Suffering and Sunset

"Celeste-Marie Bernier has written a sweeping account of the art, life, and time of Horace Pippin, one that brings unprecedented color to and a clear understanding of an under-represented American artist. The voluminous research in Suffering and Sunset takes the reader beyond the realm of art to establish a broad historical base that includes issues of race and identity in American culture. The book gives an unbiased biographical account of the artist’s everyday activities, much of which is drawn from Pippin’s war diary and his day-to-day transactions with his art dealer. Salient among Bernier’s observations about Pippin’s art and his long journey as a World War I soldier in Europe are the extraordinary experiences he endured in the pursuit of his artistry, some of which were purely racist in nature. Relying heavily on Pippin’s own personal account of his life as an artist, Bernier paints an indelible word picture of the pain, struggle, and triumph of one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century."
—David C. Driskell, Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park

"Suffering and Sunset is an engaged consideration of Horace Pippin as an African American artist and World War I veteran who was forever changed by his experiences in the trenches. Celeste-Marie Bernier examines Pippin’s writings and art as linked creative forms through which Pippin described the European battlefield and the ways its violence permeated his thinking after he returned to the United States. Noting that Pippin volunteered to join the war effort, Bernier finds in his images and texts a shift to an anti-war perspective. In Bernier’s hands, Pippin’s work is a rich historical archive that also stands as a testament to his determination to represent his era."
—Jacqueline Francis, author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America

"Bernier painstakingly examines Pippin’s manuscripts, paintings, and sketches to show how his meager written legacy casts revealing light on his other works…. The author analyzes Pippin’s work in exhaustive…detail, comparing the scant information of his wartime experience with the stark monotones in his paintings…. (The) in-depth analyses (are) filled with learned conjecture."
—Kirkus Reviews

"In this generously illustrated intellectual history and cultural biography, Bernier makes a persuasive case for (Pippin) being one of the 20th century's most groundbreaking artists."
—Times Higher Education

"(A) provocative, meticulously researched, multidisciplinary, and multilayered interpretation of the paintings and autobiographical writings of Horace Pippin.... Through extensive and ground-breaking archival work, she offers, throughout the book, intriguing and previously unknown information about Pippin’s family history, including the likely identity of his mother and the misconception that Pippin was the grandchild or son of slaves.... Bernier presents an innovative recovery and repositioning of Pippin’s written archive."
—American Literary History

"Suffering and Sunset is an important book, not only because of the reputation of the artist, the paucity of scholarly examinations of his war work, and the array of evidence Bernier brings to her study but as a model for how a richly interdisciplinary study can add both basic knowledge and nuance to a monographic study of one individual. This book should be equally valuable to the historian of American art, those concerned with African-American studies, and broader cultural studies as well."
—Journal of American Culture