Mobile Museum of Art Shows Howard Cook : 'Drawings of Alabama'

Monday, 15 January 2007 02:35

Mobile, AL - In the spring of 1934, Howard Cook (1901-1980) received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to spend a year traveling through the American South to continue his creative work in the graphic arts.  By this time Cook had established a reputation for his numerous prints of the desert Southwest and its Indian inhabitants, Mexican peasants in Mexico, and as well for a series of cubistic prints of the bridges and skyscrapers of New York City.  On exhibition until 15 April, 2007 at Mobile Museum of Art.

Cook and his wife Barbara Latham (1896-1989), also an artist, set out from New England in mid-May, spending three and a half months, first in Virginia, then Kentucky and North Carolina, before driving to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in early September.  For the next four weeks, they explored the area around Tuscaloosa.  Cook made numerous drawings of the everyday work activity of the local people, both black and white; cotton production from field to gin, sorghum-making, and throwing pottery on a wheel.  Cook also drew portraits of several of the local African Americans, and two very large and striking drawings of their religious practices; a baptism and a foot washing, as well as of a fiddler’s contest attended by area whites.

In early October Cook and Latham drove first to Birmingham, where Cook made drawings in the coalmines and the iron and steel mills, and then on to Gadsden.  Soon after returning to Tuscaloosa in mid-October, they drove to Mobile and then to New Orleans and eventually to Texas, where Cook finished his fellowship on a ranch in south Texas.  There is no record that either Cook or Latham ever returned to Alabama.

The 45 drawings and 2 prints in this exhibition were selected from the collection of the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, and a private collection by guest curator, Stephen J. Goldfarb of Atlanta, who also authored the accompanying catalogue.  The project was assisted at all stages by the cooperation of William U. Eiland, Director, Georgia Museum of Art and his staff.

Cook’s forthright drawings illustrate great solidity and observation. His subjects’ weather-beaten faces and rough clothing do not conceal the dignity of these people accustomed to self-sufficiency, through hard work during the worst of the Great Depression.

Organized by the Georgia Museum of Art and the Mobile Museum of Art.  Visit : www.mobilemuseumofart.com/