A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 197)

prominence is George Rodrigue. Born in New Iberia in 1944, Rodrigue studied as an art major at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (1962-64) while William Moreland taught there. Determined to study commercial art, he went to Los Angeles and enrolled at the Art Center College of Design (1965-67). In Los Angeles he became increasingly aware of Pop Art in the galleries and art world of Los Angeles, and visited the Ferus Gallery where he saw the works of Andy Warhol. He returned to Louisiana in 1967, after his father suffered a stroke, and discovered that much was being lost in his native environment, later recalling that “each time I’d come back to Louisiana I’d see something different that I hadn’t noticed growing up. I started painting and I saw all this stuff leaving us, things I wanted to capture in the Cajun country, and so I decided to call myself a Cajun artist.”30 Initially, he painted the landscape environment of Acadiana, focusing on the live oak tress and dark atmosphere of the area. Then, in The Aoli Dinner (1971), he featured a Cajun dinner gathering and created his first work to include figures in a landscape, followed by The Class (1972), based upon his mother’s class photograph. Rodrigue became recognized for his images of oak trees, Cajuns, Jolie Blonde, and Evangeline, and achieved national recognition with his book, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue, published in 1976, as the American Bicentennial placed a growing focus on the art and diverse cultures of the nation. He painted Louisiana politicians, including Huey Long as The Kingfish, and later portraits of governors Edwin Edwards and Kathleen Blanco. His focus on the people and culture of his region coincided with a rising interest in preserving the heritage of Acadiana, evident not only in the world of art and photography, but also in the emergence of Cajun cuisine (and figures such as Paul Prudhomme) and the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), as well as beginning of Festivals Acadiens and a focus on the region’s music and folklife. Rodrigue completed the first of his loup-garou paintings around 1984, inspired by the lore and mythology of the region, and became well known for its popularized morphed form in his “Blue Dog” paintings, prints, and sculptures in the intervening years.31 John Scott was born on a farm in the Gentilly area of New Orleans and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward of the city, where he encountered early art training when he learned to embroider from his mother. He attended Xavier University in New Orleans, where he studied art as an undergraduate with Numa Rousseve and Sister Mary Lurana Neely, before attending Michigan State University, where he completed an MFA degree in 1965. He returned to teach at Xavier, a position he retained for forty years, from 1965 to 2005, establishing an influential art program at the university. His early works focused on Christian imagery and classical mythology, yet in the late 1960s he focused increasingly on African, African-American, Caribbean, and Southern Creole cultures and their relationship to the culture of New Orleans, often noting that he let the “sidewalks of New Orleans speak to his soul and imagination.” Scott’s accomplishments were nationally recognized, as underscored when he was awarded a “Genius Grant” in 1992 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. One of Scott’s Xavier undergraduate students, Martin Payton (BA, 1973), received an MFA degree from the Otis Art Institute (1975), and returned to Xavier and joined the faculty from 1976 to 1981. He later became a professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge in 1990. Scott and Payton collaborated on one of Scott’s last major public art projects, a large sculptural installation on DeSaix Circle in New Orleans, titled Spirit House, dedicated in 2002 and restored in 2011. Scott was the subject of a major retrospective, Circle Dance: the Art of John T. Scott, at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2005. Impacted by Hurricane Katrina, Scott moved to Houston, where he underwent two double lung transplants, then died in September of 2007. Following his death, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities assembled and installed the largest public and permanent collection of his art, the John Scott Collection, on view at the Louisiana Humanities Center at Turners’ Hall.32 Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, and continuing into the 1980s, a new generation of artists was trained at Louisiana’s colleges, universities, and art schools, often under a new generation of art professors and professionals. At Xavier, for example, Jeffrey Cook studied with and was influenced by John Scott and Martin Payton. Hunt Slonem studied at Tulane, absorbing lessons in art and art history, and became well educated in the architectural history of Louisiana. Tom Young, a veteran of the New York art world, assumed leadership of the art department at the University of New Orleans, and recruited a broad range of faculty members, including Ida Kohlmeyer and Doyle Gertijansen, and attracting students who included Lynda Benglis and Peter Halley. Robert Warrens joined the LSU art department faculty in 1967, a position he held until he became professor emeritus in 1998, and influenced artists such as the young Douglas Bourgeois. Gene Koss came to Tulane after completing an MFA degree at the Tyler School of Art (1976) in Philadelphia, and began to establish one of the preeminent glass programs in the United States. In the late 1970s he designed and built a glass studio on the campus, laying the foundations for a program that grew in national stature and influence during the 1980s and 1990s, enhancing New Orleans’ position as a prominent center for glass artists and glass studios. In 1976, adding to the impact of these art departments and faculty members in New Orleans, the Contemporary Art Center was founded by a group of artists, including Robert Tannen and Tina Giroud, as an artist-run organization focused on exhibiting contemporary art. By this time, important private art collections devoted to the art of Louisiana and the South were evolving ART IN CONTEMPORARY LOUISIANA 197 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=996 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1327 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1234 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1358 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1208 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1373 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1217 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1288 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=997 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1130

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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