About the artist
1890–1972, lived and worked in Chicago, IllinoisLike so many self-taught artists, Joseph Yoakum arrived at art in his later years, making approximately 2000 drawings—with the exception of a few portraits—almost exclusively small-scale landscapes, in the last decade of his life. Unlike many self-taught artists, he enjoyed at least a modest amount of appreciation and remuneration from the mainstream artworld before he passed away in 1972. Although shrouded in his own invented mythology, certain facts can be ventured: Yoakum was born in 1890 in Missouri to parents of African, French, and Cherokee descent (although he claimed 1888, in Arizona, to a Navajo family.) At age nine, he ran away to join the circus—as many as five different outfits, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to Ringling Brothers—and traveled the world as a billposter. Upon his return as a young man, he settled first in Missouri and finally in Chicago, but only after a time as an Army railroad worker and more peripatetic adventures around the U.S. He began drawing in the 1950s, and in 1967 his imaginary landscapes came to the attention of the Hairy Who and Imagist circle of the Art Institute of Chicago. Artists Ray Yoshida, Jim Nutt, and Whitney Halstead praised and promoted Yoakum, who was granted a solo show at the Whitney Museum shortly before his death in 1972.
He conjured his mesmerizing, melting landscapes from both memory and vision. A proud world traveler and a deeply spiritual man whose beliefs embraced both Christianity and Navajo animism, Yoakum instilled in his work elements of travelogue and revelation. Usually rendered in ballpoint pen and colored pencil, and then buffed to a shine with toilet paper, these evocative drawings feature a refined color sensitivity, a sublime sense of compositional balance and symmetry, and a sinuous organic line. Yoakum’s art opens windows onto shivering, abstracted spaces of lush tranquility, majesty, and wonder, generally devoid of animal or human presence (except for the occasional building or ship at sea). Most drawing includes a cursive ink inscription of the location, sometimes accompanied by the season or time of day depicted or an autobiographical detail. This formulaic specificity belies the imagined nature of the images, combining to affect a convincingly unified field of unspoiled spatial and temporal experience. Joseph Yoakum is today recognized as a master draughtsman and an important influence on Chicago artists. His work resides in a number of major collections.
—Brendan Greaves
Bibliography
African-American Artists 1880-1987, Selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection. Seattle: University of Washing Press and the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
Allison, Diane. “Joseph Yoakum at the Beginning: The Show at ‘The Whole.’” Raw Vision 16 (Fall 1996): 24-31.
American Folk Art from the Milwaukee Art Museum. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1989.
Animistic Landscapes: Joseph Yoakum Drawings. Philadelphia: Janet Fleisher Gallery, 1989.
Atkins, Jacqueline M. “Joseph E. Yoakum, Visionary Traveler.” The Clarion 15, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 50-57.
Black History and Artistry: Work by Self-Taught Painters and Sculptors from the Blanchard-Hill Collection. New York: Baruch College/CUNY, 1993.
Common Ground/Uncommon Vision: The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1993.
DePasse, Derrell B. Travelling The Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi/Museum of American Folk Art, 2001.
Dream Singers, Story Tellers: An African-American Presence. Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Museum, 1992.
The Harmon and Harriet Kelly Collection of African American Art. San Antonio, TX: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1994.
Hartigan, Lynda. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Livingston, Jane, and John Beardsley. Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi/Center for the Study of Southern Culture for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1982.
Muffled Voices: Folk Artists in Contemporary America. New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1986.
Off Center: Outsider Art in the Midwest. St. Paul: Minnesota Museum of Art, 1996.
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Rhodes, Colin. Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology. New York: Museum of American Folk Art, in association with Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1998.
Transmitters: The Isolate Artist in America. Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Art, 1981.