Folk Art 21st century
Thornton Dial was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.
Arthur Dial is an American painter and sculptor living and working in Bessemer, Alabama. He is a part of the Dial family of artists, which include his older brother, Thornton Dial, and his nephews, Thornton Dial Jr., Richard Dial, and Ronald Lockett.
Dial created reliefs and paintings that narrowed in on a specific moment within the broader narrative that he wished to convey. He uses these moments, such as Eve reaching for the forbidden fruit or "George Wallace blockading the entrance to the University of Alabama in Montgomery," to highlight historical or folkloric moments of extreme tension. Dial's focus on scenes of conflict in humanity's real or imagined history come from his direct observation of southern life throughout the 20th century. He describes his narratives as "a record of what went by".
George Widener is a self-taught artist who employs his mathematical/calculating capability to create art ranging from complex calendars and numerical palindromes to Rembrandt-like antiquarian landscapes to Asian scrolls.
Widener's work can be found in many private and public Outsider Art collections, including the Bruno Decharme ABCD Collection in Paris, The American Folk Art Museum, The Art Collection of the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, and The Collection de l’Art Brut.
