Untitled (Chase Scene) from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Micki Beth Stiller ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust — *Untitled (Chase Scene)* from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Micki Beth Stiller ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust

The art of Bill Traylor has been well-known among afficionados and collectors of “outsider art” for decades, where his prolific work has always been represented in art fairs and fetched increasingly higher prices every year. His distinctive style which can only be described as raw and visceral, has the symbolic and mysterious quality of ancient cave paintings. On some level, they are akin to those works insofar as they form a sort of visual history, in this case, of the lives of so many southern Blacks through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration. The beauty of this documentary is how the man and his work is given such rich contextual background through archival photos, film, the poetic words of Zorah Neale Hurston, period music and the interpretive tap dancing of Jason Samuel Smith, all illustrated by dozens of his unique drawings and paintings.

Bill Traylor ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust

Bill Traylor was born in Alabama in 1853 and was owned by the Traylor family where he worked in the cotton fields. After the Civil War he continued to farm the land as a sharecropper and had several wives and many children. As his children grew up and began the northern migration, he found that did not suit him and ended up alone and aging in the thriving black community in Montgomery, Alabama, where he worked at odd jobs. He was in his late 80’s when he set himself up on a sidewalk perch outside a pool hall and began drawing images on scraps of wood, cardboard, the backs of posters, using pencils, crayons, whatever he could scrounge. He became something of a curiosity among the locals and eventually a few white artists discovered him and felt compelled to help him out with art supplies and paint which really upped his work. Charles Shannon, an artist and teacher, gave him a show in Montgomery in 1940 and continued to champion his work to the larger world. In 1942 he was given a show in New York at Ethical Culture Fieldston School – Bill Traylor: American Primitive (Work of an old Negro). Nothing was sold, although Alfred Barr, director of MoMA, tried to buy several for the museum but only offered to pay a few dollars each. Shannon rejected the deal. Traylor moved around between various of his children in his final years, suffering ill-health and losing a leg to gangrene. He died in Montgomery in 1949.

Untitled (Man, Woman, and Dog) from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust — *Untitled (Man, Woman, and Dog)* from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust

Traylor’s work finally caught the attention of the broader art world in the late 1970’s and 80’s when Shannon brought his whole collection out of storage. A show in 1979 led to a purchase by the Schomberg Center. Since then, his work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, Studio Museum in Harlem, American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum and the largest in 2018, at the Smithsonian Museum, and purchased for the collections. He is widely acknowledged and appreciated as a seminal artist and chronicler of his time.

Untitled Man in Blue and Brown) from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. And Douglas O. Robson ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust — *Untitled Man in Blue and Brown)* from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. And Douglas O. Robson ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust

Untitled (Woman with Umbrella and Man on Crutch) from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust — *Untitled (Woman with Umbrella and Man on Crutch)* from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum ©1994 Bill Traylor Family Trust

For me, the work has the searing intensity of Kara Walker without the refinement of the trained artist. It is impossible not to be captivated by the syncopation of the figures, with their torqued limbs, dancing, arguing, fighting, drinking or carousing. The animals – birds, cats, dogs, snakes and pigs feel like spirit figures, full of symbolism. The film captures the essence of Traylor’s lived experience and the work makes it vividly real. I couldn’t recommend it more.

(Available in virtual cinemas or kinolorber.com)