. I could say they name you three dozen, but yes, we produced artists who have received national and national recognition as painters, sculptors, weavers in all of the media. You mentioned that there was a shock in 1976 because a lot of people didn't know about the wealth of talent that Black America has. Is that still true today, our Black artists been a fourth of the opportunity to display their works in galleries across the country? It is gradually taking place. It has not opened up yet. We still don't. You see the marvelous paintings that are here next door there. I doubt very seriously that a great number, great numbers of the public of San Antonio really

know these artists. And I just hope that this happens more. It's a matter of the public becoming aware of originality, the lyrical values of originality that is around them, that they daily walk over, that they step over. But I think that this is one of the important things about collectors and patrons, like Dr. Pears, that he attempts to bring unknown artists to the public. He collects, he pushes the meaning of what we call the folk artists, because out of the folk, out of the folk musician of Beethoven was born. You see what I mean? Out of the folk, we all rise. This is the meaning of the earth, you see. This is how it takes place. Through interested patrons who see the genius, the magnificence, the beauty, and bring this forward.

And that's how it has to be done. You see the establishment has never done that. This is done by individual who have strong convictions. So you saying that still is the need for local arts alliances? So yes, from our own means. And then there's the great necessity that we have of patrons and people who are interested who will bring forth these things. This is how it has to be done. It's always done that way. Is a college education necessary to actually gain or try to find knowledge that you need to know to be an accomplished artist? One of our great artists, I do think his name right now wrote a book saying that colleges could never produce any great artists. Do you concur? Do you concur? To some extent. It's a card to the vision, the vision in the program. If your administrators are humanists and visionaries, it can happen. If they believe in only certain kinds of academic traditional concepts, no, it won't. So it's left to the vision of the people who've run it.

Is there a particular style of art in which you enjoyed doing better over others? Well, I have a definite style, and it's changed a little bit, but basically it's remained the same. And it falls in some category, let us say, of symbolic expressionism. And this is very closely related to African art, deals in value, value relationships rather than a world of visual perspective. It has to do with conceptual art, the whole modern movement of conceptual art has grown out of. There's the whole concept of action painting grew out of this. You see, all of the modern movements grew out of this kind of world of value relations, you see, which was in opposition to the visual analysis of space that characterized European painting. You see? So I go into that category, even though a lot of my work is very visual. Why is John Bigger's state active since retiring from education?

Well, that's life. That's a view on active you did. So I had my rebirth today that I retire. No, I'm finally finding the time to do art. I wanted to do this when I finished college. That was impossible. I had to make a living. So today, since I retired, and I do have enough retirement money to give me the necessities, I can paint all day now. That's what I always wanted to do. Are you working at any particular works at the present time? Yeah, I'm working all the time. She tells about it. I've got about 10, 15 paintings going at the same time. Yeah, I work for four to eight hours a day, sometimes 16 hours in a day. I've got a lot of work to do. And I'm enjoying it. I look forward to my work every day. Any advice for a young, inspiring black artists, painters, sculptures? Yeah, get it in work, paint, sculpt, that's the only thing to do it. Get it in, do it.

Because this is how you want to understand them, say, let's just want to know how you understand the extension of your own creative powers. This is what art is, you see what I mean? And it's transferable. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to become a great artist. It might mean you become a great mathematician, a great scientist. You see a great actor, a television announcer. You see creativity is creativity, and you need it for all endeavours in life. And to start drawing and painting and doing pottery and sculpture might be the opening. This might get the juices flowing to become something else, but it's fire, do you see? Because we want creative people. A world of coaching quality is developed by creative people. And it doesn't matter what fields they get. That might be harder for you.

noted artists John T. Bigger's retired chairman of the Texas Southern University's art department. If you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette copy of this program write us the address is in Black America Longhorn Radio Network UT Austin Austin Texas 787-12 that address again is in Black America Longhorn Radio Network UT Austin Austin Texas 787-12 for in Black America's technical producer Cliff Hargrove I'm John Hanson. Join us next week. You've been listening to in Black America reflections of the Black

experience in American society in Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station this is the Longhorn Radio Network