With an HBO documentary focused on his influence, a nationally touring exhibition and new catalog, 2021 shapes up as the Year of David Driskell.
One of art history’s most amusing anecdotes involves David Driskell. Born in 1931 in tiny Eatonton, Georgia and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, Driskell possessed prodigious intellect and ambition. He would be the rare Black man from the rural South during Jim Crow to attend college. Howard University. Washington, D.C. So he went. He started attending classes. It’s easy to imagine a youthful Driskell on the edge of his seat, soaking up knowledge. One problem. He didn’t realize he had to register for those classes. Someone had to tell him that. The rest is history. After graduating from Howard in 1955, Driskell would go on to become one of the 20th century’s preeminent art historians, educators and curators. A titan in all three fields. He was an exceptional painter as well. “David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History,” on view now through May 9 at the High Museum of Atlanta, brings together approximately 60 of his artworks, highlights of a long career. “There is no question that David’s work as a practitioner was preempted by the enormity of his achievements as a scholar and educator,” Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum in Atlanta told Forbes.com. “The absolute need for an African-American art history that redressed the yawning void brought about by historically exclusionary practices, and a vision for charting a course forward to consider the influence of African art and that of the diaspora, was much larger than any individual’s own practice.” Putting aside Driskell’s scholarly achievements to focus on his painting is akin to focusing on Hank Aaron as a right fielder, ignoring his ability as a hitter. Painting, however, is the focus at the High. An artist who holds his own with any from the era reveals himself plainly. “One of his greatest talents as a painter was his constant investigation of syncretic form–whether fusing African and European imagery, investing his images of the natural world with the sacred or metaphysical, or oscillating between the observations of the world around him and pure abstraction,” Rooks explains.
