Renee Stout facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Renee L. Stout
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| Born | 1958 (age 66–67) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Assemblage art |
Renée Stout, born in 1958, is an American artist. She is famous for her sculptures and other artworks. Her art often uses a style called assemblage. This means she puts different objects together to create new art pieces.
Renée Stout's art explores her own life story. It also focuses on her African-American heritage. She was born in Kansas and grew up in Pittsburgh. Now, she lives in Washington, D.C. Her art shows her interest in African cultures that have spread across the United States. Renée Stout was the first American artist to have an exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art.
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Renée Stout's Early Life
Renée Stout was born in Junction City, Kansas. Her family loved being creative. Her mother enjoyed needlework, which is like sewing and embroidery. Her father was a mechanic and steelworker who liked to build and fix things. One of her uncles was a painter.
When Renée was one year old, her family moved to East Liberty in Pittsburgh. As a child, she took weekend art classes. These classes were at the Carnegie Museum of Art. She says these classes helped her discover African art.
How African Art Inspired Renée
Two special objects at the Carnegie Museum really influenced her. These were shrunken heads from South America and nkisi. An nkisi nkondi is a powerful statue from Central Africa. It often has nails or blades stuck into it.
Renée Stout saw an nkisi nkondi when she was ten years old. She said, "I saw a piece there that had all these nails in it..." As she traveled and saw more African art, she kept thinking about pieces like that.
A writer named Greene noted that Renée Stout's childhood in Pittsburgh happened when singer Betty Davis moved there. Renée owned all of Betty Davis's records as a teenager. Renée compared how people reacted to Betty Davis's music to how she expected people to react to her own art. She felt that people were not ready for Betty Davis's unique style. Renée thought her own art might be seen as "weird" at first. She joked that people might only "get it" when she was much older.
Renée Stout's Art Career
Renée Stout went to Carnegie Mellon University. She studied to be a photo-realist painter. This means she learned to paint things so realistically they look like photographs. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1980. She followed the realistic style of artists like Edward Hopper and Richard Estes.
After college, she worked as a professional sign painter. She was very skilled at painting textures. She could make glass, plastic, and cardboard look real in her paintings.
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Exploring Heritage and Healing Through Art
In 1985, Renée Stout moved to Washington, D.C. There, she saw the challenges of city life. She started to include these social topics in her artwork. She also deeply explores her African-American heritage.
Renée Stout finds ideas for her art from the African diaspora. This refers to the spread of African people and their cultures around the world. She also gets ideas from her everyday surroundings. Her art aims to encourage people to think about themselves. It also promotes self-empowerment and healing. She uses ideas from African belief systems and their descendants.
Renée Stout also creates imaginary characters for her art. She uses many different art forms. These include painting, mixed media sculpture, photography, and installations. She has received awards from important art foundations. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions. These shows have been across the United States and in other countries.
A Historic Exhibition
In 1993, Renée Stout made history. She was the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art. Her exhibition was called The Eyes of Understanding: Kongo Minkisi and The Art of Renee Stout.
In 2021, Renée Stout was a judge for an art show. This show was called Inside Outside, Upside Down. It featured 64 artists from the D.C. area. The show helped people remember a confusing and difficult time.
Renée Stout's Artistic Style
Renée Stouts art combines old African American customs with city culture. Her work often has a theatrical or festive feel. She creates handmade assemblages, which are artworks made from different objects. She also makes installations and tableaus. These are art pieces that fill a space or tell a story. She also creates vibrant paintings, prints, and photographs. All these forms help her tell complex stories with characters she invents.
Influences and Themes
Her art is influenced by Yoruba sculpture. She is also inspired by the nkisi (sacred objects) from the Central African Congo Basin. She first saw these objects at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh when she was young.
Other topics in her work include Haitian Vodou. This is a spiritual practice. She also explores the culture of New Orleans and the Voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau. In a book called Tales of the Conjure Woman, Renée Stout said she wants to continue inspiring her art with themes like African spiritual beliefs and Vodou. She wants to open conversations about African American culture's history.
Renée Stout also uses an imaginary character named Fatima Mayfield. Fatima is a fictional herbalist and fortune-teller. Through Fatima, Renée explores these cultural traditions. This helps her create her own unique visual language. Her work is carefully made and full of symbols.
Materials and Other Artistic Influences
Renée Stout's sculptures often include materials used in Voodoo practices. She uses handmade potions, roots, herbs, found objects, bones, and feathers. She combines these with painted and sculpted parts.
Renée Stout's work also shows influences from other American artists. These include the photorealist painter Richard Estes and the sculptor Joseph Cornell. She is also inspired by installation artist Edward Kienholz and assemblage artist Betye Saar. You can see their impact in her realistic painting style. She also uses found objects in her art. Her early work as a sign painter and her interest in handmade signs also appear in her pieces.
Exhibitions of Renée Stout's Art
Renée Stout has had many solo art shows. These have been in the United States and other countries. Some of her important solo shows include:
- Astonishment and Power: Kongo Minkisi and the Art of Renée Stout (1993) at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.
- Readers, Advisors, and Storefront Churches (2005) at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
- Renée Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman (2013-2016). This show started at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina.
Andrea Barnwell Brownlee was involved with one of Renée Stout's larger exhibitions. This was The Thinking Room (2005). She also helped with a book called Renee Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman. This book brought together over sixty recent artworks. It invited viewers into a rich and complex world. The exhibition explored the myths, folk stories, and spiritual traditions that shape Renée Stout's art. These artworks later became part of the traveling exhibition Tales of the Conjure Woman.
Renée Stout has also been part of many group shows. These include Afro-Atlantic Histories and Spirit in the Land. Spirit in the Land was a traveling show. It was organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2023. It was also shown at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2024.
Awards and Recognition
Renée Stout has received many awards for her art. These include:
- Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (1991, 1999)
- The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1993, 2018)
- Anonymous Was A Woman Award (1999)
- Joan Mitchell Award (2005)
- High Museum of Art David C. Driskell Prize (2010)
- Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize (2012)
- Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Achievement Award (2015)
- Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2018)
Images for kids
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Pittsburgh Skyline
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Elegba (Spirit of the Crossroads) (2015)
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Headstone for Marie Laveau (1990)
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Mannish Boy Arrives (For Muddy Waters) (2017)
