New Light

  • Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
  • Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
2004
Wood, wire, twine, caning, cloth, wire screen, cow bone, enamel, and Splash Zone compound on wood
81.5 x 94 x 8 inches
Collection of
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco museum purchase American Art Trust Fund and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

Thornton Dial’s New Light commemorates the advent of electrical power in his hometown of Emelle, Alabama, in the late 1930s. The late arrival of basic utilities to poorly served African American communities may be traced back to the Supreme Court’s infamous “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy Vs. Ferguson (1896), which condoned segregated public facilities that often had inferior—or nonexistent—services. The absence of paved roads, plumbing, and electricity soon stigmatized many African American neighborhoods.

The Foundation of New Light is a picket fence or wall, an emblem of segregation, with a jagged upper silhouette that resembles a city skyline. A globelike tangle of power lines represents a form of integration that appears to connect the urban landscape at the top with the rural realm (symbolized by cow bones) at the bottom. Dial’s black-and-white composition with its Biblical undertone of the phrase “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) represents the newfound power of African Americans to see—and to be seen—during the Civil Rights era. —Timothy Anglin Burgard