When painter Sam Gilliam died last weekend at the age of 88, he left behind pioneering works of art, especially his draped canvases dyed with colorful flowers that forever changed the way the world conceived a painting. But he also left a more personal legacy: his impact on fellow artists and friends.
Sculptor Melvin Edwards, 85, was a friend of Gilliam for more than 50 years, forming a close-knit trio with painter William T. Williams. Edwards and Gilliam owned each other’s work and wondered non-stop about the process, sometimes talking three or four times a day.
“We always wondered why the other had done something a certain way,” said Edwards, perhaps best known for his “Lynch Fragments” series and barbed wire. “But that was the nature of Sam’s work: he always questioned space.”
Just two days after Gilliam’s death, Edwards and Johnson talked about how they are processing his life and work, his decision to stay in Washington, DC, and his success as his best critic, in a conversation that has been edited and condensed.
How do you look now at Sam’s characteristic movement: pulling the canvas off the wall and wrapping it, which he said was partly inspired by the clothes hanging on the clotheslines?
MELVIN EDWARDS Sam was a very good, curious and experimental painter. Thinking about the surfaces on which the art was made did not begin with Sam, but he took a step that most people did not understand was possible. Sam took the plunge. It was seen in the right way by some people who were paying attention to this kind of thing, and they immediately blessed it.
Often, fellow artists quickly recognize the implications of style and possible importance. One of the first things I did involved suspended steel elements and chains. When Sam and I showed up together at the Harlem Studio Museum [in a landmark 1969 show], I was making the first of my pieces of barbed wire, some of which were glued to the wall, some of which were suspended. And we almost took it for granted that we were both taking steps.
So there were those swirls and echoes between you, right?
EDWARDS Look, it’s all visual art, it’s not about labeling. It’s up or down or left or right. For me and most artists, it’s like having a baby. When you have sex you are not thinking about how you tell the baby.
Rashid, what were the entry points for you with Sam’s work?
RASHID JOHNSON There are many, but the most significant is their relationship with improvisation, their ability to respond in real time with gestures, branding and decision-making in a way that fits the the largest art form in the United States and the most ambitious innovation. : jazz music. We talked about that. Just watching Sam explore with an honest and radical sense of self. That radicalism was linked to improvisation and innovation.
What innovations in particular?
JOHNSON His bezels for me are as ambitious an innovation as the manumission of the fabric from the stretcher. [Gilliam’s “Beveled-Edge” or “Slice” paintings, a series that began in the late 1960s, were made on beveled-edge stretchers that projected off the wall.] I think there is something really important in this work.
Honey, do you agree?
EDWARDS There was no need to know where I was going with Sam. The pieces were supported in different ways. For example, in the recent show at Pace [featuring Edwards and Williams], the easels he used were a perfect role for Sam, extending his work horizontally. It had a human scale, while the other pieces in that exhibition took us straight to the ceiling.
Sam was quite competitive, talking about wanting to win the art game; artists now don’t talk like that.
JOHNSON Part of that is generational. Older artists are more willing to admit to the competitive spirit. It’s different today. I have so much respect for that thought. There is a beauty in trying to win. Even if there is no direct opponent.
He was a tennis player, and maybe that was related to the willingness to compete.
EDWARDS When we talked two months ago, I made fun of Sam because he had been a tennis player. Our friend William has been a track athlete and a wide jumper, and football was my main sport in high school. We were all physical people who understood physical dynamics. I don’t mean that it has been translated individually into our work, but I mean sensitivity to all three dimensions.
Rashid, you talked about a black artist’s decision in the 60s and 70s to work in an abstract way and not directly represent black in representative or figurative terms, and how that continues for you.
JOHNSON It was a decision, and it’s a silly mission to pretend it’s not true. Sam and artists like Sam, who chose abstraction as a vehicle and saw it as a path to follow, were so aware of the fact that they did not include the black body or the thematic concerns of blacks. I thank these people. It wasn’t always rewarding in the usual ways.
Sam stayed in Washington, and did not have a constant representation in the gallery in New York, the center of the art world, until late in his life. How did this affect your career?
EDWARDS He had his independence, which was the core of his personality anyway.
When I interviewed him in 2018 and asked him if being black had slowed down his career, he said yes and no, and he wasn’t interested in clearing the contradiction.
JOHNSON I honestly love it, and I see a lot of truth in both answers. Western white history often does a great job of focusing. For me, as a young artist, Sam Gilliam was important. Mel, Ed Clark, William T. Williams, these were heroes to me. And the fact that they were not represented with so much ambition in some of the cultural institutions did not prevent how he saw the world.
EDWARDS People think that the things written about whites are the ones we should aspire to as meaningful. The art world has its own ways of seeing things and has its own ways of educating us in a way that often, we limit our thinking. Sam, finally, was not limited by these things.
I know it’s so soon after his death, but what is his key legacy?
JOHNSON I feel happy for the life he lived and excited about the impact it had on so many of us. For me, they are the cycles of his life and career: the fact that he continued to work and continued to do things that not only complemented his legacy, but added to it. I know some people will cite his first advances, but I think in the last three years he has provided us with what can be as ambitious a job as he has ever done, honestly. That part matters. This guy really went on.
EDWARDS I’m glad Sam was Sam, doing what he felt he wanted to do. He always maintained that attitude. You could fill the entire New York Times with just Sam and forget about the rest. This is my emotional vision of my friend. He was glad his work was getting more attention and more finances came to him, but it was a hellish struggle. He always wanted to do the job, and he did it until he couldn’t.