John Biggers’ world of women and washboards, men and metamorphosis, and Southern Blacks and shotgun houses was forged most directly from influences in Gastonia, North Carolina, Houston’s Third Ward and the shores of West Africa.
“Dance of Creation,” a retrospective of Biggers’ work, is on view at the Hampton University Museum, the nation’s oldest African American museum.
Nationally recognized as an artist and educator, Biggers spent his adult life portraying Black people as indelibly imprinted by rootedness and displacement. He attended Hampton in the 1940s, where he met his mentor, Viktor Lowenfeld. In 1990, he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from the university. Two of Biggers' 10-foot-by-20-foot murals from the early 1990s, “House of the Turtle” and “Tree House” – collaborations with his nephew James – are significant pieces in the museum’s collection.
Born in Gastonia in 1924, Biggers began college in 1941, where he studied art. Biggers had intended to become a plumber but his life took a turn under Lowenfeld’s instruction, which emphasized the value of cultural identity and encouragement to address racism. Under this Jewish emigre’s tutelage, Biggers encountered the dignity and beauty of African art, as seen in the university’s collection, which was established in the 19th century.
Lowenfeld also introduced him to the Harlem Renaissance and the influential writings of Alain Locke, the founding chair of the philosophy department at Howard University. His New Negro Movement encouraged African Americans to celebrate and express their unique cultural heritage.
Also at Hampton, Biggers served as a studio assistant to Elizabeth Catlett, a renowned sculptor and printmaker, and to Charles White, known primarily for his large-scale works that depicted the fortitude and dignity of Black people in history and contemporary society. From Catlett, Biggers gained a deeper understanding of how Black artists express identity, and through White, Biggers’ ability to tell stories in images, especially those related to social justice, was honed technically and conceptually. He also learned about the activism and work of Mexican muralists and American regionalist artists.
Biggers was drafted into the Navy in 1943 but remained on campus as a visual art specialist, creating models of military machinery for training. After being discharged in 1945, he followed Lowenfeld to Pennsylvania State University, where he received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in art education.
In 1948, he married, and in 1949, he founded the art department at Texas State University, now known as Texas Southern University. He retired from TSU in 1983, garnering prestigious awards throughout his career. A UNESCO fellowship in 1957 afforded Biggers and his wife the opportunity to immerse themselves in West African culture for six months in vibrant villages and cities, a watershed experience that transformed his life and art in incalculable ways.
Biggers' work reveals the influence of Mexican Muralists, Harlem Renaissance artists and American Regionalists. The Muralists’ commentary on social inequality is evident in images of downtrodden workers rising up in mass, their bodies morphing into an integrated force to be reckoned with. The Regionalists’ social realism criticizes injustices and celebrates Black ancestry, culture and racial pride.
Biggers’ expressive brand of description transitioned into symbolism and allegory, while his sculptural forms metamorphosed into abstraction and flattened geometry.
Figurative work from the 1940s is notable for elegantly twisting, spiraling forms, deeply etched faces and large hands and feet with gnarled fingers and toes. The surfaces of his drawings, regardless of subject, are characterized by vigorous and masterful cross-hatching.
“Crucifixion,” a vibrantly colored work in the show from the 1950s, exemplifies Biggers’ ability to convey human pathos. The expression on Christ’s face, his neck straining against a noose and the rough-hewn lumber of the cross, contrasts with his placid body, his hands and feet crossed into precise X-shaped motifs. The monumental cross towers over what appears to be a jumbled heap of buildings, including a church and Biggers’ shotgun houses, normally a symbol for resilience and continuity of African American culture, as though this event has shaken the community.
In contrast, work beginning in the 1980s emphasizes repeated quilt-like patterns, bold and delicate, as well as simple and intricate, layered within one composition. Following Biggers’ trip to Africa, an iconography of anvils and Ashanti combs, stools and other everyday objects populated his work as he paid homage to themes, such as cultural pride, that had long driven him, but with a new vocabulary.
Biggers had a predilection for circular design motifs, whether in the form of a mother’s arms encircling her children, the underlying framework of a large mural, or the shape of a black iron pot or a turtle shell. The pots symbolize wombs and ward off evil spirits, while turtles are thought to represent a range of concepts in his work, from endurance and longevity to health and stability. In various mythologies, the Mother Turtle is said to hold up the world with her shell.
A work in the exhibition, “Tree House,” 1991-1992, demonstrates one approach to Biggers’ parabolism. In West Africa, Biggers had met Oku Ampofu, an artist and medical doctor, whose work he considered a link between past and present. In this piece, Biggers likewise links past, present and future, as well as African American and African cultures.
Its spine is a representation of Hampton’s Emancipation Oak, a symbolic link between Africa and America. Populated with children and adults, alone, in pairs, and in groups, Biggers underscores the community’s role in educating future generations.
At its core, the piece is about the nurturing and growth of knowledge. The pervasive checkerboard pattern represents traditional textiles, but also human presence in its right angles and geometry. Combs and other tools, as well as iron pots and stools, symbolize connections between cultures, while the washboard serves as a stylized ladder. Even the fish, which swim across the bottom, represent awareness and intelligence supported by water, the source of all life. The checkered green earth at the apex of the composition is a reference to the future, with all other symbols suggesting and supporting aspiration for knowledge and wisdom.
The exhibition is open through April. Admission is free.
Hampton University Museum, 14 Frissell Avenue, Hampton, 757-727-5308.