Overview

Born into slavery on an Alabama plantation in 1853, Bill Traylor worked as a sharecropper for most of his life. But in 1928 he moved to Montgomery and changed his life, becoming a self-taught lyric painter of extraordinary ability and power. From 1936 to 1946, he sat on a street corner- old, ill, and homeless- and created well over 1,200 paintings. Collected and later promoted by Charles Shannon, a young Montgomery artist, his work received star placement in the Corcoran Gallery's 1982 exhibition Black Folk Art in America. From then on, the spare and powerful """"radical modernity"""" of Traylor's work helped place him among the rising stars of twentieth-century American artists. Most critics and art historians who analyze Traylor's paintings emphasize his extraordinary form and evaluate the content as either simple or enigmatic narratives of black life. In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel's trenchant analysis reveals a previously unrecognized central core of meaning in Traylor's near-hidden symbolism- a call for retribution in response to acts of lynching and other violence toward blacks. Drawing on historical records and oral histories, Sobel carefully explores the relationship between Traylor's life and his paintings and arrives at new interpretations of his art. From an interview with Traylor's great-granddaughter, Sobel learned that Traylor believed the Birmingham policemen who killed his son in 1929 in fact lynched him- a story that neither Traylor nor his family had previously disclosed. The trauma of this event, Sobel explains, propelled Traylor to find a way to voice his rage and spurred the creation of his powerful, mysterious visual language. Traylor's encoded paintings tell a vibrant, multilayered story of conjure power, sexual rivalry, and violence. Revealing an extraordinarily diverse visual universe, the symbols in Traylor's paintings reflect the worlds he lived in between 1853 and 1949: the plantation conjure milieu into which he was born, the blues culture in which he matured, the world of Jim Crow he learned to secretly violate, and the Catholic values he adopted in his final years. From his African heritage, Traylor drew symbols not readily understood by whites. He mixed traditional African images with conjure signs, with symbols of black Baptists and Freemasons, and with images central to the hidden black protest movement- the cross and the lynching tree. In this groundbreaking examination of an extraordinary artist, Sobel uncovers the internalized pain of several generations and traces the paths African Americans blazed long before the march down the Selma- Montgomery highway.

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In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel probes the life and cryptic imagery of this onetime slave whose work defied the constraints of the Jim Crow era -- a raging fire of a man who believed that art could conjure a better world. -- O, The Oprah Magazine

His studio was a street corner in Montgomery, Alabama. His canvases were weathered sheets of cardboard. Folk artist Bill Traylor, whose work now hangs in major museums and galleries, was old and homeless, painting outdoors, when a young local artist named Charles Shannon discovered him and began to champion his work. Traylor made more than 1,200 paintings, as enigmatic as hieroglyphs, as charged with social protest as the 'bitter blues' lyrics of the 1930s and '40s. In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel probes the life and cryptic imagery of this onetime slave whose work defied the constraints of the Jim crow era--a raging fire of a man who believed that art could conjure a better world.--Shane White, coauthor of Stylin' African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit O, The Oprah Magazine Mechal Sobel's Painting a Hidden Life is a revolutionary work that rescues the field of vernacular art by transcending it. It is one of the most profound examinations of the relationship between an artist's life and work in print and, as such, should be read by anyone who believes in the power of art to both divide and reconcile. Traylor's world comes alive with vivid, fully dimensional relationships and new information on almost every page. Sobel's readings of Traylor's paintings forever change the way we see them and leave no doubt that the blues idiom includes visual art as well as music. Other writers have attempted to make this connection but none with more tenacity, precision, and soul. The book is a milestone and a spellbinding story as well.--Judith McWillie, coauthor of No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work O, The Oprah Magazine As one expects with any work by Mechal Sobel, Painting a Hidden Life is simply a terrific book. Sobel demonstrates conclusively that Bill Traylor was not some 'naive' or 'primitive' painter, but an African American artist conveying complex messages and using the medium of painting to display a heady mixture of conjure, Freemasonry, the blues, and Catholicism. This is a powerful and engaging reinterpretation of Traylor, one that should rescue the painter from the cuteness, and irrelevance, of Antiques Roadshow.--Shane White, coauthor of Stylin' African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit Mechal Sobel's book on Bill Traylor, one of the most searching artistic biographies that I have ever read, is clearly destined to become a classic in its field.--Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love

His studio was a street corner in Montgomery, Alabama. His canvases were weathered sheets of cardboard. Folk artist Bill Traylor, whose work now hangs in major museums and galleries, was old and homeless, painting outdoors, when a young local artist named Charles Shannon discovered him and began to champion his work. Traylor made more than 1,200 paintings, as enigmatic as hieroglyphs, as charged with social protest as the 'bitter blues' lyrics of the 1930s and '40s. In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel probes the life and cryptic imagery of this onetime slave whose work defied the constraints of the Jim crow era--a raging fire of a man who believed that art could conjure a better world.-- ""O, The Oprah Magazine"" Mechal Sobel's Painting a Hidden Life is a revolutionary work that rescues the field of vernacular art by transcending it. It is one of the most profound examinations of the relationship between an artist's life and work in print and, as such, should be read by anyone who believes in the power of art to both divide and reconcile. Traylor's world comes alive with vivid, fully dimensional relationships and new information on almost every page. Sobel's readings of Traylor's paintings forever change the way we see them and leave no doubt that the blues idiom includes visual art as well as music. Other writers have attempted to make this connection but none with more tenacity, precision, and soul. The book is a milestone and a spellbinding story as well.--Judith McWillie, coauthor of No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work As one expects with any work by Mechal Sobel, Painting a Hidden Life is simply a terrific book. Sobel demonstrates conclusively that Bill Traylor was not some 'naïve' or 'primitive' painter, but an African American artist conveying complex messages and using the medium of painting to display a heady mixture of conjure, Freemasonry, the blues, and Catholicism. This is a powerful and engaging reinterpretation of Traylor, one that should rescue the painter from the cuteness, and irrelevance, of Antiques Roadshow.--Shane White, coauthor of Stylin' African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit Mechal Sobel's book on Bill Traylor, one of the most searching artistic biographies that I have ever read, is clearly destined to become a classic in its field.--Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love

As one expects with any work by Mechal Sobel, Painting a Hidden Life is simply a terrific book. Sobel demonstrates conclusively that Bill Traylor was not some 'na ve' or 'primitive' painter, but an African American artist conveying complex messages and using the medium of painting to display a heady mixture of conjure, Freemasonry, the blues, and Catholicism. This is a powerful and engaging reinterpretation of Traylor, one that should rescue the painter from the cuteness, and irrelevance, of Antiques Roadshow.--Shane White, coauthor of Stylin' African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit Mechal Sobel's book on Bill Traylor, one of the most searching artistic biographies that I have ever read, is clearly destined to become a classic in its field.--Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love Mechal Sobel's Painting a Hidden Life is a revolutionary work that rescues the field of vernacular art by transcending it. It is one of the most profound examinations of the relationship between an artist's life and work in print and, as such, should be read by anyone who believes in the power of art to both divide and reconcile. Traylor's world comes alive with vivid, fully dimensional relationships and new information on almost every page. Sobel's readings of Traylor's paintings forever change the way we see them and leave no doubt that the blues idiom includes visual art as well as music. Other writers have attempted to make this connection but none with more tenacity, precision, and soul. The book is a milestone and a spellbinding story as well.--Judith McWillie, coauthor of No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work His studio was a street corner in Montgomery, Alabama. His canvases were weathered sheets of cardboard. Folk artist Bill Traylor, whose work now hangs in major museums and galleries, was old and homeless, painting outdoors, when a young local artist named Charles Shannon discovered him and began to champion his work. Traylor made more than 1,200 paintings, as enigmatic as hieroglyphs, as charged with social protest as the 'bitter blues' lyrics of the 1930s and '40s. In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel probes the life and cryptic imagery of this onetime slave whose work defied the constraints of the Jim crow era--a raging fire of a man who believed that art could conjure a better world.--O, The Oprah Magazine

Author Information

Mechal Sobel is the author of four books, including The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia and Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era. She is professor emerita in the department of history at the University of Haifa in Israel, where she lives with her family.

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