'Suffering and Sunset': Horace Pippin's World War I Manuscripts and Paintings

贺拉斯·皮平(Horace Pippin，1888-1946)是唯一一位在第一次世界大战中服役的非洲裔美国士兵，他既创造了一幅视觉作品--包括预备素描和油画--又创作了一系列未转录的、语音书写的自传片段的文本档案。这个项目的主要目的是完成一本9万字的书的研究和写作，书名为《苦难与日落：贺拉斯·皮平的第一次世界大战手稿和绘画》，与弗吉尼亚大学出版社签约，将于2012年2月到期。基于史密森美国艺术档案馆、Schomburg黑人文化研究中心和切斯特县历史学会的档案，这本书不仅将包括一本7万字的专著，调查贺拉斯·皮平的生平和与他的第一次世界大战经历有关的作品，还将提供他四本未出版自传(总计2万字)的第一个批评版。这本专著的写作目的是为了解决他在艺术史上普遍被忽视的问题，这本专著将重新设置背景，重新理论，并重新审视皮平的生平和作品，特别是他的第一次世界大战著作、绘画和插图。更具体地说，这项研究将考察他对美学、叙事、政治和历史的自我反省关系，因为他通过不同的素描、插图和油画以及他未出版的散文和书信来戏剧化他的艺术人生故事。这项研究将首先考察皮平作为一战作家的重要性，特别是与许多主流的、主要是白人的美国艺术家转变为战争日记和自传作家以及大量研究不足的非裔美国自传作家、诗人、小说家和剧作家的不同关系。然后，这本书将深入分析皮平的第一次世界大战画作，不仅从他坚持艺术是驱除他的“蓝色咒语”的一种方式中进一步推断，而且还将重新评估他的作品，这与他对赞助商说的“不要告诉我如何绘画”的艺术独立宣言有关。利用非裔美国人艺术史理论家(鲍威尔、胡克斯、华莱士、斯坦、威尔逊等)的关键智力方法，这项研究将把皮平作为未受过教育的天真、精神上的远见卓识者和土著画家的不同流行表现形式存在问题。这本书的另一个目的是将皮平的全部作品置于其他非裔美国艺术家(埃德温·哈勒斯顿、马尔文·格雷·约翰逊、威廉·H·约翰逊等)作品的背景下，类似地致力于提供战争的实验性表现，以及抵抗白人主导的艺术世界的政治、智力和美学影响。然后，这本书将讨论白人编辑在皮平手稿中的角色，不仅是为了直面困扰非裔美国作家几个世纪的出版困难，而且还将他的作品与非裔美国作家创作的其他第一次世界大战文本放在一起。这本书的结尾是带注释的打字稿，包括脚注、词汇表和参考书目，这本书的目的是展示皮平的戏剧性油画和他令人回味的手稿一起最容易被理解，因为它们证明了他强大的信念：我不能忘记苦难，我不会忘记日落。

Horace Pippin (1888-1946) is the sole African American soldier serving in World War I to have created both a visual - consisting of both preparatory sketches and oil paintings - and textual archive comprising a series of untranscribed, phonetically written autobiographical fragments. The primary but not sole purpose of this project is to complete the research and writing of a 90,000 word book entitled, 'Suffering and Sunset: Horace Pippin's World War I Manuscripts and Paintings,' contracted to the University Press of Virginia and due February 2012. Based on archives held at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Chester County Historical Society, this book will not only consist of a 70,000 word monograph investigating Horace Pippin's life and works in relation to his World War I experiences but will also provide the first critical edition of his four unpublished autobiographies (a total of 20,000 words). Written with the aim of addressing his widespread neglect within art history, this monograph will recontextualise, retheorise and reexamine Pippin's life and works with a particular emphasis upon his World War I writings, paintings and illustrations. More particularly, this research will investigate his self-reflexive relationship to aesthetics, narrative, politics and history as he dramatised his 'life story of art' across diverse drawings, illustrations and oil paintings as well as his unpublished prose and correspondence. This study will begin by examining Pippin's importance as a World War I writer, particularly in diverse relation to a number of mainstream, primarily white, American artists turned diarists and autobiographers of the war as well as a rich array of under-researched African American autobiographers, poets, novelists and dramatists. The book will then analyse Pippin's World War I paintings in depth not only to extrapolate further from his insistence that art was a way to exorcise his 'blue spells' but also to re-evaluate his work in relation to his declarations of artistic independence as he informed his sponsors, 'Don't tell me how to paint.' Utilising key intellectual approaches by theorists of African American art history (Powell, hooks, Wallace, Stein, Wilson et al), this research will problematise popular representations of Pippin variously as an untutored naïf, a spiritual visionary and an indigenous painter. Another aim of this book will be to situate Pippin's oeuvre within the context of works produced by other African American artists (Edwin Harleston, Malvin Gray Johnson, William H. Johnson et al) similarly engaged in providing experimental representations of war and in resisting as well as signifying upon the political, intellectual and aesthetic influences of a white dominated art world. The book will then address the role of the white editor in relation to Pippin's manuscripts not only to confront the publishing difficulties which have beset African American authors for centuries but also to situate his work alongside other World War I texts produced by African American writers. Concluding with annotated typescripts including footnotes, a glossary and a bibliography, this book will aim to show that Pippin's dramatic canvases can be best understood in conjunction with his evocative manuscripts as they testify to his powerful conviction, 'I cannot forget suffering and I will not forget sunset.'