THREE EXCELLENCES OF CULTURE: PAINTING, POETRY AND MUSIC, THE WORK OF ART ROSENBAUM AND FRIENDS REVISTed

PEARL FINCHER MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, SPRING TEXAS

Art Rosenbaum painted images of Southern folklore in richly colored canvases that depict lively figures often dancing or holding musical instruments. After moving to Georgia, Art and Margo met musicians such as Ring Shouters on the Georgia coast, banjo and fiddle players in the mountains, faith-filled singers in African American churches, and old-school blues players. These musicians made their way into Art’s paintings as well as Margo’s photographs. “

A typical Rosenbaum canvas is fairly teeming with figures, many of them specific portraits, often including the artist himself,” writes painter Philip Morsberger. “Elements of landscape, of architecture, of still life (often musical instruments): all are presented in rich detail, but at the same time with bold and fearless brushwork. There is no dead space in a Rosenbaum painting. Something is going on everywhere one looks.”

Rosenbaum’s paintings are in many collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art. He also plays a variety of folk instruments, and his music will be part of the exhibition at the Pearl. Rosenbaum’s boxed set, Art of Field Recording Vol. 1: Fifty Years of American Traditional Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum won a Grammy for Best Documentary Recording in 2008.

Works by Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, Art Rosenbaum, and Howard Finster. *Howard Finster Man of Visions* courtesy of **Hugh and Tricia Ruppersburg**

Howard Finster, *Art Rosenbum is the Best Painter I have Ever Seen Paint*

Margo Newmark Rosenbaum has collaborated with Art over many years in documenting American traditional music. Her photographs have been published in several books by Art Rosenbaum as well as the New York Times, Newsweek, and The Old-Time Herald. Margo’s work has been widely exhibited and is part of many private collections.

Three Excellences of Culture will be featured in both the Main Gallery and the Cole Gallery at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts this fall. Among the other artists whose work will be included are Howard Finster, who designed album covers for R.E.M. and the B-52’s; Len Jenkin, whose work includes scripts for Family, The Incredible Hulk, and the novel New Jerusalem; Michael Paxton, Bonnie Loggins, Dennis Harper, Kent Knowles, Scott Belville, Dilmus Hall. Zuzka Vaclavik, and Teddy Johnson.

The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, September 24 with a members-only preview on Friday evening. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and admission is free. Please note that the Pearl will be closed September 4 – 23 for the exhibition change.

REMEMBERING ART ROSENBAUM

TYRUS LYTTON ON ART ROSENBAUM

This piece that Lee Matney, the curator of Linda Matney Gallery, has asked me to submit was part of the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art’s first “ATHICA Emerges” exhibition. I had recently graduated from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at UGA where, while Art Rosenbaum, was not my graduating professor, was my most influential. I took 2 or 3 classes with him during my tenure there, but it was a shared kinship for music as well as painting that tied us together.
This work was made shortly after I graduated school. The materials are reminiscent of what folk artists Art introduced us to use. Thorton Dial, Howard Finster, to name two. Most undergraduates have little means when they leave school, and I wasn’t dissimilar. I used what I could find walking the streets after a pint or at the dollar store. Everything I found had a song built in. An unknown history passed down like a Childe Ballad. And what kitsch glamour I could add to it I did. To sing out of tune in the right spot was well looked upon. We enjoyed laughter and a good joke. But the jokes were hooks to bring someone into the song or artwork. To observe and find a thing deeper in connection than we thought as a kid. Something to relax the stiff necks and 5-dollar neck ties. An affinity Art and I shared was confusion and open interpretation of this nonsense called life.
Art Rosenbaum was my friend and he showed me how to make more friends and live life. Either share a song of jubilation or to sing your troubles by.

TEDDY JOHNSON

Art’s reputation preceded him when we first met in 2003. I was a prospective
graduate student at UGA and I was already enamored with folk music, folk art,
and mannerist painting. I was aware of Art’s epic multi-figure murals, had read of
his connection to the storied days of Greenwich Village, his acquaintanceship with
Bob Dylan, and his banjo work on Cool Hand Luke.
So, I was I a bit intimidated to find that I was getting the school tour from this
man. I was flattered that, during the tour, he showed incredible curiosity about
who I was and the nature of my artwork—an attitude that he brought to each
person he met. Standing over my small slides on a light table, we talked with
excitement about glaze painting technique (something I had just begun to learn
during a study abroad semester in Italy earlier that year). I couldn’t have known
in that moment that it would be the start of nearly two decades of friendship.

As his student, Art impressed upon me the value of pulling the life out of the
painting instead of simply following a muse. It took me a while to find my place in
Grad School and to even to understand who Art was, but most important for me
was his teaching by example. In his studio, there was always new drawings on the
table, canvases in progress or ready to go out to exhibit, illustrations pinned up
and ready to go to a publisher, CDs in boxes ready for a merch table, a radio show
in progress, a portrait commission on the easel, a box set ready for proof, a
documentary in progress, a banjo tutorial in the works.
Art was always busier than anyone I knew and his energy seemed
unending. When walking through his studio or sitting with him and his wife and
collaborator, the incredible artist Margo Rosenbaum, there were always stories
told with enthusiasm and energy—stories of artist friends, musicians he was
recording, and projects on the horizon. Art made it clear through his actions that
there is no need to limit oneself, that in the crosspollination of passions there is
potential to do much of high value simultaneously. I credit him for giving me
inspiration through his example to pursue a multifaceted art career that includes
painting, curating, teaching, and directing a gallery.
Even around 15 years after first meeting him, my wife Heather and I laughed to
one another during a stay with Art and Margo in NYC about being outpaced by
folks twice our age as we bounced from museum to museum, and then combed

through flat files of artwork by artists including George Bellows in a rent-
controlled apartment of their old friends late into the night.

Around 2005 Art and artist (then fellow student) Ty Lytton discussed their shared
love of Sea Chanties in a drawing class, and soon enough, I was amongst about 10
folks from the drawing and painting department and beyond, who took to
regularly meeting at the Globe in Athens to sing sea chanties. The group met
monthly, and it was during these long nights of merriment that I best got to know
Art and become his friend. Art would play the banjo and accordion as he taught so
many of us that what counted was singing with resolve. He compelled us to
commit to memory songs of labor, history, innuendo, and lore. It was infectious
to gather each month, taking turns leading, trying to blend voices, and finding our
footing within a tradition that had previously seemed only a fable.

One day Art announced he had signed us up to perform on stage, and we laughed
in disbelief that we would perform alongside him. Soon enough, we had
performed on many stages, festivals, theaters, bars, and galleries, as the Around
the Globe Chantey Singers. I remember the same disbelief when he mentioned
recording an album. How empowering and inspirational it was to sit in a circle in
Art’s studio around a microphone—the group trying to translate our passion and
bond to tape. We sang into the nights with Art’s paintings, collections, and
stories adding additional warmth to songs, beers, and friendships.

The Around the Globe Chantey Singers would take on many different members
during the years and I myself would return to Maryland after the first couple
years of the group. But the friendships that I formed with Art and others during
those few years of grad school continues to be foundational to my life and work.
It formed the base of my annual pilgrimage back to Athens, long after
graduation—the highlights of which were always long conversations in Art and
Margo’s living room surrounded by their art and stories, generosity, and
mountains of books.

Grad school was the beginning of almost 20 years of meetups, occasional
collaborations, or common painting exhibits, from Savanah, to Charleston,
Virginia, New York, Baltimore, and Pennsylvania. We talked about painting and
what it meant to be an artist, to sing, to play banjo, and to see the world. It was
such a bedrock in my life to call up Art through the years and gain his insights as I

made my way through the artworld, being a professor, having a family, and the
pandemic.
The Child Ballads show in 2010 was a painting exhibit with musical performances
that I curated and produced with my now wife. It was inspired by music I learned
about by way of Art through his amazing field recordings. I remember calling him
nervously and asking him if he would participate. He not only agreed but
supported us every step of the way on the exhibit. He made a custom painting for
it entitled Lord Daniel –a bold sexually charged painting of lovers being
confronted with sword by a jealous husband based on a traditional ballad as sung
by Mary Lomax. Art drove up from Georgia to Baltimore and then a few months
later to NYC to perform at both legs of the show. He lent us lots of his time giving
feedback on the planning, and even connected us with his friend, the esteemed
John Cohen, to screen his films and serve as a guest performer. He arranged for
his son Neil's film Sing my Troubles By to have a special screening. I can’t even
begin to express how meaningful it was for me to get to collaborate with Art. It
was one the of the many generous moments with Art that had a profound effect
on my life.
I particularly treasure the last year and a half, having gotten to stay with Art and
Margo at their home on a couple of occasions. I’m grateful I was able to witness in
person and from afar Art’s final paintings and Margo’s prolific drawings and
paintings, despite Art’s diagnosis with terminal cancer. What an incredible verve
for life.
Right before my final visit, Art told me over the phone, “I won’t be much fun but it
would be great to see you.” Though by the time I arrived, Art was in the hospital
on hospice, I was amazed by the warmth and generosity at hand with so many
friends visiting. Margo even prodded us to sing chanties in the hospital knowing
how much they meant to Art. The crowd of visitors who came to see Art, spoke
volumes about how much he meant to so many.

MICHAEL PAXTON

REMEMBERING ART ROSENBAUM
BY MICHAEL K. PAXTON

With the passing of Art Rosenbuam, the outpouring of love, respect and sadness by so many
has been enormous. With every tribute his, and in turn Margo’s, effect on artists, musicians,
recordings and past students has been both wide and deep. Thinking about how to add to this I
can only recount how Art made a huge difference in my career.
I came to Athens, GA in early 1977, almost at the same time Art and Margo did. Art from Iowa
to begin teaching at the University of Georgia and I from West Virginia on a fellowship to work
on my MFA. I never had Art as a teacher and first only knew him from watching his figure
painting class while I worked the tool and material closet in the painting space.
I had begun to do these very intense and wild sketchbook performances for a while and one
day Art approached and said that this needed to be videotaped. Video field recording was very
new and consisted of a huge half inch reel to reel recorder and equally huge black and white
only camera. So, one afternoon in early 1979, Art showed up with these at my Griggs Hall
studio. I costumed up, he hit record and the rest is history.
Looking back now and knowing Art’s love for the people, music and folk artists of the
mountains and piney woods of the south, I think he saw much sooner than I did the honesty
and authenticity of an artist like myself and the influence of being a sixth generation West
Virginian from the coalfields of deepest Appalachia had on my work.
To make a long story just a little longer, this video Pre-Formed Notes was part of my MFA
exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art and raised all kinds of hell with a lot of the
department. Art had stuck his neck out for me, which I never forgot. Soon after all this and
while still living in Athens my performances got me awarded a Visiting Artist at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago and my first major show in Chicago, where 41 years later I still
maintain a working studio and robust career.
I reconnected years later with Art and Margo when I joined up with Linda Matney Gallery. We
had more than a few conversations over the years and I even conducted a webinar with Art
sponsored by the gallery just a couple of years ago. Art was a most gentle soul and yet a force
of nature with a life’s work that covered a wide range of interests, expertise and major
accomplishments. It means so much to me to be included in this exhibition as a friend of Art
Rosenbaum, it is a very heavy and bittersweet honor.

In Remembrance

of Art Rosenbaum

JEFFREY WHITTLE

Here We Go

My name is Jeffrey Whittle and I studied drawing with Art Rosenbaum in the early 1990’s. Like
so many of his students over the years I was struck by the power and originality of his artwork,
his personality and the “spark” as his son Neal described it. Now more than anything I am
struck by Art’s generosity and humility. Art had a vast knowledge of art history and when he
spoke about artists from the past they became strangely familiar: Max Beckman, Kathe
Kollwitz, Cezanne, whoever, felt closer to you - like there was a link between you (the novice)
and these heralded artists from the past. And that link was Art Rosenbaum.
The past became alive, vital even.

And I always got the feeling that Art wanted to pass the baton - a constant invitation to join in
the fray, the song, the exploration.
An example:
Like so many Athens artists I submitted artwork to the Lyndon House Juried Art Exhibition and
I was rejected. And rejected, And then one day accepted. This moment was very important to
me - my first exhibition. And they hung my painting adjacent to one of Art’s large, figurative
paintings - one of those magical, impossibly constructed works. I was next to one to one of my
heroes. And at the opening I was shy and uncomfortable, standing with my parents not
knowing what to do at an art opening.
In a bit Art walked over to us and he said “I’m so honored to have my painting next to yours.”
I didn't know what to say.
He knew what he was doing - encouraging a young artist, inviting him to join the artistic family,
something I saw him do many times over the years with young artists. What he might not have
known was that he was also setting a tone of inclusion that would influence me as a future
educator. And I suspect that I’m not the only one.
For many years (usually in the fall) I’ve taken a group of figure drawing students to visit Art’s
studio. I cancel the model that day and the students convoy over in cars, we walk up the
driveway and there is Art wearing his signature baseball cap. Nervous and excited, sometimes
awkward but always generous, he welcomes these young artists with a spark in his eye. Down
the spiral staircase, there’s always a new painting in progress to see and the stories start
coming. Here we go:
Here comes the quote from Cezanne.
Here comes the story about Bob Dylan.
I’ve heard them many times but the students haven’t and its magical to witness. The students
are excited even if they don’t know quite what to make of the whole thing. The stack of quilts,
the boats, the controlled chaos of paint brushes, books, photographs, wooden palettes. They
had entered a world - a world of drawings and paintings and the studio where these creations
came to life.
Through his music, his art and his teaching Art helped to shape the culture of this town. A
natural story teller, a singer of songs, he was warm, hospitable, slightly crazy and visionary.
For many of us he was our captain and its difficult today to fathom Athens without his
presence. He was a unifying figure that broke through boundaries.
Art Rosenbaum’s passing mark’s the ending of a small and vital world unto itself.
Yet the ripple effects of his spirit travel to the horizon.
Here we go.

Courtney Gardner Reflects on Art Rosenbaum

Director of the Pearl Fincher in Houston, Texas, Courtney Gardner, said, we were thrilled that our visitors were transported into a world of vibrant colors, lively figures, and Southern folklore in the Art Rosenbaum and Friends exhibition!" The Pearl was honored to exhibit in partnership with the Linda Matney Gallery in Virginia. The exhibit featured the incredible narrative painter Art Rosenbaum. But that's not all - this exhibition celebrated a long life of art and friendship. It also included works from Art's wife and professional photographer, Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, and some of their former students and friends, such as Howard Finster.

Art helped select the pieces for the exhibition and planned to attend its opening. However, as fate would have it, Art passed away in September 2022 at 83. His life has been celebrated in many publications since then, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and American Songwriter, to name a few.

Willem de Kooning and Neil Rosenbaum by Margo Newmark Rosenbaum

Works by Art Rosenbaum, Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, Dilmus Hall, Tyrus Lytton, and Len Jenkin

Art's paintings are a true feast for the eyes, richly colored canvases that depict lively figures often dancing or holding musical instruments. His works are in many prestigious collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art.

**Art Rosenbaum**
*Self Portrait with Philippine Graveyard*, 2010
Oil on canvas
56 × 33 in | 142.2 × 83.8 cm
**Jon and Christine Gilberti Legacy Collection**

But Art's talents didn't stop there - he also sought out and recorded various musicians to preserve their music and won a Grammy in 2008 for Best Documentary Recording. The Pearl was proud to host this special exhibition, which was likely one of the last opportunities to see such an extensive collection of Art's work.