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Myths
and Metaphors:
The Art of Leo Twiggs
Organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, the exhibition features nearly forty paintings by Twiggs. It is accompanied by a seventy-two page catalogue with essays by Frank Martin and exhibition curator Marilyn Laufer.
Myth and Metaphors: The Art of Leo Twiggs presents a highly personal exploration of the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. This emblem has been much in the news as public conflicts in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina have raged over its meaning. For many African Americans, the battle flag represents the racist attitudes that justified slavery and post-Civil War Jim Crow practices. For many whites, the emblem recalls familial memories as well as regional political and social feelings. Recent fights largely avoided challenging personal interpretations of the battle flag by targeting the privileging of this standard in public arenas such as on statehouse grounds and within state flags.
In the preface of the catalogue, William Underwood Eiland, Director of the Georgia Museum of Art, wrote:
"Leo Twiggs, with gentle but unswerving irony, takes the flag and claims it as part of his Southern heritage. Tattered, disappearing almost on its support, the standard about which there is so much controversy becomes in Twigg’s hands an ambiguous metaphor of unresolved conflict, yes, but also of a shared history."
"In addition to the Civil War, its calls to mind equally for Twiggs the suffering of slaves, the turmoil of Reconstruction, the indignity of Jim Crow, and even the promise of the Civil Rights Era, and of course, the aftermath, when this piece of cloth, venerated by some, reviled by others, continues to inspire argument and dissension."
"Twiggs transforms the image through shaping a new iconography for it, one in which he finds the possibility, albeit remote, of accord".
Twiggs studied at Claflin College, the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University and the University of Georgia. Until his retirement, he was Head of the Department of Art at South Carolina State University at Orangeburg, S.C., where he shaped and launched the careers of many aspiring artists.
In
his own work, influences of his first teacher—Arthur
Rose—and of the mid-century giant and New York University
professor Hale Woodruff remain evident. Nevertheless, the
markers of his creative genius are evident in his daring
use of light cotton fabric and batik techniques. For many
years, his preferred stretched cotton ground has recalled
the centrality of cotton in the history of South Carolina
where cotton plantations thrived during the era of slavery,
and where cotton remained the principal cash crop for black
sharecroppers and independent farmers after the Civil War.
Additionally, cotton was also in wide use in Africa where
it was sometime dyed using various resist-techniques including
the practice of batik. Twiggs’ abiding interest in
these two aspects of the history of cotton underscores
his profound grasp of social, cultural and racial symbols
in the South.
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