 Hello, and welcome to Barns Takeout, your weekly serving of art from the Barns Foundation in Philadelphia. I'm Bill Perthes, the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education, and today I take us into Gallery 12, the American Room, to look at a work by the American artist, Horace Pippin. On June 19th, 1865, two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Union forces led by Major General Gordon Granger sailed into Galveston, Texas with news of the end of the Civil War and the freeing of all slaves. He brought with him a general order number three, a significant aspect of it, which read, quote, the people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves. And the connection there to for existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. Juneteenth commemorates this event and is the oldest national commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. So in celebration of Juneteenth, I thought we would take a moment and look at a picture by the African American self taught artist, Horace Pippin. Pippin was born in 1888 on Washington's birthday in Westchester, Pennsylvania, just 25 miles west of us here in Philadelphia. As a young boy, his family moved to Goshen, New York, where he he was raised. Pippin's life was one of both celebration, but also challenges. He enlisted in the First World War and was part of the 369th Colored Regiment known as the Hellfighters who saw some of the fiercest frontline fighting of a horrific war as was the First World War. Pippin was shot by a sniper and his dominant right arm was severely injured after being honorably discharged. Pippin, who had always had an interest in art, really dedicated himself to art, both as a way of sort of rehabilitating that dominant arm, but also as a means of expressing his experiences both as a combatant in the First World War. But also of his childhood and of contemporary times. And so, as I said, I thought in celebration of Juneteenth, we would take a moment to look at this picture from 1942 called Giving Thanks. It's a kind of picture that really captures one important aspect of the body of Pippin's work and that is our pictures that on which Pippin drew from his childhood memories. And so here we're brought into the intimate domestic space of this family. We see them gathered around a table, heads bowed just before eating a meal together. And the part of what makes Pippin's work so remarkable is his choice of details. This picture might initially seem very simple, but the closer we look, the selection of things that Pippin is pointing out to us really make it all the more special. So aspects such as the bed with its knotty pine graining under the bed, a bowl and a chamber pot over on the right, up on a shelf, a hurricane lamp, a hot stove with the meal steaming in a pot on top of it. And another thing that really makes Pippin's work engaging is his feel for color and patterning. And we very much see that at work in this picture. So from left to right, the patchwork quilt with its patches of patterned colors, the striped dotted pattern of the seated boy, or the polka dot pattern of the woman, or the red kerchief that she wears, or the rugs. So while each rug share similar colors, they're different both in their shape and in their patterning, the stripe of the rectangular rug that runs beside the bed, and then the oval rug to the right. And here Pippin has tipped the rug up so that the patterning, that oval patterning becomes all the more apparent. And the way that Pippin arranges them in this picture, these colorfully patterned areas run as a band across the picture and encourage our eye to move from left to right, traversing the family around the table with its own colorfully striped tablecloth. So it's these choices that really point out Pippin's feel for color and for patterning. And then other choices that he made, very modernist choices in many ways. I mentioned the tipping up of the oval rug so that we see the patterning. But also his choice to flatten areas out, he gives us a sense of perspective on these chairs so that we're looking at them head on. And yet he's chosen to flatten out and simplify the bed or the corner of the wall rather than having the left hand side jut out towards us, it flattens out to become a screen against which these bold patterns and colors stand out all the more. And it's these aspects of a picture that initially seems quite simple, but as we look at it, its complexity reveals itself. This is often what makes Pippin's work truly remarkable. Just a simple quote from Pippin in the way he's articulating how he thinks, he says, pictures just come to my mind and I tell my heart to go ahead. And I think in many ways these pictures, these ones where he's drawn from his childhood memories are touching in that way because you can feel his commitment, his heartfelt commitment in these pictures. So I hope next time that you come to the Barnes Foundation, you'll keep an eye out for works by Pippin. Or if you go to other collections, please seek his work out. It's always rewarding. And so until next week, I hope you do well and take care. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.