Joseph Elmer Yoakum, The Outlet in English Channel near Southampton Eng to Lehauerve France; This ship is the Lusatainia Conveyince Service, c. 1963/1967
Joseph E. Yoakum. Grizzly Gulch Valley Ohansburg Vermont, n.d. Gift of the Raymond K. Yoshida Living Trust and Kohler Foundation, Inc. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw
At age 71, Joseph Yoakum (1891–1972) began making idiosyncratic, poetic landscape drawings of the places he had traveled over the course of his life, creating some 2,000 extraordinary works that bear little resemblance to the world we know. This exhibition is comprised of over 100 of those works, predominantly from the collections of the artists in Chicago who knew him and admired and supported his work.
Joseph E. Yoakum, American Zeppolin Flight from New York City to Paris France in Year 1939, 1969. The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Whitney Halstead.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw
In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) reported having a dream that inspired him to draw. Thereafter the retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works.
This exhibition follows a shifting progression of Yoakum’s mountainous terrain, arid deserts, and majestic waterways, as well as a selection of his portraits of African American icons, testifying to the rich imagination of an exceptional American artist as well as to the remarkable circumstances that led to his lasting legacy.
The New York Times
Joseph Elmer Yoakum’s Delirious Vistas
By Roberta Smith
The visionary landscapist Joseph Elmer Yoakum (1888-1972) has been categorized as an outsider, self-taught or folk artist. Whichever: His place in the expanding canon of 20th-century American art is assured, both for his achievement and influence. The latest evidence of Yoakum’s originality is this enthralling exhibition, among the largest ever devoted to his work.
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Caucasus Mts On Black Sea near Urmavin in USSR, 1968
Smart Museum of Art
Joseph Elmer Yoakum: Line and Landscape
This solo exhibition features works from the Smart Museum's permanent collection, and is paired with a related presentation of works from the Chicago Imagists.
During the last decade of his life, self-taught artist and South Side resident Joseph Yoakum (1890–1972) began drawing almost full time. He produced several thousand works in this short period, mostly of highly stylized landscapes. Although he titled his drawings after specific locations from around the globe, Yoakum was less concerned with their likeness to the physical sites than with the feelings they evoked—a process he referred to as “spiritual unfoldment.”
Works by Joseph Elmer Yoakum (left) in A Trip from Here to There, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art
A Trip From Here to There
Joseph Elmer Yoakum featured in group exhibition exploring practices and works generated by walking, wandering, and travel.
As members of exploratory expeditions and surveys, painters and draftsmen have long played key roles in the plotting and investigation of place. Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, as artists increasingly emphasized the process by which an artwork is made, road trips and other journeys became both medium and subject.
Yoakum is featured alongside artists including Marcel Broodthaers, Juan Downey, Hamish Fulton, Brion Gysin, Mona Hatoum, Richard Long, and Jorge Macchi.
![Joseph Elmer Yoakum Mt [title faded], 1970](https://img.artlogic.net/w_1320,h_1320,c_limit/exhibit-e/5b6b5f6d6aa72c4f430fcc53/d42800dfee3f79ce16e84edcca68308e.jpeg)
![Joseph Elmer Yoakum Mt. Wilhelemina of Nassau Range Near Carstenez New Guinea asia [sic], c. 1970s](https://img.artlogic.net/w_660,h_660,c_limit/exhibit-e/5b6b5f6d6aa72c4f430fcc53/e650aa5d195ae1742e2ac2b9d2c3615e.jpeg)
Joseph Elmer Yoakum with “Mississippi River Neir Noth Side," c. late 1960s. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Whitney B. Halstead papers
Joseph Elmer Yoakum was, according to official record, born in Ash Grove, Missouri, in 1890. Much of Yoakum's background is shrouded in legend, in keeping with the dreamlike nature of his work. What appears certain is that Yoakum, of Native American and African-American descent, had traveled widely before he began his artistic work in 1962 in his early 70s. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I—deployed at one point to France—and claimed to have toured with the circus in his youth. This nomadic narrative strongly marks Yoakum’s seminal creative output, which was conceivably inspired by real places even though his surrealistic landscape drawings were completed through what Yoakum called “spiritual unfoldment.” Self-taught, Yoakum nevertheless influenced many important artists. The critical attention of art historian Whitney Halstead, of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was crucial in bringing Yoakum’s innovative works to a broader public. Yoakum was a particularly strong influence on Chicago imagists, including Jim Nutt and Roger Brown. Yoakum’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations. In June 2021, The Art Institute of Chicago will present Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw, a retrospective of the artist’s work. Previous solo exhibitions include the David and Alfred Smart Museum of the University of Chicago; Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Yoakum’s work is frequently featured in major group exhibitions, including recent presentations at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. His work is held many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Menil Collection, Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Joseph Elmer Yoakum lived and worked in Chicago until his death in 1972.
In New York, two art fairs go in different directions; one tightly focused on expanding the canon, the other unfortunately bloated.
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Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw @ Menil Drawing Institute
Art critic Barry Schwabsky writes on Joseph E. Yoakum and Etel Adnan for The Nation.
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CBS News covers "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw" on their Sunday Morning broadcast.
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw is covered in The Brooklyn Rail's ArtSeen.
The work of Joseph E. Yoakum is highlighted as key in institutional acceptance of Outsider art.
"Joseph E. Yoaum: What I Saw" is reviewed by The Brooklyn Rail.
At MOMA, an outsider artist is now in.
The Chicago artist’s works, drawn from the world and his imagination, are on show in New York.
The Museum of Modern art highlights the Chicago-based African-American creator of rhythmic, obsessive drawings of fantastic landscapes.
Exhibition catalogue, "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw," named one of the best art books of 2021 by ARTnews.
The self-taught artist’s landscapes are unsettling but thoroughly absorbing, as this major survey of over 100 drawings at MoMA makes clear.
“Wherever my mind led me, I would go,” he said. “I’ve been all over this world four times.”
Culture Type reviews the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective exhibition, "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw."
The Museum of Modern Art announces Joseph Yoakum: What I Saw, the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work in over 25 years, on view at MoMA from November 28, 2021, through March 19, 2022.
Using the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition, “Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw,” Artforum reflects on the life and career of Joseph E. Yoakum.
Hypperallergic's Debra Brehmer reviews the work of Joseph E. Yoakum on view at the Art Institute of Chicago in "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw."
The Chicago Tribune reviews the Art Institute's "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw."
Brut Journal discusses Joseph E. Yoakum with the Art Institute of Chicago's "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw" co-curators, Mark Pascale.
Joseph E. Yoakum’s origin story has long been inseparable from the reception of his artwork.
Two new exhibitions also deserve attention.
A major survey of the late artist’s output is on view now at the Art Institute of Chicago
Newcity review of Art Institute of Chicago exhibit, "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw," lauds show's emphasis on artistic practice over biography.
Chicago Sun-Times features "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw” among new exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Joseph Yoakum's "What I Saw" at the Art Institute of Chicago is noted among museum highlights of Summer 2021
The new retrospective of Yoakum's work is announced in the Chicago Gallery News
Time Out spotlights the retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago ahead of its June 12 opening
Starting in his 70s, the Chicago artist made visionary drawings of places seen and imagined.
Apollo Magazine previews work from the Art Institute of Chicago's "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw"
A review of the new retrospective of Joseph Elmer Yoakum's work at the Art Institute of Chicago
Here’s a guide to some of the most exciting shows opening in the coming months—from historical surveys to solo exhibitions of dynamic young artists.
Joseph Elmer Yoakum recollects his adventurous life in signature curvilinear language.
Yoakum's picaresque life and his late embrace of an artistic vocation call to mind traditional myths that assume artists are born, not made.
The visionary landscapist Joseph Elmer Yoakum (1888-1972) has been categorized as an outsider, self-taught or folk artist. Whichever: His place in the expanding canon of 20th-century American art is assured, both for his achievement and influence.
A cornucopia of over 60 exquisitely beautiful quasi-abstract colored-pencil landscapes by Native and African-American visionary Joseph Yoakum — and that look like they might have been made on Mars — is emitting undulant optical auroras at Venus Over Manhattan gallery.
These captivating ballpoint-and-watercolor landscapes are confident improvisations based on the American artist’s extensive travels.
African- and Native-American artist Joseph Elmer Yoakum, one of the best artists of the 1960s, was in his 70s when he began to make art full time.
Joseph Yoakum is an artist we should all know better.
It's another busy week for art in New York as summer officially begins.
Joseph Elmer Yoakum (1890–1972) was a self-taught African-American artist who claimed Native American ancestry. Though records show he was born in Missouri, he asserted that his birthplace was on the Navajo Reservation in Window Rock, Arizona, and repeatedly referred to himself “Na-va-JOE.” (He also said he was of African, French and Cherokee descent.)
For an even wilder walk on the wild side of landscape painting, Venus Over Manhattan gallery in New York presents Joseph Yoakum June 20 through July 26. Yoakum was a self-taught artist, his work variously categorized as “outlier,” “outsider,” “folk,” “naïve,” “vernacular.”
The most powerful outsider artworks in Outliers and American Vanguard Art at the National Gallery of Art evoke ideals about all artists: the belief, for example, that they are distinct from non-artists.
