Southern/Modern

Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Jonathan Stuhlman, Martha R. Severens, Jonathan Stuhlman, Martha R. Severens

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781469674087
• eBook ISBN: 9781469674094
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art

Inspired by a companion exhibition, Southern/Modern is the first book to survey progressive art created in the American South during the first half of the twentieth century. Featuring twelve essays, this lavishly illustrated volume includes all the works from the exhibition and assesses a broader body of contextual pieces to offer a fascinating, multipronged look at modernism's thriving presence in the South—until now, something largely overlooked in histories of American art. Contributors take a broad view of the region, considering artists working in the states below the Mason-Dixon Line and those bordering the Mississippi River. It examines the central roles played by women and artists of color, providing a fuller, richer, and more accurate overview of the artistic activity in the region than has been previously presented. The book is structured around key themes, including the embrace of "high" modernism, the importance of emerging university programs and artist colonies, the depiction of rural and urban modern life, and the role of artists from the South who left and artists from outside the region who came to the South seeking new subjects.

Contributors are Daniel Belasco, Katelyn D. Crawford, William Underwood Eiland, William R. Ferris, Shawnya Harris, Todd A. Herman, Karen Towers Klacsmann, Leo G. Mazow, Christopher C. Oliver, Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Martha R. Severens, Jonathan Stuhlman, Rebecca VanDiver, and Jonathan Frederick Walz.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Director’s Welcome
• Foreword Modernism in the American South
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Red Clay under My Nails How a Connecticut Yankee Dug into the South
• Chapter 2 The Alchemy of Modernism Extractive Industries and the Southern Modern Landscape
• Chapter 3 Earnest Endeavors Art Colonies in the Deep South
• Chapter 4 Bringing Modernism Home
• Chapter 5 Labor, Lynching, and the Lord Parsing the Iconography of African American Representation in Southern Art
• Chapter 6 The Sonic Foundations of Southern Modernism
• Chapter 7 Carrying the South Artists Leaving and Returning
• Chapter 8 The Unprecedented Flowering of the Graphic Arts
• Chapter 9 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Pioneers of Southern Modernism
• Chapter 10 Clashing Currents Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Modernism in Richmond, 1938–1970
• Chapter 11 Alma Thomas’s Southern Draw/l
• Chapter 12 Inside Rooms Abstract Painting in the South
• Exhibition Checklist
• Suggested Reading
• Contributors
• Photo Credits
• Index
• Back Cover