Late-Career

In the summer of 1979, Charles Shannon completed four portraits of Birmingham executives. From that point on, Shannon no longer accepted portrait commissions. He could now experiment more with oil on canvas, while continuing to work in other media.

 In January 1980 a solo exhibition, Bill Traylor, 1854-1949, Works on Paper, was shown at the contemporary New York City gallery R.H. Oosterom. In May 1982,  Black Folk Art in America, opened at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (travelled to seven different venues).  Snake by Bill Traylor was selected for the cover image of the catalogue and his Yellow Chicken was selected of the poster for the exhibition,  Critics named Bill Traylor the star of the show.   Later, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, Illinois and Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York City, would handle work from the Shannon’s Bill Traylor collection. 

In the summer of 1980 through the fall, ArtSouth Inc. began developing a plan for a museum Shannon retrospective. Mary Victor’s, (Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama), commitment to support the exhibition gave ArtSouth, Inc., “the encouragement to make it a regional show.” The exhibition, Charles Shannon Painting and Drawing, opened May 6, 1981 at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and travelled to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama; The Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee; Piccolo Spoleto, Charleston, South Carolina; and the Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sixty paintings and drawings were shown in the exhibition.

The article, Lifetime Vision of South Shown in Shannon’s Art, the Chattanooga Times, September 18, 1982 stated: “A lifetime dedicated to the translation onto paper and canvas of one artist’s vision of the South is chronicled in the beautifully realized retrospective exhibition of works by Charles Shannon, now on display in the upper gallery of the Hunter Museum of Art through Oct. 25th.   From the bold images and social commentary of the Montgomery, Ala. Artist’s Depression era paintings and drawings to his tranquil interpretations of scenes in today’s changed South, the gradual evolution of the man, his techniques and the region which has been his inspiration can be traced."

On May 20, 1981 a Winston-Salem Journal review stated: “At SECCA until July 1, they are having a retrospective of the work of Charles Shannon. From Montgomery, Alabama, Shannon paints the South, old storefronts, whitewashed trees, blacks, fishermen, a medicine man, etc…
There are quite a few paintings which employ an unusual use of media. Shannon has drawn in pencil on linen canvas (unstretched linen) and then used oil washes, without covering the whole canvas. The wonderful casual sort of pencil lines show through. He seems to have been concentrating on light and atmosphere. The shapes of the shadows seem much more important to him than the literal shapes of objects… In one painting he uses successive acrylic washes on linen. In another he has done the most subtle scratching with pastel--all to the same effect, light. 

     Appropriately, Shannon’s best work is his latest. These are oils, with a generous use of paint, but the conception appears to be sparse. Actually, it is rather the kind of synthesis that marks the true artist. The paintings have become almost pure light and atmosphere. He uses the most unexpected colors to achieve this. In one painting Shannon may use only a few colors, such as orange, a red-violet, and a brown. He makes almost all of the shadows one monochromatic shape. 

     Besides the paintings, Gallery A is full of Shannon’s drawings. His pencil has meandered through scenes of the South... He has the gift of looseness coupled with accuracy. Color notes are included on some of the drawings as if he intended to work them up into paintings…”
 

 On August 31, 1981 the exhibition, Southern Works on Paper 1900-1950, Southern Arts Federation’s Visual Arts Touring Program, opened at the Atlanta Museum of Fine Arts, Atlanta, Georgia. Shannon’s paintings, Saturday Nights Surprise, Escape and Woman in Orange, oils on paper, were exhibited. The exhibition was organized by Richard Cox, School of Art, Division of Art History, Louisiana State University, Shreveport, Louisiana. Shannon’s painting, Saturday Nights Surprise, was the cover image for the catalogue. 

Also included was a brief essay, Bill Traylor, by Shannon, editor’s title, The Folk Art of Bill Traylor, with a reproduction of Shannon’s photograph, Two Boys/Seven-up Sign/Traylor Drawing.  The exhibition tavelled to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama; Milledgeville Allied Arts Center, Georgia; University of Mississippi Museum, Oxford; Louisiana Arts and Science Center, Baton Rouge; Gertrude Hebert A rt Institute, Augusta, Georgia; Childrens Museum, Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Southern Technical Institute, Marietta, Georgia.

On May 10-17, 1982 Shannon was a member of the Ossabaw Island Foundation Genesis Project’s retreat for artists and scientists working on individual projects. He spent a week drawing, painting, and making notes on the beautiful barrier island off the coast of Georgia. 

In February 1983 Shannon received an invitation to exhibit a law-related painting in the nationally touring exhibition, West’83/ART AND THE LAW, West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota. West Publishing Co. was one of the leading publisher of law books and legal texts and supplier of WESTLAW©, the major computer-assisted legal research service. A national panel of artists, critics and art scholars chose the participating artists for West’83/ART AND THE LAW. Among the artists selected, along with Shannon, were Jack Levine, Aaron Bohrod and Andy Warhol. Work from the exhibition would be added to the West Art Collection through Purchase Awards. 

Shannon submitted his painting, View of the Courthouse, a recently completed work derived from images of downtown Union Springs, Alabama. The exhibition opened at the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center, Atlanta, Georgia on July 25, 1983. Shannon’s painting, View of the Courthouse, was awarded a Purchase Award. The exhibition travelled to Kittredge Gallery, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington; Portland Justice Center, Oregon; Florida District Court of Appeals, Supreme Court Building, Tallahassee; Greenville Museum of Art, South Carolina and the Main County Civic Center, San Rafael, California. 

In October 1983 Shannon’s drawings Tobacco Road (Two Women), Old Lady with Fan, and Backyard with Chicken Coop, were exhibited in Printmakers of the South, sponsored by the Southern Arts Federation, organized by Richard Cox, Louisiana State University, Shreveport, Louisiana and Tom Dewey, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, (tour 1983-1984). 

In his exhibition catalogue’s essay, Richard Cox highlights Shannon’s half-dozen Tobacco Road drawings, 1939, which examined closely the hardships of beleaguered white southern sharecroppers. Richard Cox wrote: “Sharecropping offered the barest means of subsistence and too numerous opportunities for tragedy, as Shannon’s poignant pen and ink and wash drawings expose.” Shannon’s drawing, Tobacco Road (Two Women) was reproduced in the catalogue. 

On May 27, 1984, Painting in the South: 1564-1980, the largest survey of Southeastern American art to date, opened at the Virginia Museum, Richmond,  The exhibition travelled to the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; National Academy of Design, New York; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky and the New Orleans Museum of Art.  Shannon’s painting, The Lover, was exhibited. 

Vivien Raynor, of the New York Times, on April 28, 1984 reviewed the exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York. She wrote: “ With 121 paintings, the display is three-quarters the size it was when it started at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Yet it is still a remarkable survey of Southern art from 1564 to 1980, as it spread from the coastal states to beyond the Mississippi... The two societies, both originally agrarian, had in common trends as well as individual artists... The South even had its share of Colonial-style portraiture, although it appears that no one thought to focus on it until very recently…

 The next important peak is Regionalism, a movement that flourished nowhere more legitimately than in the depressed rural South. Of special interest is Charles Shannon, represented by ‘The Lover’, an expressionistic study of a black man lying on the ground under a full moon. Shannon was instrumental in bringing the drawings of the former slave Bill Traylor (now collectors’ items) to public attention.... ‘Painting in the South’, should probably have ended before World War II, it becomes thereafter a sketchy anthology of painters, Southern or not, who owe allegiance to New York…” 

In June,1984, Shannon’s painting, Saturday Night, was shown in the opening exhibition, Art and Artist of the South (1825-1950), Robert P. Coggins Collection (the largest private collection of Southeastern American art),  at the Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennesse . The exhibition was organized by the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, with support from the South Carolina Committee for the Humanities/National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibition travelled to the San Antonio Museum Association, Museum of Art, Texas; the Hunter Museum, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Huntsville Museum, Alabama; The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia; Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences, Savannah, Georgia; Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Mississippi Museum of Art Jackson and The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock.

Early July 1984 Shannon was invited to participate in the W.C. Bradley Co. Centennial Art Collection, Visiting Artist Program, Columbus, Georgia. The program tapped select national artists from all corners of the United States. The unique commission structure of this program was more closely attuned to a fellowship. These fellowships were artist-directed, in schedule, intensity, duration and location. The hallmark of the W.C. Bradley Co. Centennial Celebration was to be the formation of the Centennial Art Collection, which was created primarily from works of the Visiting Artists Program. 

On May 17, 1985 Shannon’s paintings Summer Porch and Warehouse were exhibited at the “premiering” of the W.C. Bradley Co. Corporate Art Collection, at the Centennial Celebration of the W.C. Bradley Co, Columbus Ironworks Convention and Trade Center, Georgia.

In December 1985, Shannon designed and acted as builder of a house/studio,  Midlane Court,  Old Cloverdale, Montgomery, Alabama. The builders he approached turned him down because they said that the design was complicated and too time consuming, so he handled it himself. Shannon was at the site almost daily until completion, June 1986.

On June 26, 1991 Shannon was approached by Chicago, Illinois art dealer Carl Hammer, regarding a Shannon/Traylor exhibition. Shannon agreed to a Traylor/Shannon exhibition. On April 24, 1992 the exhibition Traylor/Shannon, opened at Carl Hammer Gallery, 200 West Superior Street, Chicago. Fourteen Bill Traylor drawings from the Shannon collection and 15 recent works of similar size by Shannon were exhibited. Three recent large Shannon oils were also shown at the gallery. An exhibition catalogue was unnecessary in light of the newly published book, Bill Traylor, His Art ● His Life, with essay, Remembering Bill Traylor: An Interview with Charles Shannon, Frank Maresca/Roger Ricco, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 1991.

On September 24, 1992 Shannon’s painting, Saturday Night, was shown at the opening of the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia in the exhibition A Southern Collection, from the Morris Museum of Art’s permanent collection. The country’s first ‘pan-Southern’ museum, dedicated to work by artists native to the Southern states and work that takes the South as its subjects. The painting, Saturday Night, was reproduced in the exhibition catalogue which stated: “Shannon’s interest in the black community is best known through his discovery of and friendship with the self-taught artist Bill Traylor. But his interest in black subject matter for his own painting began in the summer of 1935... Saturday Night dates from this period (1936-1938). It is not a figure study so much as a swaying, rhythmic tribute to the spontaneous interaction of the subjects themselves.” The Morris Museum had acquired Shannon’s painting, Saturday Night, when it purchased the Robert P, Coggins collection. 

 On November 12, 1992 the decedents of the artist Bill Traylor filed suit in New York City in the  United States District Court, the Southern District of New York, against Charles and Eugenia Shannon and Hirschl & Adler Modern, Inc., claiming that the defendants had fraudulently sold work by Bill Traylor that rightfully belonged to them. That Charles Shannon had not paid Bill Traylor for the drawings which constituted the Charles Shannon’s Bill Traylor collection.On November 12, 1993 Judge John E. Sprizzo, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered the settlement of the lawsuits concerning the art of Bill Traylor. Attorneys involved in the case released the following;

“Statement by the Parties Announcing Settlement of the Lawsuits Concerning the Art of Bill Traylor

        Charles and Eugenia Shannon, Hirschl & Adler Modern, Inc. and the descendants of Bill Traylor announce the settlement of the lawsuits concerning the art of Bill Traylor. This litigation began as an action by the Traylor family for an accounting. It launched a barrage of national news media accounts charging theft of valuable art and racial exploitation. It ends with the declaration by all parties that those charged were totally wrong. In truth, the relationship between Charles Shannon and Bill Traylor was founded upon fair compensation, support and mutual esteem…. 

        ‘I am pleased that these lawsuits have ended in establishing the truth about my relationship with Bill Traylor and about the kind of man he was,’ Charles Shannon said today. ‘Bill Traylor was my friend and  teacher in countless ways, as well as a great artist.’ He added. Regarding Bill Traylor’s descendants, Charles Shannon said, ’The Traylor  family is rightly proud of their forefather’s unique contribution to the artistic heritage of African-Americans as well as all Americans, and they will play an important role in maintaining his legacy.’

       The settlement involves a gift by Charles Shannon of twelve Traylor drawings to a trust for the benefit of the Traylor family. Hirschl & Adler Modern, Inc. will act as the dealer for any sales of art from the family trust, and will continue to act as art dealer for Traylor works offered for sale by the Shannons.”

 On November 26, 1993 Shannon received a letter from Peter Harrington, curator of The Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, who requested that he gift some of his World War II art to the collection. "The Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University, is America’s foremost graphic and documentary resource of soldiers and soldiering, military history, art and iconography; The Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. "

On February 15, 1995 Shannon’s gift of  WWII paintings, drawings, photographs, and documents to Brown University’s Military Collection was finalized. The exhibition, American Artists in Uniform; The World War II Experience, Brown University, Providence, opened on May 1, 1995.  "The exhibit commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and recognized the efforts of the artists of wartime".   Shannon’s oil paintings Rendova Beachhead and Rendova Mud, and his brown ink sketch, Native Guide Digging Foxhole, and a Shannon WWII photograph were exhibited.

 In November 1998-August 1999 forty-five of Shannon’s Monroe Street Area Photographs were shown at the exhibition, Deep Blues, Bill Traylor 1854-1949, Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany and the Robert Hull Fleming Museum, Burlington, Vermont, USA. The forty-five photographs were reproduced in the exhibition catalogue accompanied by an essay, Images of the South, the Photographs of Charles Shannon, Josef Helfenstein.  In the essay, Helfenstein discusses Shannon’s photographs in the context of those of Walker Evans, Ben Shahn and other photographers of the Farm Security Administration. 

Helfenstein’ s essay concluded: “Shannon’s photographs, which arose from his fascination for the person and art of Bill Traylor, are a contribution to the exploration of the American cultural heritage. His text for the exhibition of Bill Traylor’s drawings in New South in 1940 shows that he recognized the significance and uniqueness of Traylor's work precisely for American culture. To him we owe not only the preservation of Traylor's drawings, but also the only photographic documents that capture the aura of their creation.” 

On November 14, 2019-January 5, 2020 the solo exhibition, Charles Shannon, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, was presented on the occasion of the celebration of the Bicentennials of the State of Alabama and the capital city Montgomery and the symposium, Bearing Witness: Art in Alabama, Alabama Humanities Foundation, Alabama State Council on the Arts. The museum installed four paintings, The Red Flower (1936), The Lover (1937), Summer Games (1949), and Checker Players (1975), by Charles Shannon in the Hughes and Wilson rotunda gallery. 

The announcement for the exhibition stated: “Charles Shannon (1914-1996), was one of the great artists of the mid-to-late 20th century in the River Region. An important teacher as well as working artist, Shannon’s influence on art and artists in Central Alabama over a career that spanned more than 50 years is represented in the works included in this installation. One of his paintings, The Lover(1937), became part of the Museum's permanent collection in 1986; the other three important works are on loan from Mrs. Charles Shannon. Together, these paintings represent the finest examples of Shannon’s ability as an artist with a sensitivity and passion for the American South and its people.”