id: 154832
accession number: 1989.411
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1989.411
updated: 2024-03-26 02:00:06.726000
House and Car, near Akron, Alabama, 1981. William Christenberry (American, 1936–2016). Chromogenic process color print (Ektacolor); image: 44.3 x 56 cm (17 7/16 x 22 1/16 in.); paper: 49.7 x 60.9 cm (19 9/16 x 24 in.); matted: 61 x 71.1 cm (24 x 28 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchased with a grant from the NEA and matched by contributions from Museum members in 1989 1989.411
title: House and Car, near Akron, Alabama
title in original language:
series:
series in original language:
creation date: 1981
creation date earliest: 1981
creation date latest: 1981
current location:
creditline: Purchased with a grant from the NEA and matched by contributions from Museum members in 1989
copyright:
---
culture: America, 20th century
technique: chromogenic process color print (Ektacolor)
department: Photography
collection: PH - American 1951-Present
type: Photograph
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
---
CREATORS
* William Christenberry (American, 1936–2016) - artist
William Christenberry American, 1936-2016
William Christenberry investigates the land, structures, and symbols of his native Alabama. Since 1968 he has made annual sojourns to Hale County and its environs to photograph the abandoned buildings, rusted signs, kudzu-infested fields, gourd trees, old warehouses, and white country churches that inform and inspire his art. The imagery pervades his paintings, sculpture, drawings, building constructions, and installations and collectively constitutes a vernacular of symbols and signs. Memory and myth fuel Christenberry's obsessive desire to reveal and understand his roots on both personal and universal levels.
At the University of Alabama (B.F.A. in painting, 1958; M.A., 1959) Christenberry studied the works of the abstract expressionists, dadaists, and surrealists and read widely. The 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans had a profound impact on Christenberry when he came across it in 1960. As he would discover the following year when he met Evans in New York City, they had photographed many of the same Alabama subjects and shared many of the same interests and artistic concerns. The two became close friends.
Born in Tuscaloosa, Christenberry had begun taking pictures with a simple Brownie camera in 1958 as color studies for his paintings. In 1961, at the encouragement of Evans, he started to consider these snapshots as serious photographs. He purchased an 8 x 10-inch Deardorff view camera in 1977 at the suggestion of friends Caldecot Chubb and Lee Friedlander and, in 1978, began to work intermittently with a Polaroid camera.
Christenberry's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1984), a Lyndhurst Foundation prize (1982), and an honorary doctorate of arts from the Kansas City Art Institute (1983). Since 1968 he has taught painting and drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., receiving numerous awards for his contributions as an educator.
Among Christenberry's major exhibitions are the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1973), Institute of the Arts, Rice University (1982), Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth (1990), Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover (1994), and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson (1996). His publications include William Christenberry (1973), William Christenberry: Southern Photographs (1983), Of Time and Place: Walker Evans and William Christenberry (1990), William Christenberry (1994), William Christenberry: The Early Works, 1954 to 1968 (1996), and Christenberry: Reconstruction, the Art of William Christenberry (1996). Christenberry died on November 28, 2016. According to his daughter, the cause of death was complications from Alzheimer's disease. Christenberry lived in Washington, D.C. A.W.
---
measurements: Image: 44.3 x 56 cm (17 7/16 x 22 1/16 in.); Paper: 49.7 x 60.9 cm (19 9/16 x 24 in.); Matted: 61 x 71.1 cm (24 x 28 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work: edition of 25
support materials:
inscriptions:
inscription: Written in black ink on verso: "House and Car, near Akron, Alabama, 1981 printed 1985 Christenberry [signed]"
translation:
remark:
---
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Contemporary American Photographers
opening date: 1992-11-18T05:00:00
Contemporary American Photographers. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 18, 1992-January 3, 1993).
---
LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
---
PROVENANCE
---
fun fact:
digital description:
wall description:
---
RELATED WORKS
---
CITATIONS
E. H. T. "The Year in Review: Selections 1989." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 2 (1990): 38-78.
page number: p. 69, no. 71
url: www.jstor.org/stable/25160106
Hinson, Tom E. "Contemporary American Photographs: An Exhibition." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 9 (1992): 306-51.
page number: p. 346, no. 5, repr. p. 321
url: www.jstor.org/stable/25161375
Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.
page number: Reproduced: P. 124
url:
---
IMAGES