B.U. Bridge is published by the Boston University Office of University Relations.

Contact Us

Staff

Seeking the monumental in African art

By Bari Walsh

As both a painter and an art dealer, Tim Hamill is fascinated by monumentality. He paints objects that he wants to immortalize, infusing them with a symbolic importance that makes them appear to him -- and thus appear on his canvases -- huge, no matter how small they are. Collecting traditional African art satisfies the same need for connection to the monumental, the powerful, and the immortal. By 1990, his collection was so big that he opened the Hamill Gallery of African Art, an important center for patrons of tribal art.

	Tim Hamill and his collection. Photo by Fred Sway

The collection, nearly 20,000 pieces in all, is not, Hamill (SFA'65,'68) is careful to say, "tourist art." Nor is it even the work of artists. "The people who make our pieces are usually blacksmiths or artisans. We show things that people actually use. They are bought from the people who own them and who use them, not the people who make them," he says.

That characteristic, the "used" quality, is part of what Hamill finds inspiring. He discovers in them a unique synergy: a sense of time passing and of time boldly circumvented. "I like almost all ancient and primitive art," he says. "More than most other types of art, there are things in African art that are very large and impressive and bold and modern in their feeling. Plus, they are weathered and used and aged. Although they're made by man, they're taken back by nature and improved with time." He sees a correlation, perhaps counterintuitive, between people's reactions to primitive art and to contemporary art; if they like one, they generally like the other.

Right now, Hamill is busy documenting and photographing his ever-growing collection of masks, figures, textiles, jewelry, furniture, currency, weapons, and architectural components. One of his most prized possessions is a carved support beam taken from a men's meeting house in Mali. Called a toguna post, it was made by a Dogon tribal artisan of an extremely hard wood called kile. It depicts one of the ancestral founders of the Dogon people, an Adam or Eve figure, Hamill says. A nearly identical beam, probably from the same building, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hamill points out that his toguna had been partially planted in the ground, and that in his opinion the aging and rotting of the wood add to its power. "Even in a support beam, they'll want to make it beautiful and spiritual," he says. "You can see that it's really been used, but it's survived. It would look good in a modern art exhibit; it would belong in a museum; it would belong anywhere."

Hamill likes what time and nature add to things made by man, and he finds those effects predominant in the traditional African art he loves. "Guernica isn't getting better because it's aging. It's getting better because it's famous. This," he says, pointing to the toguna post, "actually aged because of nature, and it's better now."

In his enthusiasm for the gallery, and for collecting African art, Hamill has all but stopped painting, and he eagerly looks forward to "doing something incredible." Before opening the gallery, Hamill taught art, first at Boston University and then for 10 years at Milton Academy, a prep school outside of Boston. He also ran a picture-framing business. Through it all, he had a thriving career as an artist, with more than 50 one-man shows and many more group exhibitions. "I had an above-average art career, but I didn't really 'make it.' I was just working hard and getting a lot of exposure," he says. He regrets having lost his habit of painting every day, but he says he was overwhelmed by his "intense love" for African art, and he found that building the gallery satisfied him creatively and professionally as no other job had done. He's now in the process of fighting his way through that love and rediscovering his own art, and he plans to work and exhibit in a space on the first floor of the large building that houses his gallery.

When he does begin painting again, he hopes to draw on the strength and spirituality that he finds in African art objects. "It's been a long time since people viewed me as an artist," he says. "It will be fun to reassert myself."

You can visit the Hamill Gallery, at 2164 Washington St., Boston, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 12-6 p.m. or tour Hamill's collection online at www.hamillgallery.com. African stools will be on exhibit through May 26.

23 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations