William Christenberry, artist of a crumbling, memory-haunted South, dies at 80

[mahatmakanejeeves]

William Christenberry, artist of a crumbling, memory-haunted South, dies at 80

By Matt Schudel

November 29 

William Christenberry, whose intimate photographs of crumbling rural buildings and almost violently verdant landscape of his native Alabama made him one of the most respected and influential artists of the modern South, died Nov. 28 at a nursing home in Washington. He was 80. ... The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said a daughter, Kate Christenberry.

Mr. Christenberry — the “t” in his name is silent — began his career as a painter and for decades taught painting and drawing at Washington’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. The small photographs for which he became renowned evoke a vanishing world populated almost solely by dilapidated buildings, rusting automobiles, advertising signs, graves and vegetation growing out of control. ... Taken with a Kodak Brownie camera, the 3-by-5-inch images were an accidental art form, intended as color guides that Mr. Christenberry taped next to the easel while he worked on his expressionistic paintings. In 1960, he discovered “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” the 1941 book of photographs by Walker Evans and with a poetic text by James Agee.
....

In his 2013 book “The Storied South,” William R. Ferris, a scholar of Southern culture and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, named Mr. Christenberry one of the three most important photographers of the South, along with Evans and William Eggleston. ... “What Faulkner has done in his fiction, Christenberry has done in his photography,” Ferris wrote. “He has such a feel for what Eudora Welty called ‘the sense of place.’ ”

Along with his photography, Mr. Christenberry continued to paint, and he also made collages and small models of real and imagined architectural structures that he called “dream buildings.” He also created and rarely exhibited a “Klan room” tableau, using dozens of G.I. Joe dolls outfitted in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan, with an assortment of disturbing images of violence, including coffins and guns. ... “I hold the position that there are times when an artist must examine and reveal secret brutality,” Mr. Christenberry told The Washington Post in 1997.

Comment:

Mo Dickens
11:33 AM EST

Thank you to Mr. Schudel for this nice tribute to a great artist. Mr. Christenberry's commentary on the KKK is mentioned, and I will alert your readers that Bill's "Klan Tableau" is slated to be exhibited at MICA later this month. Mr. Christenberry was a courageous artist and as Mr. Schudel points out, he did indeed confront America's "secret brutality." - Mo Dickens, Gallery Assistant, Belger Arts Center, Kansas City, MO

Don't miss the gallery that goes with the obituary.

[dhill926]

1. so many stories behind these photos...

[gratuitous]

2. Christenberry's specialty was the South

But these sorts of buildings can be found anywhere. Still, it's compelling to examine the photos for little clues and hints of things long gone and nearly forgotten. For example, in the Coleman's Cafe photo, two of the posts propping up the porch cover look like repurposed banister newels. Was this a temporary measure meant to serve until other posts could be acquired, or were they a fix after the original posts broke or rotted away?