Interesting Tidbits Concerning
Gilbert Wilson
(Please note that the majority of the information on this page has
been taken from Beth Schultz's book Unpainted to the Last. The rest
was obtained through Graeme Reid, currator of the Sheldon Swope
Art Gallery in Terre Haute, IN)
*You probably either have never heard of Gilbert Wilson or only recently
have, which is a shame.
*Wilson lived and worked in Terre Haute, Indiana.
*Wilson began his work on Moby Dick in the mid forties and
continued until his death in 1991.
*Wilson was the only artist to attempt to clase the gap between lay-man
and the scholarly "elite" concerning one of America's most treasured
novels.
*Wilson's work on Moby Dick includes a short art film version of the novel,
the
Insanity Series
featuring Ahab, stage designs and a libretto for a musical version of
Moby Dick entitled The White Whale, and more than 300 drawings
and sketches inspired by the novel. which he took on the road in a 26 week
52 city lecture tour in the 1950s.
*Wilson's film version of Moby Dick won the Venice Film Festival's
Silver Reel awrd in 1955.
*Wilson was briefly apprenticed to Rockwell Kent in 1947
*Many consider Wilson's crowning acheivement to be a series of murals done
in chalk at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High School in Terre Haute. In Wilson's
words, "The theme of the murals is an expression of the dangers and the
confusion and the complexity of the present day society which faces youth."
Wilson depicts a variety of ideas, including war, technology, life, death,
agriculture, and brotherhood in the murals and the result is simply
spectacular. They were comissioned by city officials, but they withheld
payment because they thought that Wilson quoted Union champion
Eugene V. Debs
in the murals. The only payment Wilson recieved was what teachers and studentscollected for him, which didn't amount to very much.
