@article{856870,
      recid = {856870},
      author = {Umberger, Leslie, and Marshall, Kerry James,},
      title = {Between worlds : the art of Bill Traylor /},
      pages = {444 pages :},
      note = {"Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same  name, on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,  Washington, DC, September 28, 2018-March 17, 2019"--Page  after title page.},
      abstract = {"Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949) is regarded today as one of  the most important American artists of the twentieth  century. A black man born into slavery in Alabama, he was  an eyewitness to history--the Civil War, Emancipation,  Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration,  and the steady rise of African American urban culture in  the South. Traylor would not live to see the civil rights  movement, but he was among those who laid its foundation.  Starting around 1939, Traylor--by then in his late eighties  and living on the streets of Montgomery--took up pencil and  paintbrush to attest to his existence and point of view. In  keeping with this radical step, the paintings and drawings  he made are visually striking and politically assertive;  they include simple yet powerful distillations of tales and  memories as well as spare, vibrantly colored abstractions.  When Traylor died, he left behind more than one thousand  works of art. In Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor,  Leslie Umberger considers more than two hundred artworks to  provide the most comprehensive and in-depth study of the  artist to date; she examines his life, art, and powerful  drive to bear witness through the only means he had,  pictures. The author draws on a wealth of historical  documents--including federal and state census records,  birth and death certificates, slave schedules, and  interviews with family members-- to clarify the record of  Traylor's personal history and family life. The story of  his art opens in the late 1930s, when Traylor first  received attention for his pencil drawings on found board,  and concludes with the posthumous success of his oeuvre"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/856870},
}