Mt. Magazine Point in State near Town of Havana Arkansas1967Sheet: 18 x 12 "Ballpoint pen, crayon, colored pencil, and pastel on paperBlanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard, Jr.1998.10.7301539812580Joseph E. YoakumDrawingsCopyright for this work is under review. 'Mt. Magazine Point in State near / Town of Havana Arkansas''By J.E.Y. / Joseph E. Yoakum / 4/4 – 67'ChicagoChicagoUnited StatesIllinoisWorks on PapereMuseum - Collection HighlightsChicagowatercolorPAINTINGObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgThe rhythmic and luminous landscapes of Joseph E. Yoakum express a collision of the real and the imagined. For many years after the artist became publicly recognized, it was assumed that the locales that he depicted in a schematic, fluid manner were fictional, even though he claimed to have traveled to each site, including Mt. Magazine, Arkansas’s highest point. As the advance man for an itinerant circus and part of an elite team of African American troops in Europe during World War I, Yoakum had a nomadic lifestyle that entailed extensive travel—a motion and energy that infuse his art. Scholars have now allowed for the possibility that the vistas are recorded memories based in truth, although they may be embellished by the artist’s creative filter and his observation of topographical maps in atlases that were found in his studio. He likely started drawing in 1962, when he was in his seventies, and thereafter he made one or two drawings a day until his death. Chicago imagists, who collected and exhibited his works, championed him.Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2019.Joseph Yoakum, an avid storyteller, created an account of his life that was as fabulous as the landscapes he drew. He ran away to join the circus while a young teenager, worked for Buffalo Bill, traveled the world, and ended up as valet to John Ringling before serving in France during World War I. After the war, he continued his travels as a sailor, railroad porter, and hobo. In the late 1950s, he and his second wife settled in Chicago, where they ran an ice-cream shop. In 1962, after his wife's death, Yoakum received a divine calling to draw. He enjoyed ten productive years, obsessively creating between fifteen hundred and two thousand drawings, primarily landscapes. Yoakum claimed that he had traveled to every continent except Antarctica, and he presented each landscape as a place he had visited. However, visitors to Yoakum's home reported seeing a Bible, a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an atlas, and travel books. By offering his drawings for sale in the window of the storefront building where he lived, Yoakum attracted the encouragement of instructors and students from the nearby Art Institute of Chicago.
In Mt. Magazine Point, Yoakum uses fluid lines, drawn with ballpoint pen, and luminous areas of color—crayon, colored pencil, and pastel polished to a sheen with toilet paper—to depict one of his favorite subjects, a serene valley sheltered by thrusting plateaus. Lush greenery and fertile fields lead to a distant vista of sharp-peaked mountains. Swirling gray clouds lend the scene a nervous intensity. Yoakum's remote aerial viewpoint turns his landscape into abstract forms and rhythmic patterns.
Cheryl Rivers, "Mt. Magazine Point in State near Town of Havana Arkansas," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 390.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org19671967 1998 10 73 watercolorPAINTINGObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgThe rhythmic and luminous landscapes of Joseph E. Yoakum express a collision of the real and the imagined. For many years after the artist became publicly recognized, it was assumed that the locales that he depicted in a schematic, fluid manner were fictional, even though he claimed to have traveled to each site, including Mt. Magazine, Arkansas’s highest point. As the advance man for an itinerant circus and part of an elite team of African American troops in Europe during World War I, Yoakum had a nomadic lifestyle that entailed extensive travel—a motion and energy that infuse his art. Scholars have now allowed for the possibility that the vistas are recorded memories based in truth, although they may be embellished by the artist’s creative filter and his observation of topographical maps in atlases that were found in his studio. He likely started drawing in 1962, when he was in his seventies, and thereafter he made one or two drawings a day until his death. Chicago imagists, who collected and exhibited his works, championed him.Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2019.Joseph Yoakum, an avid storyteller, created an account of his life that was as fabulous as the landscapes he drew. He ran away to join the circus while a young teenager, worked for Buffalo Bill, traveled the world, and ended up as valet to John Ringling before serving in France during World War I. After the war, he continued his travels as a sailor, railroad porter, and hobo. In the late 1950s, he and his second wife settled in Chicago, where they ran an ice-cream shop. In 1962, after his wife's death, Yoakum received a divine calling to draw. He enjoyed ten productive years, obsessively creating between fifteen hundred and two thousand drawings, primarily landscapes. Yoakum claimed that he had traveled to every continent except Antarctica, and he presented each landscape as a place he had visited. However, visitors to Yoakum's home reported seeing a Bible, a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an atlas, and travel books. By offering his drawings for sale in the window of the storefront building where he lived, Yoakum attracted the encouragement of instructors and students from the nearby Art Institute of Chicago.
In Mt. Magazine Point, Yoakum uses fluid lines, drawn with ballpoint pen, and luminous areas of color—crayon, colored pencil, and pastel polished to a sheen with toilet paper—to depict one of his favorite subjects, a serene valley sheltered by thrusting plateaus. Lush greenery and fertile fields lead to a distant vista of sharp-peaked mountains. Swirling gray clouds lend the scene a nervous intensity. Yoakum's remote aerial viewpoint turns his landscape into abstract forms and rhythmic patterns.
Cheryl Rivers, "Mt. Magazine Point in State near Town of Havana Arkansas," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 390.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org