Joseph Elmer Yoakum
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.
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Waianae Mtn Range Entrance to Pearl Harbor and Honolulu Oahu of Hawaiian Islands, stamped 1968.
Collection Christina Ramberg and Phil Hanson
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt Cloubelle Jamaca of West India, stamped 1969.
Collection of Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt Brock of Air Cave Pass Near Carson City Nevada, not dated.
Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bequest of Whitney Halstead
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Rain Bow Bridge in in Bryce Canyon National Park near Henriville Utah, 1968.
Collection of the Roger Brown Study Collection
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Wilks Land in East Sector of Antartica Continents on Rose Sea and Ice Shellf Cliffe of the Two Sectors Discovery Since Australia and New Zealand, stamped 1969
Collection of Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt
Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Mt Baykal of Yablonvy Mtn Range near Ulan-Ude near Lake Baykal of Lower Siberia Russia E Asia, 1969.
Collection of Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt
Joseph E. Yoakum, Workbook B, 1972. The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Whitney Halstead.
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw
June 12 - October 18, 2021
The Art Institute of Chicago
Press release from the Art Institute of Chicago. Read more about the exhibition on their website.
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.
Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus. He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States as well as abroad and becoming intimately familiar with the world’s various landscapes. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fueled his deeply spiritual vision decades later.
When he began to put that vision to paper in his apartment on Chicago’s South Side in the early 1960s, Yoakum quickly developed a unique visual language, independent and distinct from other artists in the city, such as those involved in the flourishing Black Arts Movement or the up-and-coming Chicago Imagist group. His drawings—predominantly landscapes in ballpoint pen, colored pencil, pastel, and watercolor and inscribed with locations from all seven continents—reflect the scope of his national and international travels as well as his idiosyncratic and poetic vision of the natural world.
After Yoakum’s first exhibition in 1968, word spread through the local artist community. School of the Art Institute (SAIC) professor Whitney Halsted took a serious interest in his work, an interest that would lead to Halsted writing a foundational text about Yoakum’s drawings, and artists such as Karl Wirsum, Ray Yoshida, Jim Nutt, and Roger Brown—all SAIC graduates—began to collect Yoakum’s work, marveling at his instincts and creativity despite having no formal art training. His designs, forms, lines, and colors defied landscape traditions, yet they each possessed a power derived from the artist’s uncanny use of his distinctive graphic style.
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.
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw is organized by The Art Institute of Chicago in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art and the Menil Collection.
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.
"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.
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.
The New Yorker includes “Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw" in their winter art preview.
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
Apollo Magazine previews work from the Art Institute of Chicago's "Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw"
Starting in his 70s, the Chicago artist made visionary drawings of places seen and imagined.
Time Out spotlights the retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago ahead of its June 12 opening
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.
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.
