DAILY ART FIX: In His Garage, an Untrained Artist Created a Work of Sublime Divinity

By Richard Bledsoe on August 26, 2024

Art world links which caught my eye...

James Hampton with his creation in the Washington, D.C. garage where he worked in the 1950s and early 1960s.

I had the honor of viewing this work in the American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Displayed in a dimly lit room, the ornate pieces create the feeling of a sacred space.

"For some 14 years he labored in solitude. Lovingly. Obsessively. Every night after work, in a rented garage on 7th Street NW in Washington, D.C., James Hampton, a World War II veteran and janitor for the General Services Administration with no artistic training, methodically built what he came to call The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton prepared the throne to receive Jesus, flanked by a dozen angels, at the time of the Second Coming.

"Born in 1909 to a South Carolina preacher, Hampton, who may have lived with schizophrenia, had his first religious vision at the age of 22—a visitation from the patriarch Moses. He later said Adam and the Virgin Mary had come to him as well. Why he began the Throne in 1950, no one can say. Passion. Devotion. Divine inspiration. But it came to comprise a handmade masterpiece of 180 or so separate components, each crafted from found and scavenged parts. Hampton embellished discarded furniture and light bulbs, tin cans and jelly jars with gold and silver foils and wrapping paper—materials reflecting light and inspiring something like awe at the prospect of an apocalyptic end to this world and the peace and glory to come in the next. Leslie Umberger, a curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, describes the part of the sculpture on display as the 'central section of a spiritually driven, pulpit-style array' that Hampton created 'as a sacred space for sharing his faith.' The 'third heaven' is a reference to God's home, an exalted heaven-within-a-heaven; the Throne, Hampton is reported to have said, 'is my life. I'll finish it before I die.'"

James Hampton "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly"

Read the full article here: Smithsonian - In His Garage, an Untrained Artist Created a Work of Sublime Divinity

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