Thornton Dial (10 September 1928 – 25 January 2016) was a pioneering American

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.

Biography

Thornton Dial was born in 1928 to a teenage mother, Mattie Bell, on a former cotton plantation in

Emelle, Alabama Emelle is a town in Sumter County, Alabama, Sumter County, Alabama, United States. It was named after the daughters of the man who donated the land for the town. The town was started in the 19th century but not incorporated until 1981. The daught ...

, where relatives in his extended family worked as sharecroppers. He lived with his mother until he was around three when Dial and his half-brother Arthur moved in with their second cousin, Buddy Jake Dial, who was a farmer. When Thornton moved in with Buddy Jake, he farmed and learned about the sculptures that Buddy Jake made from items lying around the yard, an experience that influenced him. Dial grew up in poverty and without the presence of his father. In 1940, when he was twelve, Dial moved to

Bessemer, Alabama Bessemer is a southwestern suburb of Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. The population was 26,019 at the 2020 census. It is within the Birmingham- Hoover, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area, of which Jefferson County is the ...

. When he arrived in Bessemer, he noticed the art along the way in people's yards and was amazed at the level of craft exhibited. He married Clara Mae Murrow in 1951. They have five children, one of whom died of cerebral palsy. The late artist

Ronald Lockett Ronald Lockett (1965–1998) was an American visual artist, combining painting with three dimensional objects. “Lockett's primary artistic mentor” was the painter Thornton Dial, his cousin. In describing his work, Holland wrote of the influen ...

was his cousin. His principal place of employment was as a metalworker at the

Pullman Standard The Pullman Company, founded by George Pullman, was a manufacturer of railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Through rapid late-19th century d ...

Plant in

, which made railroad cars. The plant closed its doors in 1981. After the Pullman factory shut down, Dial began to dedicate himself to his art for his own pleasure. In 1987 Thornton Dial met Lonnie Holley, an artist who introduced Dial to Atlanta collector and art historian

William Arnett William Sidney Arnett (May 10, 1939 – August 12, 2020) was an Atlanta-based writer, editor, curator and art collector who built internationally important collections of African, Asian, and African American art. Arnett was the founder and cha ...

. Arnett, whose

art historical Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of ...

interests had now focused on African-American vernacular art and artists, brought Dial's work to national prominence. The art historian has also brought Lonnie Holley, the Gee's Bend Quilters and many others to the attention of the United States. Arnett, with

Jane Fonda Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, sev ...

also helped to create a publishing company, in 1996, along with his sons Paul and Matt. He is also the founder and Chairman Emeritus of the

Souls Grown Deep Foundation Souls Grown Deep Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and promoting the work of leading contemporary African American artists from the Southeastern United States. Its mission is to include their contributio ...

, an organization dedicated to the preservation and documentation of African American art. Dial's work has been continually heralded in international cultural institutions and large survey exhibitions, such as the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Over time, the context for Dial's work has expanded to showcase the political and social responsiveness of his artwork, expressing "ideas about black history, slavery, racial discrimination, urban and rural poverty, industrial or environmental collapse, and spiritual salvation". Since 2011 the language surrounding Dial's artwork and practice has shifted. This change in perception was the result of the first touring retrospective of Dial's work curated by art historian and cultural critic Joanne Cubbs for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In reviews of this exhibition, Dial received unprecedented recognition in the national press, which, for the first time, positioned him as a bonafide contemporary artist. For example, Karen Wilkin of ''The Wall Street Journal'' called Dial’s work “first-rate, powerful Art–with a capital ‘A.’” Later, the ''Journal'' also named the Dial retrospective one of the best museum shows of 2011, alongside showings of such major art world luminaries as Degas, Picasso, Kandinsky and Willem de Kooning. In another 2011 review of the ''Hard Truths'' exhibition, art and architecture critic Richard Lacayo published a four-page story on Dial in '' Time Magazine,'' arguing that Dial's work should not be pigeon-holed into the narrowly-defined category of "outsider art":

Dial's work has sometimes been described as " outsider art", a term that attempts to cover the product of everyone from naive painters like
Grandma Moses Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), or Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. H ...
to institutionalized lost souls like
Martín Ramírez Martín Ramírez (January 30, 1895 – February 17, 1963) was a self-taught artist who spent most of his adult life institutionalized in California mental hospitals, diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic. He is considered by some to be one ...
and full-bore obsessives like Henry Darger, the Chicago janitor... But if there's one lesson to take away from "Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial," a triumphant new retrospective at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, it's that Dial, 82, doesn't belong within even the broad confines of that category....What he does can be discussed as art, just art, no surplus notions of outsiderness required....And not just that, but some of the most assured, delightful and powerful art around.

In still another response to the ''Hard Truths'' exhibition, New York Times reporter Carol Kino described Dial's "work's look, ambition, and obvious intellectual reach hew ngclosely to that of many other modern and contemporary masters, from Jackson Pollock and

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

Jean-Michel Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al ...

." Most recently, Alex Greenberger of ARTnews similarly said: "Thornton Dial has been termed an outsider artist, a vernacular artist, and a folk artist—but any of those labels might be a misnomer, since the late painter's work has been gradually moving into the mainstream art world's view in the past few years."

Work

Thornton Dial's work addresses American sociopolitical exigencies such as war, racism, bigotry and

homelessness Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also kn ...

. He draws attention to these themes using the overlooked and under-considered material artifacts of everyday American life. Combining paint and found materials, Dial constructs large-scale assemblages with cast-away objects ranging from rope to bones to buckets. Works such as ''Black Walk'' and ''The Blood of Hard Times,'' for example, use corrugated tin and other dilapidated pieces of metal to refer to the destitute bodies and vernacular architecture of the rural

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

. Dial invokes the history of the American rural South throughout much of his work. The symbol of the tiger is also a primary visual trope in Thornton Dial's oeuvre. Artist and African-American art historian

David C. Driskell David C. Driskell (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020) was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world’ ...

explained Dial's use of the tiger as an allegory for survival and an implicit reference to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. In 1993, Dial's work was the subject of a large exhibition that was presented simultaneously at the

New Museum of Contemporary Art The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Scho ...

and the American Folk Art Museum in New York. In 2000, the artist's work was included in the Whitney Biennial, and in 2005-06, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

presented a major exhibition entitled "Thornton Dial in the 21st Century," which was followed in 2011-13 by the major touring retrospective "Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial." Dial's works can be found in many notable public and private collections, including those of, among other institutions, the High Museum of Art, the

; the American Folk Art Museum, New York; the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington D.C.; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. On November 24, 2014, The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that 57 works by contemporary African American artists from the Southern United States—including 10 works by Dial—were donated to the Museum by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from its William S. Arnett Collection. An exhibition devoted to the gift opened at the Metropolitan Museum on May 22, 2018, and ran until September of that year. As Sheena Wagstaff,

Leonard A. Lauder Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933) is an American billionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Laude ...

Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum, described the gift, "From Thornton Dial's magisterial constructions to the emblematic compositions by the Gee's Bend quilters from the 1930s onwards, this extraordinary group of works contributes immeasurably to the Museum's representation of works by contemporary American artists and augments on a historic scale its holdings of contemporary art." Two of Dial's major works were included in a March 2016 gift to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by the president of its board of trustees, William A. Royall, and his wife, Pam. Those works are the iconic, "Old Uncle Buck (The Negro Got to Find Out What's Going On in the United States)," from 2002; and the monumental 2005 sculpture, "Freedom Cloth." The High Museum of Art in Atlanta had a memorial exhibition, on view February 13 to May 1, 2016, that presented a selection of Dial's exuberant drawings and symbolically rich paintings that the Museum has collected over the past twenty years. In April 2016 Marianne Boesky Gallery presented "We All Live Under the Same Old Flag", a show dedicated to Dial since his death. Artsy, the online industry publication, gave the Dial show at Marianne, "We All Live Under the Same Old Flag", top billing among 15 "blockbuster", "must-see" gallery exhibitions on display during the month of May. In 2018, David Lewis Gallery presented "Mr. Dial's America," a survey of Thornton Dial's work from 1989 - 2011. The show garnered significant press, including a review from the editors of ARTnews, who praised the artist's diverse oeuvre of "early self-portraits as well as paintings treating Jim Crow–era America and the struggle for civil rights, the

O.J. Simpson trial ''The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson'' was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court starting in 1994, in which O. J. Simpson, a former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster and actor, was t ...

, and the site of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks." Writing of the show in the New York Times, Roberta Smith commends "Dial's ability to commandeer any material into a painting," and called the works "fiercely formal in ways that connect to Jackson Pollock's allover fields of dripped paint and the object paintings of

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan hav ...

and Julian Schnabel."

Personal

Thornton married Clara Mae Murrow in 1951. At his death he was survived by three sons, Thornton Jr., Richard and Dan, a daughter, Matte Dial, as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Clara Mae Dial died in 2005.

Exhibitions

Dial's work has been exhibited throughout the United States since 1990. Museum exhibitions include: 2022 * ''Called To Create: Black Artists of the American South'', National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, September 18, 2022 – March 26, 2023. 2019 *''Home is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context,'' The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 2019 *''Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera'', The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 2018 *''History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift'', The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 2017 *''Revelations: Art From the African American South,'' De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA *''Self-Taught Genius'', organized by the American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, travelled to Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; New Orleans *''Third Space/Shifting Conversations About Contemporary Art'', The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL *''Inside the Outside: Five Self Taught Artists from the William Louis Dreyfus Foundation'',

Katonah Museum of Art The Katonah Museum of Art is a non-collecting institution geared towards visual arts, located in Katonah, New York, Katonah, New York (state), New York. It does not have a permanent collection, but holds temporary exhibitions. The museum was foun ...

, Katonah, NY; The Baker Museum *''Known / Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art'', Museum of Sex, New York, NY 2016 *''Green Pastures: In Memory of Thornton Dial Sr.,'' High Museum of Art, Atlanta 2015 *''I See Myself in You: Selections from the Collection'',

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, Brooklyn, NY *''Social Geographies: Interpreting Space and Place'', curated by Leisa Rundquist, Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, NC 2014 Thornton Dial Hard Truths

*''When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South'', The

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

, New York, NY 2011-13 *''Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial'', Indianapolis Museum of Art (organizing museum); New Orleans Museum of Art, The Mint Museum, and the High Museum of Art *''Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper'', Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (organizing museum);

Fleming Museum of Art The Fleming Museum of Art is a museum of art and anthropology at the University of Vermont in Burlington. The museum's collection includes some 25,000 objects from a wide variety of eras and places. Until 2014, the museum was known as the Robert H ...

, University of Vermont, Burlington;

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is a museum located in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, featuring several art collections. The permanent collection includes examples of 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and sculpture, Southern regional art, Ol ...

, Montgomery, Alabama; and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee. 2005 *''Thornton Dial in the 21st Century'',

2002-2004 *''In the Spirit of Martin'', Smithsonian Institution Thornton Dial Ricco Maresca Gallery

2000 * Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York *''Thornton Dial: Drawings'', Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY, May 11 - June 24, 2000 1998 *''Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century: An American Anthology'', Philadelphia Museum 1997 *''The Hirshhorn Collects: Recent Acquisitions 1992 - 1996'', Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1993 *''Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger'',

, New York; American Folk Art Museum, New York; American Center, Paris *''Passionate Visions of the American South: Self -Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present'', New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans

Public collections

* Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC * American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY * Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL * Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY *

Clark Atlanta University Art Museum Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educat ...

, Atlanta, GA * Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX * de Young Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA * Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI *

Gadsden Arts Center and Museum Gadsden may refer to: Places *Gadsden, Alabama **Gadsden Depot, a United States Army Depot in the city of Gadsden, Alabama *Gadsden, Arizona *Gadsden, Indiana *Gadsden, South Carolina *Gadsden, Tennessee *Gadsden County, Florida *Gadsden Indepen ...

* Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA * Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA * High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA * Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. * Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN * Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN * Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN * Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago, IL * The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY * Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI * Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN * Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN *

, Montgomery, AL * The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, Boston, MA *

, TX * Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY *

, Philadelphia, PA *Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL *

, Washington D.C. *

Spelman College Museum of Fine Art The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is a museum located on the Spelman College campus in Atlanta. The museum is housed in the Camille O. Hanks Cosby Academic Center named after philanthropist Camille Cosby, who had two daughters attend Spelman ...

, Atlanta, GA *

Studio Museum The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

, Harlem * Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA * Virginia Union University, Richmond, VA * Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Public art

*Road to the Mountaintop (sculpture) (2014), Nashville, TN *

The Bridge (sculpture) ''The Bridge'' is a 1997 sculpture by Thornton Dial. It is located at John Lewis Plaza in Freedom Park in Atlanta, Georgia at the intersection of Ponce de Leon Avenue with Freedom Parkway in the Poncey-Highland neighborhood. The work portrays " ...

(1997), Atlanta, GA

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dial, Thornton 1928 births 2016 deaths Artists from Alabama People from Sumter County, Alabama Outsider artists African-American sculptors 20th-century American sculptors Self-taught artists 20th-century African-American artists 21st-century African-American people