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October 21, 2005 > Arts & Entertainment > MFAH shows sculptor Dial’s political work

MFAH shows sculptor Dial’s political work

By Rachel Green | For the Thresher

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Thornton Dial in the 21st Century creates Dial as a Robert Rauschenberg with a more haunting draw and a three-dimensional Jackson Pollock.

Born in Alabama in 1928, Dial did not gain any recognition as a major artist until well into the 1980s. Both his experience as a welder and as a black man living in the South have contributed much to his work, lending craftsmanship and inspiration to each piece.

The exhibit displays only recent works in response both to social and political events that have affected him strongly. Dial’s body of work consists mostly of large-scale assemblages mounted on canvas and grand sculptural pieces that dominate the exhibit space, although smaller drawings are also shown. The materials he chooses are varied and anything but conventional, ranging from carpeting to house paint to Barbie dolls to spandex. All these obscure materials add vivid layers to his compositions.

Dial’s use of unusual or discarded objects is highlighted in the first work one sees in the exhibit. Recalling the vague form of a ship at sea amid spray-painted driftwood and angular black bird forms streaked with stark red and white, The Old Water stands proudly at the center of the room. A walk around the monumental sculpture reveals wire, lattice fencing and recognizable objects often found in Dial’s other works.

A second theme — sheer magnitude — is apparent in the rest of the exhibit. The 10-foot-tall sculptures and the expansive assemblages that line the walls around them lend a feeling of grandeur and importance. Two assemblages, Master of Space and Stars of Everything are especially impressive; they striking in their own right, but they are also positioned high above the heads of observers, evoking a sense of awe.

To the naive observer, Dial’s body of work may seem like a haphazard melange of atypical materials purporting to be art. Spray-painted carpeting, dead tree limbs, animal bones, creepy stuffed animals — these are not the watercolors and brushes of the old masters by any means. However, it becomes clear early in the exhibit that Dial is able to control his nontraditional media and manipulate it in such a way as to make the viewer forget he is looking at a bunch of painted tin cans or dolls’ feet.

Dial’s work is not intriguing solely because of his atypical media. His assemblages and sculptures are often his reactions to outside events. A large section of the exhibit is devoted to Dial’s reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent actions taken by the U.S. government. It includes works such as The Morning of the End of the World, Victory in Iraq and Don’t Matter How Raggly the Flag, It Still Got to Tie Us Together, a Jasper Johns-esque glorification of a tattered American flag.

Dial’s genre-bending compositions reveal both his mastery of atypical materials and his ability to forge from them imposing and impressive reflections on American society. The exhibit proves Dial is worthy of all the recognition he has finally received.

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