{"id":12828,"date":"2019-07-27T12:17:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=12828"},"modified":"2019-07-27T12:46:20","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T16:46:20","slug":"joseph-yoakum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/07\/27\/joseph-yoakum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visionary Landscapes Of Joseph Yoakum: \u2018There’s Nothing I Haven’t Suffered To See Things First Hand\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Yoakum (1890-1972) often jotted the locations of his abstracted landscape drawings in the top left of the pictures\u2014the Florida Everglades, the Mississippi River, Utah canyons, New Orleans\u2019 Lake Pontchartrain, Oregon\u2019s Columbia River, a Minnesota waterfall, Alaska, Argentina, Cuba, mountains outside Madrid, the English Channel, the Himalayas, New Zealand mountains. The Chicago artist claimed to have visited every one.<\/p>\n

“I tell you\u2014There’s few places I haven’t been\u2014of any size that is. And there’s nothing I haven’t suffered to see things first hand,\u201d he told Chicago artist Christine Ramberg in 1969.<\/p>\n

Yoakum told people that he was born in 1886, or 1888, \u201cnear the village of Window Rock, Arizona, in the Southwest territory before it were made the Navajo and Apache Indian reservation,\u201d according to Venus Over Manhattan gallery<\/a> in New York, where more than 60 of Yoakum\u2019s drawings were on view from June 20 to July 26, 2019.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Yoakum exhibition at Venus Over Manhattan gallery, New York, 2019. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But his Social Security and army records report that he was born in southwestern Missouri on Feb. 20, 1890, as Derrel B. DePasse noted in her 2001 book \u201cTraveling the Rainbow: The Life and Art of Joseph E. Yoakum.\u201d<\/a> His father, John Yokum, was born in the Cherokee nation in 1850. His mother, Frances \u201cFrannie\u201d Wadlow, was of French-American, Cherokee and African-American descent and born enslaved on a farm in Green County, Missouri, in 1857.<\/p>\n

Yoakum said he left home when still young to join the Great Wallace Circus. He told of touring the country, putting up advertising posters for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and working for the Ringling Brothers circus, including serving as personal valet to John Ringling. Before he returned to Missouri around 1908, and began having children with his girlfriend (later his wife) Myrtle Julian the following year, he claimed to have visited every continent\u2014save Antarctica\u2014\u201cas a hobo and stowaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chicago art historian Whitney Halstead, a friend of Yoakum\u2019s, had doubts, calling Yoakum\u2019s accounts “more invention than reality… in part myth, Yoakum’s life as he would have wished to have lived it.” But DePasse reported that Yoakum had actually visited many of the places that he said he had, that many of his stories were true.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, The Outlet in English Channel near Southampton Eng to Lehauerve France; This ship is the Lusatainia Conveyince Service, c. 1963\/1967, Blue and black ballpoint pens, color pencils and chalk with smudging, on tan wove paper, 19 x 24 in, 48.3 x 61 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, St Louis & Sanfrancisco Rail Road between Thayer Missouri & Jonesboro Arkansas, n.d., Blue ballpoint pens and chalk and colored pencils with smudging on ivory wove paper, 12 x 18 3\/4 in, 30.5 x 47.6 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yoakum seems to have served in France with the 805th Pioneer Infantry of the United States Army during World War I. But after the war, he didn\u2019t return to his family. Instead, he ended up in Chicago. Venus Over Manhattan says Yoakum worked as a mechanic, carpenter and railroad inspector. In the early 1940s, he and a second wife ran an ice cream shop on Chicago’s South Side. In 1946, according to some reports, Yoakum was committed to a psychiatric hospital.<\/p>\n

Somewhere around 1962, at the age of 72, in Chicago, Yoakum began making landscape drawings outlined in ballpoint pen (two lines around land masses) of forests, mountains, rivers and roads, drawings inspired by his travels. They are distinguished by shapes that wind about like curtains or intestines. He colored them in with pastels, watercolors, and crayons, and buffed them with toilet paper. By then he was retired, his wife had died, and he\u2019d found a home in Chicago housing project for the elderly.<\/p>\n

Yoakum referenced travel books, an atlas, the Encyclopedia Britannica, but his drawings often do not resemble the places they\u2019re said to depict\u2014which sewed doubt about his stories. Mostly he drew landscapes, though he occasionally rendered places and scenes from the lives of Moses and Jesus, as well as portraits of Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Clark Gable, boxer Jack Johnson, steel driver John Henry. Yoakum dated them with a rubber stamp to add a “touch of class.\u201d<\/p>\n

“My drawings are a spiritual unfoldment,\u201d he told Norman Mark of The Chicago Daily News in 1967. Yoakum said he took up art after sickness awoke him one night and he felt obliged to draw\u2014first sketching Golgotha, in Christianity the site of Jesus\u2019s crucifixion. He would produce a couple thousand artworks before his death. “The Bible is my biggest storybook,” Yoakum said. “What I don’t get, God didn’t intend me to have, and what I get is God’s blessing,\u201d Yoakum said.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, A Long Continentle Divide, n.d., Color pencil on paper, 11 7\/8 x 17 7\/8 in, 30.2 x 45.4 cm. Collection of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, gift of Martha Griffin, 2014.5.3. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt. Shasta 80 Miles West of Susanville In Circayou County California, c. 1970s, Pen, color pencil on paper, 12 x 19 in, 30.5 x 48.3 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1966, Yoakum moved into a South Side storefront on 82nd Street near Stony Island Avenue. In the second half of the 1960s, he often produced a drawing or more a day. “I had to do something, or I’d go crazy,” he said.<\/p>\n

A neighbor, John Hopgood, saw some drawings Yoakum had clothes-pinned to a line in his window around 1967. An anthropologist and professor at Chicago State College, Hopgood helped Yoakum get an exhibition at The Whole, a coffeehouse in the basement of St. Bartholomew’s Lutheran Church on the city\u2019s South Side.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a large man, with huge hands. He was shy, quiet, proud of his drawings. He felt flattered that anyone would want to show them. He carried a portfolio with maybe a hundred pictures. I chose twenty or thirty which we later matted,\u201d Harvey Pranian, the director there, told Diane Allison for a 1995 article in Raw Vision magazine.<\/p>\n

Norman Mark of the Chicago Daily News interviewed Yoakum in 1967, around the time of the coffeehouse show. “Why can’t people realize that we’re all God-made and sustained and become more considerable toward each other and make this world a decent place to live in again,\u201d the artist told him.<\/p>\n

Tom Brand, owner of Galaxy Press on the south side of Chicago, saw Yoakum\u2019s art at The Whole and got Ed Sherbyn Gallery on Clark Street, on the north side of the city, to exhibit them in spring 1968. There artists from Chicago\u2019s Hairy Who pop art collective discovered Yoakum\u2019s art. Painter Karl Wirsum bought a drawing and took it home, where painter Jim Nutt saw it, and went and bought some himself. Word spread through their circles of artists and teachers and historians\u2014including Whitney Halstead, who would befriend Yoakum, including helping him to the doctor late in life. Chicago artist Roger Brown recalled that finding Yoakum\u2019s art in Chicago \u201cwas like finding [Henri] Rousseau in our own backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illness landed Yoakum in a nursing home in 1971. He died a month before a solo exhibition of his work opened at New York\u2019s Whitney Museum in 1972.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, The First Zepolin to compleet the first non stop flight Between New York City + Parris France, 1969, Color pencil, ballpoint pen on paper, 12 x 19 in, 30.5 x 48.3 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York, and The Museum of Everything. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt. Raft River near Great Salt Lake near Village Grouse Creek, Utah, 1969, Color pencil, ballpoint pen, graphite on paper, 12 x 18 3\/4 in, 30.5 x 47.6 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: William H. Bengston, Chicago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Trinity and Brazus Valley near Elpaso Texas, 1964, Blue ballpoint pens and graphite, with watercolor on tan wove paper, 12 x 17 1\/2 in, 30.5 x 44.5 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt. Cross Pate in Long Range, Mt. Range near Damals Harber New Foundland, n.d., Color pencil, ballpoint pen on paper, 11 3\/4 x 17 3\/4 in, 29.9 x 45.1 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mound Valley, Kansas, n.d., Watercolor, ink, pencil on paper, 8 1\/4 x 11 in, 21 x 28 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Near Shore of Le Huavre, France, n.d., Watercolor, ink, pencil on paper, 8 1\/4 x 10 3\/4 in, 21 x 27.3 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt Mckinley Highest Point in North America 20320 FE Near Town of Curry! Anchorage Seetor Alaska, USA, n.d., Color pencil, ballpoint pen on paper, 12 x 17 5\/8 in, 30.5 x 44.8 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>

Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt. Wilhelemina of Nassau Range Near Carstenez New Guinea asia [sic], c. 1970s, Color pencil, ballpoint pen, and ink on paper, 18 x 24 in, 45.7 x 61 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt. Cook of Southern Alps in South of New Zeland town as Church of Christ, c. 1968, Color pencil, ballpoint pen on paper, 12 x 18 1\/4 in, 30.5 x 46.4 cm. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan, New York. Photo: Claire Iltis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Joseph Yoakum (1890-1972) often jotted the locations of his abstracted landscape drawings in the top left of the pictures\u2014the Florida Everglades, the Mississippi River, Utah canyons, New Orleans\u2019 Lake Pontchartrain, Oregon\u2019s Columbia River, a Minnesota waterfall, Alaska, Argentina, Cuba, mountains outside Madrid, the English Channel, the Himalayas, New Zealand mountains. The Chicago artist claimed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[198,586,497,584],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12828"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12906,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12828\/revisions\/12906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}