Purvis Young’s Overtown Brought Life At Tampa Museum Of Art

Purvis Young’s Miami was a sweaty Miami. A sticky, stifling, urban Miami. No beaches. No sea breezes. No nightclub bottle service.

His Miami was the Overtown neighborhood, one of the city’s traditionally African American sections, not Will Smith’s “Welcome to Miami” Miami Beach.

Gritty, not glamourous.

Poor, not pools.

The Tampa Museum of Art brings visitors to Purvis Young’s Miami through an overwhelming, gallery-filling installation of the artist’s assemblage paintings reminiscent of Young’s Goodbread Alley Mural. From 1971 through 1974, Young displayed his artworks salon style, street level to the sky, on a length of unused storefronts in Overtown creating a magnificent outdoor art installation; a gift to Miami, before city officials began dismantling it.

In his day, the city removed Purvis Young’s murals; today, it’s putting up murals memorializing him.

Young painted his observations, not imaginations. While unidealized, Young (1943–2010) was prideful about Overtown where he was born, raised and rarely left throughout the course of his life.

“Not a utopia, but not a dystopia either,” Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tampa Museum of Art told Forbes.com.

Look closely and you’ll see his optimism.

Pregnant women. Hope for the future.

Overtown inspired Young and he strove to paint positive imagery. Look for the angels and halos which represented the good he admired in his neighbors.

305 ‘til I Die

Young’s grandparents immigrated to Miami by boat from the Bahamas, settling in Overtown. You’ll see boats among his paintings.

A high school dropout, Young’s education was self-directed; as an adult, he learned about the world and art through watching documentaries and reading. He had a passion for books, spending hours at the Miami-Dade Public Library.

Although encouraged into artmaking by his mother, Young didn’t take it seriously until he was sent to prison between 1961 and 1963 for attempted burglary. Imagine doing two years in prison in your teens for attempted burglary.

Inside, he resumed drawing. He reconnected with his love of painting. He found art books, closely studying the Old Masters: El Greco, Rembrandt, van Gogh.

Notice all the yellow in his paintings, the influence of van Gogh.

What are all those horses doing in pictures of Overtown? The influence of Fredric Remington.

In the early 1970s, Young began painting regularly. While self-taught and not producing for market acceptance, the incredible volume of pieces on view at TMA demonstrates clearly that his was a serious, daily practice. He was not a Sunday painter.

Robotham describes it as a ritual.

Young lived amongst his art. No separation existed between Purvis Young the man and Purvis Young the artist.

“(His art) is his true essence,” Robotham said.

Young’s production was both figuratively and literally of Overtown. He rendered his work from found objects, items sourced around the neighborhood: discarded wood, windows, furniture fragments, cabinets, doors, carpet, fabric, string, and cables. Nails, staples and brackets remain visible in his “canvases.” He hammered on the frames.

As a result, his work possesses a rich material quality. Three-dimensional depth. Rough surfaces. The items on which Young chooses to share his stories have stories of their own.

His color palette—fiery reds, golden yellow, forest green, navy blue, hot pink—developed from house paint.

Purvis Young x Don and Mera Rubell

In the late 1990s, Miami-based art collectors Don and Mera Rubell befriended Young. The couple began collecting contemporary art following their first studio visit in 1965. What began with acquisitions made on installments has grown to become one of the most significant holdings of contemporary art in the world, filling two museums.

Though Young wasn’t represented by galleries, he was recognized throughout Miami for his contributions to the cultural landscape of South Florida.

The Rubells came to acquire the contents of his studio taking in over 3,300 works in total, donating hundreds to museums and universities across the country.

In 2004, TMA was the beneficiary of such a gift from the Rubell Family Foundation, 91 artworks by Young joining the permanent collection. All, but a couple are on view through June 2024 as part of the exhibition, “Purvis Young: Redux.”

Thanks to the Rubell’s, and Young’s talent and determination, Purvis Young’s recordings of Overtown can now be found in the most prestigious art institutions in the United States.

Overtown

As Miami was developing through the 20s, 30s and 40s, Overtown prospered. Black owned businesses supported a vibrant African American community.

In a story repeated across America, so-called “urban renewal”–white politicians deeming Black communities as blighted and routing new interstate highways through them, destroying the communities in the process–visited Overtown in the 60s. The results were disastrous. Miami sited I-95 to run straight through the heart of Overtown, dispossessing homeowners, closing businesses, cutting the community in half.

Ten lanes of concrete and traffic took the place of sidewalks and shoppes. Future public transportation projects were routed through Overtown, further fracturing it.

This was occurring right as Young had been released from prison and was entering adulthood. Notice all the 18-wheelers in his paintings. Young was born into a lively, supportive Overtown, only to see racist urban planning policies target it for destruction. Are these trucks commentary on urban renewal and the interstates which ran them through Overtown by the tens of thousands?

It’s difficult not seeing them that way.

What of all the crowds of protestors? Have they taken to the streets outraged and anguished by Arthur McDuffie’s murder at the hands of white police officers in Liberty City seven miles north of Overtown.

In 1980, the 33-year-old McDufffie, a Black man, a veteran with a 1-year-old son, was stopped by police and beaten into a coma with flashlights. He died days later.

Officers, as is often the case, attempted to cover up their brutality. An investigation and eye-witness testimony of a fellow policeman revealed the truth. Neither dissuaded an all-white jury of acquitting the officers for their responsibility in McDuffie’s death, sparking violent uprisings in and around Liberty City, the first “race riot” in America since the Civil Rights era.

Martin Luther King Jr said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Young was the voice of his community. A voice speaking from Overtown that Miami politicians and the white power structure didn’t want to hear. A voice that will long outlive those who sought to silence it and others like his.