It was 1964 in Washington DC. The country
was experiencing something of a Renaissance. The Beatles had just played their first American show there in the nation's capitol. Texas Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson had just been sworn into office, following the
sudden assassination of John F Kennedy, an event which heralded a period of
uncertainty and mourning. But for Meyer Wertlieb, a working-class business owner
walking down 7th Street, he had been one simple mission. The task of clearing out
one of his storage units. The tenant, a reclusive janitor whom Meyer only barely knew, had suddenly stopped paying the rent. When Meyer opened the unit he unveiled the product of a lonely, intense obsession. From the discarded items swept into his dustbin and collected from
garbage cans along on the street, the janitor had been working tirelessly for
over a decade to create the artifacts of a strange, religious message. Crowns made from light bulbs and coffee cans, plaques crafted from cereal boxes--a handwritten
journal inscribed in an unrecognizable language. And at the center, a throne, designed from stained discarded cushions and cardboard. Atop it all, molded from
household aluminum foil, were two words: Fear Not. This is the story of
outsider artist, James Hampton. Wertlieb recalled Mr. Hampton, his tenant
of the last 14 years, dutifully paying his $50 dollar rent every month since 1950. After midnight, the janitor would make his nightly trek to the garage, steering a
wagon filled with garbage the citizens of Washington DC had left her him to
clean up. In these found objects he saw the specific shapes needed for a foil
covered wing, or the base of the crown. The product of his labor is a throne
room filled with glimmering shrines and plaques--a total of nearly 180 individual
works. A pulpit, from which to deliver an address of some kind, is designed with
painstaking symmetry in mind. The throne itself, a seven-foot-tall place of
royalty, serves as a seat from which to pass divine judgment. All items are
wrapped in aluminum foil, reflecting the light from the bulbs he'd hung from the
ceiling, creating the illusion of gold and silver. While this texture is meant
to inspire a sense of awe from those who stand court in Hamptons garage, this is
juxtaposed by the humble materials which make up these items. Hidden within the
layers of Reynolds Wrap are decade's worth of junk. The title of his creation,
written on a chalkboard found in the garage, places these items in their
intended religious context. The Throne of the Third Heaven of The Nations'
Millennium General Assembly. Only two pictures of the artist seemed to exist.
In both James Hampton stands in front of his creation, staring into the camera
with resolute confidence. One of the first questions I had after taking all
this in was, who was this for? Who did Hampton intend to wear these crowns? Who did he imagine would sit on the throne? To answer this question, let's take a
look at what we know about James Hampton, and how he came to be who his journal
described as the Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity.
His interest in religious imagery may have originated with his father, a
traveling Baptist preacher and gospel singer, although reports suggest he may
not have been a prominent presence in James's life. His brother Lee however
seemed to share a close bond with James. The two lived together for much of
James's early adult life, after he'd served in the United States Air Force,
where he worked as an airstrip maintenance worker. It was during the
time of living with his brother Lee, while working as a janitor for
Washington DC's General Services Administration, that Hampton reported
having visions. Always in the late night hours, well after his shift had ended,
figures from Judeo-Christianity, the Virgin Mary, Adam, and Moses, tasked
Hampton with the mission of creating The Throne of the Third Heaven of the
Nations' Millennium General Assembly. These visions occurred intermittently
for nearly 20 years, and it was after his brother's death in 1949, cause unknown,
that James Hampton set to work. During this 14-year period Hampton was
single-minded and focused. For hours every night he removed foil from
cigarette cartons, taping and gluing together old whiskey bottles and chewing
gum wrappers until they became emblematic of his vision. As if to prove
to himself he was indeed fulfilling his divine prophecy, Hampton began tagging
many of his artifacts with an inscription. "This is true, that the great
Moses, the giver of the tenth commandment, appeared in Washington, April 11th 1931"--
one inscription read. "This is true, that on October 2nd 1946, the great Virgin
Mary and the Star of Bethlehem appeared over the nation's capital"--read another. On
a chalkboard fixed to the garage wall Hampton inscribed the Ten Commandments, written in a language which has since been referred to as Hamptonese. One can
ascertain little from the vestiges of Hamptons new religion, but nowhere is
this more true than its accompanying holy text: The Book of the Seven
Dispensation. The title almost certainly refers to the idea of dispensationalism,
which posits that God is delivering his plan incrementally throughout different
eras of human history, with no doubt James seeing himself as the chosen
steward for the newest dispensation--a modern-day equivalent of Moses or
Abraham. But the content of this text is impenetrable. Its pages are filled with
a recurring symbol, hieroglyphic in nature, it's six-sided shape appears
symmetrical, aside from the mysterious details drawn within it. Each entry
begins with Hamptons signature, St. James. At the end, the word revelation is
written with such urgency it seems to be shouting from the page. The content of
these entries is an unrecognizable language which is puzzled linguists for
decades. Having quickly ruled out a simple
substitution cipher for English as a solution, and failing to identify what, if
any, type of encryption Hampton was using-- results have been inconclusive.
In 2005, over 40 years after its discovery, a computer scientist named
Mark Stamp published the paper "Hamptonese and Hidden Markov Models." The hidden
Markov model is an approach used to find a set of unknown variables, by
extrapolating variables that are known. For example, ascertaining the weather by
observing the clothing people outside are wearing. Stamp began by identifying
each character, noting their frequency, and applying the 42 unique symbols to
the model. Despite getting closer than anyone, Stamp's results were
inconclusive--ending his analysis with a startling thought. "Hamptonese is simply
the written equivalent of speaking in tongues." There are many gaps in the life of James Hampton, and much is left a speculation.
Especially during the time he was devoting himself to his throne. Although
commonly believed to be a quiet and mysterious man, James had, on occasion,
shared his work with carefully selected acquaintances. One of the only people to
view Hampton's work, a woman impossible romantic interest, by the name of Otelia
Whitehead, had this to say of her experience: "I was speechless," she told The
Washington Post, "a cab driver brought me to the alley saying there's something
here you really must see. Mr. Hampton opened the door and it was like the
wings of Gabriel were beating in the extremely bright light.
Mr. Hampton showed me each piece, speaking of the millennium and
Armageddon, you may live to see it, he said. You might be here when He comes
again. Mr. Hampton was sleeping in that space, on a couch, with an electric burner
for heat. Despite the poorness of the surroundings, I felt the presence of some
unknown force. I returned to visit Mr. Hampton a dozen occasions.
No one could sit on The Throne, but he would permit you to approach it on your
knees. I knelt before the mercy seat and it was like praying before a great altar." Meyer Wertlieb, the man Hampton had been
renting his studio from, knew his tenant had been working on something, during the
midnight hours, and had once confided in his landlord that the project was his
life, and he would finish it before he died. But the tragic reason for the
unpaid rent, as Wertlieb would soon find out, was that James Hampton had died of
stomach cancer at a nearby Veterans Hospital, at the age of 53. This begged
the question, was Hamptons decorated monument to his new religion, made from
the discarded objects the citizens of Washington DC had left for him to clean
up, finished? Hampton himself was likely the only person who could answer that
question, but as with many cases of this type of lifelong obsession--the work is
never finished. It's difficult to imagine a time in which an able bodied James
Hampton wouldn't be dutifully reporting to a storage unit, during the late hours
of the night, after his custodial shift had ended. Transforming old ink blotters
and newspapers into golden thrones and crowns. "It seems to me an example of the
futility of life," Wertlieb later told a reporter of the Washington Post.
His sister, Hampton's next of kin, arrived in DC shortly after to take his remains
to their hometown of Orangeburg South Carolina for burial. But when Wertlieb
showed her the sculptures, the enigmatic journal, the bird-like throne, she didn't
seem interested. This left Wertlieb in an awkward
position. The artifacts of Hampton's religion, a total of one hundred and
seventy seven items, occupied an enormous amount of space. He needed to vacate a
storage unit for the next tenant, but as he told The Washington Post,
"You can't just destroy something a man devoted himself to for 14 years." With
trashing the sculptures as a last resort, he put an ad in the local DC newspaper,
advertising the storage unit, as well as the contents inside.
Days later, the shocking discovery of Hampton's throne would begin to ripple
through the art scene, inspiring creators for decades to come. James Hampton never viewed himself as an
artist, he viewed himself as a prophet. And during the only instances on record
of him sharing his art, he did so as a prophet, in areas where it was rejected.
Reportedly, he'd approached nearby churches, offering to incorporate the
throne and The Book of Seven Dispensation into their sermon. Unsurprisingly, he
failed to generate interest. But whereas the church proved an ill-suited venue
for Hampton's creation, there was one fringe corner of 1960s counterculture
which would ultimately embrace him, albeit posthumously, the art world. Many artists in the 1960s were eschewing
the conventions of painting and sculpture in favor of more abstract
means of expression. Performance art, minimalism, A new set of values began to take precedence over formal
artistic training, making it the perfect climate for outsider art such as The
Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, to
gain appreciation. And it was the art world who responded
to Wertlieb's ad. Ed Kelley, a sculptor who was looking for a space to use as a
studio, visited the 7th Street storage unit. Quickly realizing this foil covered
opus was something others needed to witness, he contacted prominent figures
in the DC art scene to come and see it. Harry Lowe a local painter known for his
gouache landscapes stated that stepping into the garage was like opening King
Tut's tomb. Robert Rauschenberg, a mixed-media artist who had also been
incorporating garbage from the streets of New York into his paintings, saw a
fellow found object artist in James Hampton. But unlike Rauschenberg, Hampton used trash not because of its poetic value,
but because it was the only material he had. Alice Denney, a curator of
avant-garde art around the DC area, paid the outstanding rent due on the storage
unit, and began to make arrangements to house it in a more suitable display.
Since 1970, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General
Assembly has been housed in DC, in what is now known as the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Physically the throne is fragile, made from items that were meant
to be cast into a garbage heap decades ago, held together by glue and band-aids.
The throne is prone to deterioration, nearly every time it's loaned to a
different museum components often require reattaching upon return. But
instances of foil ripping or wings falling off afford curators with a
unique opportunity to find out what's underneath, and if they're lucky, form a
clearer picture of the person who made it. "Here you see a tab advising the buyer that there were only six feet left, order now, order now, Reynolds Wrap. I sometimes
picture him... I'm sure he had different working phases, but I sometimes picture
him just working feverishly, and just pulling out the foil in
rolls, and not having time to even tear off the tab before he
started a new one." Although we previously assumed James had only been working on
the throne during his 14 years in the storage unit,
insight into these materials tell us that the space he rented wasn't to begin
construction, but to continue it. "He made, according to a label that's
found on one of the objects that's part of the throne, that it was made on the
island of Guam, when he was stationed there in the military. This was years
before he rented the garage, so it kind of speaks to the amount of time that
went into his conceptualizing this work." It's likely James worked on the throne,
in one form or another, most of his adult life. Planning, collecting, envisioning. He
pursued the throne with a monk-like obsession, viewing his own body as merely
an instrument of its creation. We've seen other instances throughout history of
individuals devoting their lives to one bizarre, solitary task. Herman the
Recluse, alleged author of the 165 pound Codex Gigas, labored in secret for thirty
years to create what is colloquially known as The Devil's Bible. Edward Leedskalnin, builder of the Coral
Castle, spent 28 years in South Florida, constructing a small village of
limestone, for which he was the only resident. A fellow custodian, like Hampton,
Henry Darger wrote a small library of original fictional manuscripts, complete
with sprawling illustrations of its characters. "Darger's completed works
totaled approximately 15,000 pages, collected into seven hand bound volumes,
and eight unbound volumes." Many who are drawn to outsider artists, such as these
individuals, inevitably ask themselves one question. What does it mean to labor
in solitude, with no outside encouragement, with no formal training to
fall back on, propelled only by a sense of purpose that others couldn't even
begin to understand. It's undeniable that the throne has a certain gravity,
commanding the attention of other artists,
fiction writers, poets, musicians--who often dedicate portions of their work to
the throne. Perhaps in the throne they recognize
something truly rare, art in its purest form. The compulsion to bring something
into existence without the expectation of recognition, with the artifact itself
being the only reward. Many of us will likely never know what it's like to be
driven by such a compulsion, either from a perceived divine source, or as a
devotion to a loved one, or simply a mysterious desire to manifest a unique
vision. But in The Throne of the Third Heaven, we can see the product of it.
Foil wrapped beer bottles and tissue holders, broken furniture, street side
garbage transformed into a kingdom fit for a deity, and the man who gave his
life in order to build it. A special thanks to Nefarious TV for
designing my intro and outro animations. I couldn't be more grateful and
impressed with how they turned out. If you'd like to check out his work, I'll
leave a link in the description below. If you enjoyed this video, and look forward
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videos.
Great vid! Any idea about James' truths and links to real events?
Moses in Washington April 11, 1931
Virgin Mary, nation's capital, Oct. 2, 1946