Suffering and Sunset: World War I in the Art and Life of Horace Pippin

by Celeste-Marie Bernier

Overview

For self-made artist and soldier Horace Pippin—who served in the 369th all-black infantry in World War I until he was wounded—war provided a formative experience that defined much of his life and work. His ability to transform combat service into canvases of emotive power, psychological depth, and realism showed not only how he viewed the world but also his mastery as a painter. In Suffering and Sunset, Celeste-Marie Bernier painstakingly traces Pippin’s life story of art as a life story of war. 

Illustrated with more than sixty photographs, including works in various mediums—many in full color—this is the first intellectual history and cultural biography of Pippin. Working from newly discovered archives and unpublished materials, Bernier provides an in-depth investigation into the artist’s development of an alternative visual and textual lexicon and sheds light on his work in its aesthetic, social, and political contexts.

Suffering and Sunset illustrates Pippin’s status as a groundbreaking artist as it shows how this African American painter suffered from but also staged many artful resistances to racism in a white-dominated art world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439912744
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	11/13/2017
Edition description:	1
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Celeste-Marie Bernier is Professor of African American Studies at the University of Nottingham, England. She is the author of Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination and African American Visual Arts: From Slavery to the Present.

Editorial Reviews

"Celeste-Marie Bernier has written a sweeping account of the art, life, and time of Horace Pippin, one that brings unprecedented color to and a clear understanding of an under-represented American artist. The voluminous research in Suffering and Sunset takes the reader beyond the realm of art to establish a broad historical base that includes issues of race and identity in American culture. The book gives an unbiased biographical account of the artist’s everyday activities, much of which is drawn from Pippin’s war diary and his day-to-day transactions with his art dealer. Salient among Bernier’s observations about Pippin’s art and his long journey as a World War I soldier in Europe are the extraordinary experiences he endured in the pursuit of his artistry, some of which were purely racist in nature. Relying heavily on Pippin’s own personal account of his life as an artist, Bernier paints an indelible word picture of the pain, struggle, and triumph of one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century." 
—David C. Driskell, Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park


“Bernier painstakingly examines Pippin’s manuscripts, paintings, and sketches to show how his meager written legacy casts revealing light on his other works…. The author analyzes Pippin’s work in exhaustive…detail, comparing the scant information of his wartime experience with the stark monotones in his paintings…. [The] in-depth analyses [are] filled with learned conjecture.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2015-06-01
Why understanding the art of Horace Pippin (1888-1946) requires an understanding of his experiences in World War I. Bernier (African-American Studies/Univ. of Nottingham; Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination, 2012, etc.) painstakingly examines Pippin's manuscripts, paintings, and sketches to show how his meager written legacy casts revealing light on his other works. His handwritten and typewritten works demonstrate what may well have been a learning disability, which was also suggested by his schoolboy illustrations of words that he couldn't spell. His art was reborn after his service in a black combat unit in the trenches, and he persevered despite a disabling wound to his right arm. The 100 or so drawings he made at that time are lost, supposedly to censors. However, the censors couldn't stop his mind from creating pictures, and he proved to be an excellent memory painter. Bernier attempts to categorize the artist's work as naif or folk art or to dub him "self-taught" as opposed to "self-made." Pippin was "discovered" fully 10 years after the war, and the question of his work before then goes unanswered, save one disputed painting. The few letters from him to his dealer, Robert Carlen, who "represented Pippin's artistry as indivisible from his disability," and collector Albert Barnes offer little but a glimpse of a man who avoided sharing his personal life. The author analyzes Pippin's work in exhaustive—and sometimes exhausting—detail, comparing the scant information of his wartime experience with the stark monotones in his paintings. The highly repetitive, wordy nature of the writing presents a challenge to readers to forge through in-depth analyses filled with learned conjecture and academic speculation. The temptation to skip through sections is understandable. Likely useful for scholars of art history, but general readers will find the book to be too dense and prolix.

Kirkus Reviews