White Hacks Ripping Off Southern Blacks?

Click here and you decide.

I am enormously grateful to Lenny for breaking this important story.

UPDATE: It is my understanding that my sermon regarding this matter appears in today's print edition of the Virginia Pilot.

UPDATE II: Here's the link to my letter that was published in the Sunday print edition of the Virginia Pilot newspaper.

Painting by Michael Banks

FULL DISCLOSURE: As is well known among some, I am by any definition you to choose to use a major collector of Southern art by African-Americans. I acquired my first piece of art directly from the hands of Mose Tolliver when I was 8 years old. I used to travel all over the states of Mississippi and Alabama with my grandfather during the summers - he was a cattleman from Mississippi who auctioned his stock in both states. Through him I was introduced to many of the now legendary figures in the world of Southern art, including one of my favorite Mississippi artists, and a dear personal friend before she died, Mary T. Smith. The work of Michael Banks is represented in my collection. The work of Doug Odom is as well - I own one of his birdhouses.

It's no secret that the New York City contemporary art elite holds so-called "outsider" art from the South, especially that of unschooled blacks, in absolute contempt. They view it as being an inferior form of art because it is not, in their racist opinion, "intellectual" enough to merit serious consideration. The result is that so-called "outsider", "folk", "primitive" art created by Southern blacks has been marginalized by those who are heavily invested in promoting more "serious" and "intellectually challenging" art - that is the art of white people with art degrees. I have nothing but contempt for this position that the majority of art elites takes with respect to the treasured form of art that is Southern art because I fully understand from whence it originates - white racial cultural arrogance.

The debacle that has unfolded with respect to the controversy over the jurors at the Virginia Beach Boardwalk Art Show & Festival awarding a $10,000 top prize to Doug Odom for "originality" illustrates one thing very clearly: the highly arts educated jurors who stupidly awarded Mr. Odom this prize don't know a damn thing about Southern art. Apparently all of them skipped past Emerging African-American "Folk Artists" from Alabama 101 while earning their advanced degrees. How else to explain their amazing lack of knowledge about this area of art? Every collector I know with a passing familiarity with Southern art knows of Michael Banks, as well as Doug Odom. Apparently, the uninformed contempt for this style of art has now reached out from New York City all the way down to Virginia Beach.

From Elvis Presley to Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin to Doug Odom the pathetic story of artistically inferior white guys ripping off the originality of the creative blood, sweat and tears of poor black artistic geniuses from the South and profiting mightily from their cultural thefts remains the same. The only thing sadder than this oft repeated Southern tale is when educated white folk who live among the upper rungs of the high art ladder, people who ought to know better, don't recognize an artistic theft (or seem to care) when they see one take place right under their noses - and worse than failing to see it, they go so far as to reward it.

*For the record I was also interviewed by Ms. Annas for this article. Unfortunately, my quotes were edited out.

Two painters, one question: Is one a rip-off artist?

By TERESA ANNAS, The Virginian-Pilot © June 22, 2006

VIRGINIA BEACH - After Doug Odom won the $10,000 top prize Friday night at the Boardwalk Art Show & Festival, rumors began to spread.

Painter Daniel Doughty recalled telling his wife, "I cannot believe that is that man's work. That's Michael Banks' work. I've seen it too many times."

The next day, back on the Boardwalk, Doughty told another artist, two-time best-in-show winner Ummarid Eitharong, "he's either representing Michael Banks and selling his work or he's copying it and he's had Michael's work in his hands, where he could really get it down."

By Sunday, Cameron Kitchin, executive director of the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach, which sponsors the Boardwalk show, realized he had a problem.

By Tuesday, a Maryland art gallery owner was using his blog to question Odom's win in Virginia Beach and his work.

Banks, 34, is an emerging Alabama folk artist who paints creatures and people with misshapen heads and eyes spaced far apart. His colors are deep and he incises the outlines of his form into the tar. The same general description goes for works by Odom, 59, who depicts pigs, bloodhounds and a pet poodle that live with him on his small farm in Headland, Ala. Both men paint on tar brushed onto wood surfaces set in rustic frames.

Each said he originated the style and influenced the other.

In phone conversations this week with Odom and Banks, the two agreed on certain points. They met several years ago at an art show in Alabama. Soon after, Odom began to make frames for Banks' paintings. In 2004, Banks moved in with Odom on his farm, where he lived for about eight months.

The reason he went to stay with Odom, he said, was to keep away from his wife and two children at a time when he couldn't kick drugs. Banks said he is a recovering alcoholic and addict, and takes part in a 12-step program.

Banks said he developed his style of painting on tar several years before meeting Odom and was making as much as $50,000 in sales at a two-day show. At one point, he noticed Odom was attempting to make paintings like his.

Banks said Odom was mostly displaying birdhouses he built and decorated.

"Guy didn't know how to paint," he said.

Odom said that he arrived at his style on his own and that he taught Banks. "I've explained to him that the primitive side in being black is where the money is," he said. "And he started painting primitive."

Odom said their work doesn't look alike. "His work is real dark-sided. Like, morbid."
When Banks left Odom's house, he drove home in his Mercedes and left behind several dozen of the paintings he had made while living there.

At home, Banks checked himself into a rehabilitation center, he said. His wife, Jenny Banks, attempted to get his paintings back, but Odom wouldn't let her have the work, she said.

Odom said Banks stole his tools and pawned them. Odom said he co-signed for Banks to buy the late-model Mercedes, which Banks wrecked. "He probably owes me $10,000."

Banks has heard that Odom was selling Banks' paintings at shows soon after he left. Odom said that is not true and that all the paintings Banks left at his house are still there. He said Banks never tried to get them back.

Both were in the same show this spring in Atlanta. "I saw what he's doing," Banks said. "He's copying my artwork. What he's doing is what you call ripping me off."

After hearing of his win at the Boardwalk, Banks said, "He is not deserving of that money at all."
Odom said he'd "like this thing straightened out once and for all, too. It never comes up until you win something, and everybody's jealous. 'Oh, he copied Michael Banks.' They don't even know the story.

"I took him from nothing, and put him in the face of many prominent people."

An Alabama art expert familiar with both artists asserted Wednesday that it was Banks who developed the style.

Georgine Clark, a visual arts program manager at the Alabama State Council on the Arts, said she met Banks about four years ago. "I'd say more like three years ago, he came into this style. I think his work is very personal to his demons."

Odom was making some paintings before Banks moved in, she said. "But they did not look like Michael's. Doug wasn't doing that until he had a tighter connection with Michael."

Last Thursday and Friday, on the first two days of the Boardwalk, Banks sat in his gallery's booth at the Affordable Art Fair in New York . He sold 22 paintings at that show, said his primary dealer, Marcia Weber of Montgomery, Ala. , on Wednesday.

Two were sold to television personality Bryant Gumbel, she said.

Last weekend, the co-owners of Fraser Gallery of Bethesda, Md., sat in a booth next to Weber's. They stared at Banks' work for four days. So when co-owner F. Lennox Campello checked his e-mail at home on Monday, he found a link to an article on Odom's prize in Saturday's Virginian-Pilot.

Campello looked at the picture of Odom surrounded by his work and recognized its similarity to Banks' work. He writes and edits an online art blog - dcartnews.blogspot.com, which has a story about the controversy. He also received another e-mail from an artist who accused Odom of appropriating Banks' style.

Campello said that copyright laws regarding the visual arts allow someone to mimic another artist's style. Copyright infringement involves exact copies, he said. "So you can drip all the paint in the world like Pollock did, but you cannot copy one of his paintings."

Doughty, a folk artist who lives on Virginia's Eastern Shore, first encountered Odom two years ago at a Florida art show. When he saw Odom's work, he confronted the artist about its similarity to Banks'. Odom told him he had been painting like that before Banks.

Doughty was upset to see Odom win at the Boardwalk. "I work very hard to make my own style of work. That's what folk art is all about. It's a very individual thing. I would never mimic somebody's work.

"It put a real bad taste in people's mouths."

Eitharong, who lives in Orlando, Fla., said he remembered seeing Odom "in Florida, a few years ago, doing birdhouses. And he sat right next to me a couple of times. Then two years ago, he showed up at an art show in Florida with these wonderful paintings," Eitharong said, speaking on his cell phone while driving through Iowa on Tuesday.

"This was awesome - from what it used to be, to what it is." At show's end, he traded work with Odom. At home, he noticed there were two signatures on the piece - "Doug Odom" and an indecipherable squiggle beginning with a "B," both in white ink.

"It shocked and surprised me that the community didn't do anything about it," Eitharong said regarding Odom's prize. "The work is reasonable. It's nice. It's just because there are too many questions here."

"Our intention is to honor original art," Kitchin said Tuesday, "and we prize artistic integrity above all else. We are investigating it, but at this point there is no proof."

On Wednesday, Kitchin said he was still unsure whether Odom would keep his prize. "We would need solid evidence that the work is not original." But he had scheduled a symposium, to be co-presented by the Folk Art Society of America next year on issues of originality regarding folk art.

"I think that's the right response for us," he said.

Reach Teresa Annas at (757) 446-2485 or teresa.annas@pilotonline.com.