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Don't Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together, 2003
Mattress coil, chicken wire, clothing, can lids, found metal, plastic twine, wire, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas on wood
71x114x8 in.
Collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, James E. Roberts Fund, Deaccession Sculpture Fund, Xenia and Irwin Miller Fund, Alice and Kirk McKinney Fund, Anonymous IV Art Fund, Henry F. and Katherine Deboest Memorial Fund, Martha Delzell Memorial Fund, Mary V. Black Art Endowment Fund, Elizabeth S. Lawton Fine Art Fund, Emma Harter Sweetser Fund, General Endowed Art Fund, Delavan Smith Fund, General Memorial Art Fund, Deaccessioned Contemporary Art Fund, General Art Fund, Frank Curtis Springer & Irving Moxley Springer Purchase Fund, and the Pierre F. Goodrich Endowed Art Fund.
Photo by Stephen Pitkin, Pitkin Studio
Art ain't about paint. It ain't about canvas. It's about ideas.
Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world.
I have found how to get my ideas out, and I won't stop.
I got ten thousand left.
-Thornton Dial
Hard Truths: the Art of Thornton Dial presents a major survey of the work of Thornton Dial with approximately 50 large-scale paintings, sculptures and wall assemblages that address a wide range of social and political issues. Originating at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, this exhibition examines Dial's representations of the human struggle for freedom and equality, tackling such issues as the plight of minorities, the atrocities of slavery and the challenges of the homeless.
A working-class man who spent his childhood in the farm fields of western Alabama and his adult years in factories, Dial employs a vast array of cast-off materials in his work - from plastic grave flowers, children's toys and bed springs to cow skulls and goat carcasses. These items reappear in dense accumulations amidst dripped paint and expressionistic brushworks, a style that critics have likened to Jackson Pollock and Anslem Kiefer.
Sculptural assemblages and paintings are on display at Mint Museum Uptown. An exhibition of Mr. Dial's drawings is at Mint Museum Randolph.
Cubbs, Joanne and Eugene W. Metcalf, eds. Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial. Munich: Delmonico Books, in association with Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2012.
Dial, Thornton, Sr. Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger. New York: Abrams, in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the American Center, 1993.