Life is Altogether

Life is Altogether is a beautifully dynamic pencil and charcoal drawing created by the late artist Thornton Dial in 1994. The drawing at first appears convoluted with its twisting lines and swirling faces. But, the piece is made distinctive by its title and comes to represent the interconnectedness of human life. Placed within our exhibition’s subtheme of kin, the drawing depicts our inescapable emotional and physical bonds with those closest to us. The piece also connects to the sub themes of community and art-making and is particularly powerful when considering well-being as a whole.

Thornton Dial was born in 1928 on a former cotton plantation. Growing up in rural Alabama where members of his family worked as Sharecroppers, Dial learned from a young age the inequities and hardships of life. He lived through some of the most trying times, including the Great Depression, World War II, the advent of nuclear warfare, and the upheaval of the civil rights era. It was these moments of adversity and the daily challenges Dial faced as a black man during the 20th century that shaped much of his art.

As a boy, Dial disliked school and often skipped classes in order to find work and make money. But with his limited educational experiences Dial never received any formal art training. Instead, it was his work as a handyman, carpenter, and metalworker that provided him the skills and techniques to produce his now-renowned paintings, assemblages, and sculptures. After retiring from factory work in 1981, Dial devoted all his time to his art. In the late 1980s, Dial's work caught the attention of art collector William Arnett and the artist rose to national prominence.

Dial’s work uniquely portrays America’s history of slavery, racism, poverty, and war. His artistry is both personally and culturally rich. As John Beardsley, a distinguished author, historian, and educator writes, "Dial's life is inseparable from history because he made it his business as an artist to be a historian. Dial lived history, then he represented it in paintings and sculptures". But, just as this exhibition does not seek to explicitly define wellbeing, Dial did not seek to create literal depictions of the African American experience. Instead, his art is expressive of the spiritual strength of nature, creation as motion, the power of benevolence, and finding the value in things often overlooked. Indeed, the actual art-making process was of great worth to the artist and his own wellbeing. In an interview in 1995 with Souls Grown Deep, an organization that promotes contemporary black artists from the south, Dial stated, “My art is the evidence of my freedom.”

According to Grey Gundaker, a William and Mary professor who personally knew Mr. Dial, the artist was a storyteller. Dial’s stories often focused on the energy of life, and this can be found in Life is Altogether. The artist felt that death traveled in a straight line, and therefore the constant twists and turns of line in this drawing are emblematic of life. The line is both fluid and unpredictable, and it is this that creates and encircles the fifteen or so, different, swirling faces. The faces themselves are both erratic and congruent. Each is joined to the other, but the faces differ in size, expression, and even some color. There is also great intimacy between each face. At any given point on the paper, one face connects to another through the perpetual use of line. Indeed, it is the line that actually gives form to each face.

This intertwining of line and faces in Dial’s drawing is particularly evocative of our physical interconnectedness. Just as each face is linked and formed by the same line, humans are inescapably connected by being of the same flesh and blood. When considering kin, the charcoal line comes to depict our enduring bloodline. Our relations, immediate or distant, ancestral or those to come, are all, forever connected by our prevailing lineage.

And yet, each line is irregular, and each face is unalike. There are even some lines that try and reach beyond the paper, including one in the top left corner that remains somewhat separate from the piece. But it is this variance that enables us to grow. In one sense, bloodline is only enduring when it constantly changes, joining one family to another. In another sense, humanity is only enduring when we are fully immersed in our interconnectedness. It is the unpredictable twists and turns of line and the variability of each face that allows Dial’s piece here to be so beautifully dynamic. Just as the title suggests, we are all connected. Life only prevails by being altogether.

Isabel Williams '22

Read more with Souls Grown Deep: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/thornton-dial