Albert Wagner

(Bassett, Arkansas, 1924 - 2006, East Cleveland, Ohio)

Albert Wagner was born into a family of sharecroppers in rural Arkansas. From an early age he enjoyed drawing and working with clay, and he later recalled his mother saying that if should could only afford to send him to art school, he could be a great artist. Instead, he left elementary school by the age of 13 in order to help support his family. In 1941, at the age of 17, Wager moved north to Cleveland in search of more lucrative work. There he married and started a successful furniture moving business, but over the following three decades he was also drawn into drinking, gambling, and adultery. At one point in his life, Wagner had two identities, three families and four homes, and he once went to jail for a sexual offense. However, while cleaning up his house for his fiftieth birthday party, he was inspired by he was inspired by drips and splatters of paint that had stained an old board. Wagner described this as a moment of spiritual revelation in which God spoke to him and told him that painting would offer salvation. From that moment he devoted himself to his art. Wagner’s early work—including a painting made on the night of his spiritual awakening—was abstract, but he eventually shifted into figuration. He also became an ordained minister in a denomination called the Commandment Keepers and began preaching, as well as sharing stories of his own sins and redemption. These interests came together in his East Cleveland home, a purple three-story house emblazoned with the phrases “Come Home Ethiopia” and “Jesus Love You.” The basement was home to his People Love People House of God Ministry, and the entire house was filled with such a density of his work that much of the ordinary furniture moved out over the years. Wagner’s art making—including drawings, paintings, sculptures, and found-object constructions—was so prolific that he could send out one hundred works for a show and quickly paint another hundred to fill the empty spaces they left behind. His work was often religious, illustrating lessons from the Bible, but he also expressed his feelings on social matters and depicted scenes from his childhood in the rural south. Wager is often described as an “outsider” artist, and he did participate in exhibitions or venues highlighting outsider or self-taught artists, but (as is often the case) the term is an imperfect fit. As Jennifer J. Smails writes, “Wagner himself seemed to be very much aware of the potential and limits [this category] bestowed upon him. He was not as oblivious to Western art history as the term outsider implies; he deeply admired a variety of artists, including Picasso, whose approach towards a vast range of everyday materials inspired Wagner, whose financial constraints provided limited access to art supplies. Furthermore, he seems to have understood how currency is established in artistic discourse. In exchange for the public recognition he sought, he shifted his early abstractions towards more figurative subjects at the urging of gallerists.” Smails goes on to suggest that this was likely not the only impetus for Wagner’s figuration—his desire to share narratives and religious subjects was likely a significant factor. Still, insofar as Wagner likely understood the broader art world and his position within it (for one, he said that it pained him that his support had come from white patrons and collectors in the absence of Black patrons) he likely worked to shape his own narrative, playing into and playing with “outsider” expectations at the same time.

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