Talk:Sam Gilliam

To-do list & future projects (created Feb 2024)
--19h00s (talk) 06:21, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I have boldly copied this content to a todo banner as topics are eventually archived. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 16:33, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * For anyone interested in helping edit/trim/re-style things, I think I'm basically done adding the bulk of newly sourced information and analysis. Still a few odds and ends that I think might be important, but can definitely start trying to edit it down now. 19h00s (talk) 07:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Refactoring public art + works
There was some duplication among the section on public installations and the works, and the latter seemed a bit long without context to break it up. I've moved all the installations into the dedicated section and combined works at the same museum or institute. what do you think?

There might also be some works or museums that could be left off that list, and grouping by type, so that it is more of an annotated selection -- perhaps with a link to a complete catalog if it exists. – SJ + 21:23, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The "single museum--multiple works" format is definitely more elegant, as is the incorporation of the public art into the separate section. And yeah, once I get a handle on more of Gilliam's mid-career oeuvre (which is the most lacking in terms of published catalogues/references), then it shouldn't be much more work to finish a separate "works by" article. Before then though, you're probably right that some of the listings still don't really belong (thinking in particular of Purple Antelope Space Squeeze, a lesser print that's in like 5 collections, and some of the earliest drape paintings, with are definitely overrepresented on this list.) 19h00s (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ++. The name alone made me check it out however, and I must say I love it. :) But a list article would be a good place for it. – SJ +  02:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Sj In case you have a few minutes and are interested, would love a second set of eyes to proof or trim my expansions in the bio section :) More to come on the 70s-onwards. 19h00s (talk) 18:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I took a pass at the 60s through 80s. 🗓️🖼️ Quick thoughts: this is shaping up to be an epic article! You might consider splitting this into a bio that is a briefer summary of his life and work (around 100K; compare Michelangelo), a list of works as you've mentioned (housing most of the last section, broken out by era/series), perhaps with a complementary catalogue raisonné on Commons, and then consider which of these sections is really about a work or collection that is notable in its own right, giving those their own article. Currently that might be just the Drape paintings series, which clearly deserve an article if there is an unambiguous name for them. Then the bio could have a higher-level summary of its place in his career, and the article about the work can add more detail about methods, influences, timeline, reception and impact.
 * Style point: Dates are quite prominent in the body, which mentions an unusual number of individual works; if there's a catalog section at the end you can leave out many of those dates, especially when they are in paragraphs or sentences that already specify the [relevant] year. I started to remove some of the inline dates in the 60s-70s but stopped when I realized how widespread it was. – SJ + 03:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This are all super helpful, will especially go back through and adjust the way individual works/date are invoked. Haven't expanded an artist bio article in such depth like this before, but trying to be bold lol, this was pretty scattered before. The suggestion re: an article for the Drapes is well-heard, I'm just trying to get a handle on the variation in titling/labeling to figure out what the article should start as. The 2005 and 2018 Binstock books (the two that were developed with the most prolonged access to the artist) went with non-italicized capital D "Drape painting(s)" and "Drape(s)", and used lowercase d "draped paintings" as a descriptor; news sources generally go with lowercase d "draped" or "unstretched;" art publications vary super widely, sometimes using the Binstock approach and sometimes making their own formulation; Gilliam generally called them "Drape(s)" or "Draped painting(s)," but he was not a prolific published writer, so there are few places where it's clear he controlled how the title was formatted in the prose. Plus there are quite a few individual series within the broader Drape mode (his final Drape was at least 2021, if not later). But regardless I assume the article title may need "(Gilliam)" or something similar appended. 19h00s (talk) 16:30, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Bold is good! :) The only other examples I've come across are from Nina Yankowitz from that era (whose article doesn't mention them and needs work); there could be an article on draped paintings for the family of techniques, with Gilliam's Drape paintings a section there that might then expand to its own article. – SJ + 19:29, 17 February 2024 (UTC)  I took a first pass at a stub - when did he first use the name "Drape paintings"? – SJ +  20:05, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like a great start! I'm looking through all the catalogue texts and interviews from the early years right now (shout out arts libraries that let you take photos of materials!!). I haven't yet found the first instance of him referring to them as "Drape(s)" or "Drape(d) painting(s)" (earliest so far is 1990, around the time when his catalogues started including more extensive interviews), but I've found curators/art historians calling them "so-called Drape paintings" and "his draped paintings" as early as '75. Once I've gone through all the texts I'll flag what I've found and add it to the new article! 19h00s (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Airline arrest
Expanding on my Edit summary, it would be helpful to have additional eyes on the section regarding Gilliam's mental health and arrest in 1975 for assaulting a fellow plane passenger - I want to be sure I'm keeping NPOV and citing the court memorandum correctly. There are few details readily available about the incident apart from a U.S. Tax Court memorandum decision from 10 years later related to Gilliam's legal fees, which has become notable case law due to the circumstances and the precedents it set. But that memorandum decision is structured in a way that makes it difficult to really parse (no details as to who said what, etc.) As far as I can find, the arrest was covered by The Washington Post and Washington Star (both cited via NewsBank) and United Press International (not accessible in any databases online but the Star article has no listed author and cites UPI's reporting, so it was presumably a rewrite of a UPI wire article). Gilliam was essentially an art world star when this happened, so I'm pretty surprised I haven't been able to find more. He never spoke publicly about it from what I can find, but I haven't been able to visit his papers at the Archives of American Art, so there's a chance it's mentioned somewhere in there. Significantly, none of the literature about Gilliam's art career makes any mention of the plane incident (checked all the published monographs after 1990 and all the in-depth monographic journal pieces) - it's unsurprising that it wasn't mentioned in his retrospective monograph, but even the academic art journal articles and well-researched historically oriented contemporary magazine/news profiles of Gilliam omit the incident, and none of the literature mentions his mental health whatsoever. The only place this is regularly discussed is legal journals in the context of tax law, most of which are just citing the case as a precedent.

I found this because I checked the original few edits on this article, at some point in early Wiki era the tax court memo was pasted in its entirety - it seems that a tax law professor realized who Gilliam was around the time of the retrospective in 2005 and made a blog post about him that got some attention in law circles. The really distasteful phrasing in that blog - he "went berserk" - speaks to the issue of trusting the tone/reporting on this, a nuanced situation that has few detailed first-person sources (but I also like Gilliam's art, so I want to be mindful not to let my appreciation translate into just giving him the benefit of the doubt in the way it's phrased/framed here).

I'll be adding more to the article re: his career/style in the 80s-2020s via the literature, but wanted to flag this now that I've added it and structured the relevant citations so others can help reword it/add more info/whittle it down/help translate the court memorandum speak. (tagging @Sj in case you have any insights into a good approach here) --19h00s (talk) 06:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello 19h00s, the updates are looking good. This seems like an incident that made the news but was not considered significant in his life's work, worth mention (e.g. as sources for his depression and persistent psychiatric care), but not necessarily a long paragraph here. Bios don't need to mention every verifiable health event or interaction with the law. I can try to take a pass over the weekend. – SJ + 06:44, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In reviewing the decade I trimmed it to the widely covered elements, leaving the rest to the sources, to keep the flow of that section. Primary sources like court docs aren't great sources for notability, just for confirmation of details. I'm not surprised this didn't get more coverage given the context, and it may not speak much to overall mental health given it was a drug interaction. If you end up slimming the entire article down further once it's done, I'd say this is the least notable part of the section and something of an aside - it is certainly unusual but didn't impact his life or career, and even regionally made the news less than other evaluations of his work. – SJ + 03:21, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * circling back to add: found more details re: his health in the Post from 2016, I skimmed it early in my research and missed these. Seems to be the only place that details his health diagnoses, and it was from the Post's era of terrible SEO practices, and I was originally looking for details re the incident instead of details re his health. He was diagnosed bipolar in the 60s and placed on lithium, additional details in the article. I think his health may deserve a subsection at this point given the number of ways it impacted him, but I'm not super familiar with how to break out those sorts of sections/if it would be appropriate. Will let the group help decide how to structure that long-term. 19h00s (talk) 04:05, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Gilliam, race, and politics: quotes & sources for other editors
I've tried to add a sizable number of quotes and analysis from Gilliam, critics, art historians, and journalists on issues of Blackness, race, representation, and politics, as they have been extensively cited by all four as important factors in Gilliam's life, artistic evolution, and career (there's a lot of nuance to the phrase "important factors," as Gilliam himself said that he didn't make art about politics or Blackness but that he felt his art did encompass aspects of the Black experience, yet he also suggested late in his career that he may have had more commercial success if he had integrated references to Black politics and culture more explicitly into his visual medium). At this point I think I've reached the upper limit on this type of analysis and info, barring a significant split or trimming that cuts the article down in size. But there are an even bigger range of relevant quotes from additional sources that could be helpful to anyone else who is editing or adjusting this page later down the line - and I also want to be mindful that the specific way I have written facts and included quotes and analysis may not be how another interested editor would do it, so I want to offer some additional sources beyond what's already included, for anyone who feels it needs to be rewritten later on. There is also a case to be made - which Binstock and others have argued - that the plethora of analysis on Gilliam and race is a factor of critics' and journalists' over-use of Gilliam's identity as the primary lens through which to view his work (which is why I also included one of several published Gilliam quotes where he explicitly says he doesn't believe his work should be categorized as "Black art"). Just pasting these additional quotes here (will add more as I find/re-find them.) - 19h00s (talk) 15:31, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Gilliam, quoted by the Associated Press in 2001 in "Abolitionists inspire paintings," published in The Daily News, Bowling Green, Kentucky:
 * "I don't like black art being just for black people, particularly when we are against a high wall and outnumbered," says Gilliam, who had a long friendship with [Jacob] Lawrence. "Art that is open and shows the next step is very powerful, and that is what I like about the series"


 * Gilliam quote and analysis by Jackson Brown (Callaloo 2017, cited in article), pg. 63:
 * "Gilliam years later posited the political import of his artwork as follows: 'The expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political. My work is as political as it is formal.' This rather agnostic take from an artist more commonly inclined to deny the influence of politics, particularly racial politics, on his artwork is telling, likely leveled in defense against Black Arts Movement critics who, in Gilliam’s eventual embrace of modernist abstraction, deemed artwork like his—that is, art without legible political content—irresponsible, useless in its potential service to the fight for black liberation."

--19h00s (talk) 23:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)