Oliver Lee Jackson (born 1935)[1] is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, printmaker, and educator. His art studio is in Oakland, California.[2] He was a professor at the California State University, Sacramento from 1971 until 2002, and developed a curriculum for the Pan African Studies program at the school.[3]
Oliver Lee Jackson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1935 (age 88–89) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Other names | Oliver Jackson, Oliver L. Jackson |
| Education | Illinois Wesleyan University, University of Iowa |
| Occupation(s) | Painter, sculptor, draftsman, printmaker, educator |
| Website | www |
Early life and education
editHe was born in 1935 in St. Louis, Missouri, into an African American family.[4] After graduating from Vashon High School, Jackson attended Illinois Wesleyan University (B.F.A. 1958).[4][5] He served in the United States Army and was honorably discharged in 1961.[5][3] He attended the University of Iowa (M.F.A. 1963).[4][5]
Teaching
editIn the 1960s, he taught art classes at St. Louis local universities and colleges and remained active in this local community.[6] He was director of program Uhuru at Pruitt and Igoe public housing in St. Louis in 1967 and 1968, a program to bring the low-income African American community a constructive means of developing dialogue through arts programs.[citation needed]
He taught at St. Louis Community College (1964 to 1967); Southern Illinois University (1967 to 1969); Washington University in St. Louis (1967 to 1969); and Oberlin College (1969 to 1970).[3] In 1971, he moved to California and joined the faculty at California State University, Sacramento, where he remained until 2002.[3]
Art career
editJackson was affiliated with the multidisciplinary arts collective Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis through his close friendship with BAG co-founder Julius Hemphill, though he was not an official BAG member.[5] BAG was founded by musicians, theater artists, dancers and visual artists as a support structure for creative expression among African American artists, and in order to have a greater place in the cultural landscape.[6]
Jackson’s paintings are based in figural and gestural forms, and often expressionist in nature.[7][8] There are a mixture of cultural references and iconography in his paintings including references to historical African art and European Modernism.[9] Photographs of the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 in South Africa became an inspiration for Jackson in the development of his figurative gestural forms, and resulted in his Sharpeville Series (1968–1977).[10][8]
Jackson’s works are in the museum collections of the Museum of Modern Art;[11] the Metropolitan Museum of Art;[12] the Studio Museum in Harlem;[13] the National Gallery of Art;[14] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;[15] San Jose Museum of Art;[16] the Seattle Art Museum; and many other public collections.[3]
Exhibitions
editSolo
edit- 1979 – Oliver Jackson, Bixby Gallery, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri[9]
- 1982 – Oliver Lee Jackson, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington[citation needed]
- 1983 – Oliver Lee Jackson, Matrix Gallery, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California[citation needed]
- 1990 – Currents 43: Oliver Jackson, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California[citation needed]
- 1993 — New California Art: Oliver Jackson, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California[citation needed]
- 1993 – Oliver Jackson: Works on Paper, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California[17]
- 2002 — Duo, Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center for the Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts[citation needed]
- 2017 – Oliver Lee Jackson: Composed, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, California[citation needed]
- 2019 – Oliver Lee Jackson: Recent Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.[5][18]
- 2021–2022 – Oliver Lee Jackson–Any Eyes, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, California[2][19]
- 2021–2022 – Oliver Lee Jackson, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri[5][1]
Group
edit- 1976 – Other Sources: An American Essay, curated by Carlos Villa, including Ruth Asawa, Bernice Bing, Rolando Castellón, Claude Clark, Robert Colescott, Frank Day, Rupert García, Mike Henderson, Oliver Jackson, Frank LaPena, Linda Lomahaftewa, George Longfish, Ralph Maradiaga, José Montoya, Manuel Neri, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Darryl Sapien, Raymond Saunders, James Hiroshi Suzuki, Horace Washington, Al Wong, René Yañez, Leo Valledor, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California[20]
- 1983 — 1983 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
- 1984 – An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
- 1987 – The Ethnic Idea, curated by Andrée Maréchal-Workman, including Lauren Adams, Robert Colescott, Dewey Crumpler, Mildred Howard, Oliver Lee Jackson, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Joe Sam, Elisabeth Zeilon, Tom Holland, Celeste Conner, Jean LaMarr, Sylvia Lark, Leta Ramos, Judy Foosaner, Joseph Goldyne, Belinda Chlouber, Carlos Villa. Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California[21]
- 1989 — The Appropriate Object, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, with travel to Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California; and Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
- 1994 — The Exchange Show: San Francisco/Rio de Janeiro, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California, and Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 1994 – Continuing the Legacy of the Rockefeller Collection: Recent Acquisitions of 20th Century American Art, including Joan Brown, Wayne Thiebaud, Manuel Neri, Robert Arneson, Oliver Lee Jackson, Frank Lobdell. De Young Museum, San Francisco, California[22]
- 2016 — Dimensions of Black, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, California, and Manetti Shrem Museum, University of California, Davis, California
- 2020 — Expanding Abstraction: Pushing the Boundaries of Painting in the Americas, including Alice Baber, Ibore Camargo, Fernando de Szyszlo, Helen Frankenthaler, Manuel Hernández Gómez, Grace Hartigan, Hans Hofmann, Dorothy Hood, Norman Lewis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Miguel Ocampo, Jules Olitski, Beverly Pepper, and Alma Thomas. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas[23]
References
edit- ^ a b Haddad, Natalie (2022-02-17). "The Figural Ghosts of Oliver Lee Jackson's Expressive Abstraction". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2022-02-20.
- ^ a b Bravo, Tony (November 19, 2021). "Oliver Lee Jackson: 'Any Eyes'". Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guide. Archived from the original on 2022-01-19. Retrieved 2023-05-15.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ a b c d e "Oliver Lee Jackson". Seattle Art Museum. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
Oliver Jackson taught and lectured in Art, Philosophy, and Pan African Humanities, and was a Curriculum Consultant for the creation of programs in Pan African Studies. He was Art Instructor at St. Louis Community College (1964-67); Curriculum Specialist and Lecturer at Southern Illinois University (1967-69), and lectured on philosophy and aesthetics of African peoples; Assistant Professor of Art, Washington University, St. Louis (1967-69); and Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies, Oberlin College OH (1969-70). He relocated to California in 1971 to teach in the art department at California State University, Sacramento, where he also developed a curriculum for Pan African Studies and lectured in Pan African Humanities. Jackson continued as Professor of Art at CSU Sacramento until his retirement in 2002.
- ^ a b c Stella, Lizabel (8 December 2020). "Conserving Oliver Lee Jackson's "Untitled (Sharpeville Series)"". Blanton Museum of Art. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ a b c d e f Vaughn, Kenya (July 16, 2021). "'It's Meant to Move You'". St. Louis American. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ a b Looker, Benjamin (2004). BAG: "Point from Which Creation Begins": The Black Artists' Group of St. Louis. Missouri History Museum. pp. 120–122. ISBN 978-1-883982-51-5.
- ^ Matrix Berkeley, 1978-1998. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. 1998. p. 66.
- ^ a b Salzman, Jack; Smith, David L.; West, Cornel (1996). Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Macmillan Library Reference. p. 1417. ISBN 978-0-02-897345-6.
- ^ a b King, Mary (8 April 1979). "Oliver Jackson at Bixby". Newspapers.com. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 81. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
- ^ Vaughn, Kenya (December 13, 2021). "Inspired by Africa". St. Louis American. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
- ^ "Oliver Jackson". The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Untitled No. 8, 1985". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Collection". The Studio Museum in Harlem. 2020-09-10. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Oliver Lee Jackson". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Jackson, Oliver Lee". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Oliver Jackson". San José Museum of Art. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ Dalkey, Victoria (10 October 1993). "Oliver Jackson Relies on Drawings to Clarify His Vision". Newspapers.com. The Sacramento Bee. p. 177. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
- ^ Wickouski, Sheila (May 22, 2019). "Feel the energy of Oliver Lee Jackson's 'Recent Paintings' at National Gallery of Art". Fredericksburg.com. The Free Lance-Star. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Mills College Art Museum". 7x7 Bay Area. 2022-01-28. Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ Johnson, Mark (September 11, 2013). "1976 and Its Legacy: Other Sources: An American Essay at San Francisco Art Institute". Art Practical.
- ^ "'About Faces' Celebrates Portraiture, Preserve Interest in Ourselves". Newspapers.com. Oakland Tribune. 22 September 1987. p. 32 (C-3). Retrieved 2022-02-03.
- ^ "Weekend Museums". Newspapers.com. The San Francisco Examiner. 5 August 1994. p. 63. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
- ^ Keever, Erin (2020-12-24). "Best in Show: The Blanton Museum's 'Expanding Abstraction'". Sightlines. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
External links
edit- Oliver Lee Jackson papers, 1993-2016, from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution