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St. James the Janitor

 

 

In 1964 James Hampton, an African-American veteran who worked as a janitor cleaning government buildings for the General Services Administration in Washington, D. C. died. He left a rented garage full of handmade ecclesiastical objects and visionary art. He created altars, bishop's chairs, offertory tables, crowns, plaques of scripture, and lecterns fashioned from cast-off furniture all covered with silver and gold foil. They were found behind the garage doors—the private lifework of a soft-spoken man who would probably never have described himself as an artist, though in his writings he sometimes referred to himself as St. James.

 

To all appearances James Hampton (above) was just a humble janitor – but, unknown to even his family, he was a modern visionary who spent 14 years constructing one of the most eccentric works in American Art and writing books full of encrypted script that have still not been decoded.

 

The following bit from STEVE MARSHALL examines the life and work of this latter-day mystic and self-styled saint.

 

When James Hampton, a janitor in Washington DC, USA, died of stomach cancer at the Veteran’s Hospital on 4 November 1964, his life’s work lay undiscovered for a further month and a half in his dimly-lit, rented garage. Eventually, the owner of the garage, Meyer Wertlieb, decided to find out why the rent had not been paid. He knew what Hampton had been building in the garage and recalled that the janitor had once made a remark about it: “That’s my life. I’ll finish it before I die.”

 

Wertlieb opened up the garage – on 7th Street, in northwest Washington – and found a glittering throne room packed with an array of 177 sparkling objects, arranged symmetrically about the centrepiece throne. The central, winged throne and attendant altars and pulpits, though initially looking solid, were, on inspection, constructed from old light bulbs, electric flex wrapped in silver kitchen foil, cardboard, gold foil from cigarette packs and wine bottles, discarded furniture, hollow cardboard cylinders, metallic strips cut from coffee cans, mirror fragments, and other scavenged materials. Green pieces came from discarded desk blotters. The result looks like ancient Chinese bronzes of the Shang dynasty, belying the fact the work is actually fragile and held together with glue, tacks, pins, and tape. Because the pins were sometimes too short to penetrate all the layers, all that holds the work together in places is the tin foil wrapped around it.

 

Hampton had laboured on the work – “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly” – for 14 years. This title was written on objects in the assemblage in Hampton’s handwriting. From 1950 until his death, after finishing his janitorial duties at midnight each night, he would go off to his garage to work on the throne until dawn, under the direction of God. Above the central throne are emblazoned the words “FEAR NOT”, a phrase that occurs in both Old and New Testaments. In Revelation, for instance, it appears in 1:17: “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last.”

 

Labels were attached to various objects showing that Hampton had a fascination with chapters 20 and 21 of the Book of Revelation. 20:4 reads: “And I saw thrones, and they that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them.” Satan had just been cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years “that he should deceive the nations no more.” Many people seem to miss the placement of the genitive apostrophe in the title of Hampton’s work, reading it in the singular and supposing that the “Nation” is America; it is actually in the plural, referring to all the nations of the world.

 

What is the “Third Heaven”? This rare biblical phrase appears in II Corinthians 12:2, where we find Paul the Apostle describing probably his own mystical experience of being “caught up in the third heaven.” From the context of the passage the Third Heaven appears to be synonymous with paradise. Dante uses the phrase in canto VIII of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso. In The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, Enoch describes the Third Heaven: “And I saw all the sweet-flowering trees and beheld their fruits, which were sweet-smelling, and all the foods borne by them. And in the midst of the trees that of Life, in that place whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise; and this tree is of ineffable goodness and fragrance, and adorned more than every existing thing; and on all sides it is in form gold-looking and vermilion and fire-like and covers all, and it has produce from all fruits.”

 

Secret Writing

Hampton also wrote a notebook in secret writing in which he referred to himself (in English) as ‘ST JAMES’, ending each page with the word “REVELATION”. He called the notebook St James: The Book of the 7 Dispensation drawing on the numerical symbolism of seven which runs throughout the Book of Revelation. In Revelation we find seven churches, seven Spirits of God, seven golden candlesticks, seven stars, “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne” (4:5), the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, and the book with seven seals that, like St James Hampton’s notebook, no man could read. As yet, Hampton’s code is undeciphered, like the Voynich manuscript, and might not ordinarily excite any interest, were it not for the extraordinary objects that form its context.

 

The Throne

The Throne "may well be the finest work of visionary religious art produced by an American."
-- Robert Hughes

 

ABOVE: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, about 1950–64, gold and silver aluminum foil, Kraft paper, and plastic over wood furniture, paperboard, and glass, 10 x 27 x 14 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of anonymous donors.

 

The first the world knew of the throne was when the Washington Post ran a story, on 15 December 1964, under the headline: “TINSEL, MYSTERY ARE SOLE LEGACY OF LONELY MAN’S STRANGE VISION.” The owner of the garage sold the throne to two people who, in 1970, donated the work anonymously to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, where it normally occupies 380 square feet of the first floor, rising to a height of 10 feet, and is beautifully lit against a backdrop of majestic purple.

 

The assemblage teems with wings that appear also to be eyes. Hampton had a noticeboard in the garage, upon which was pinned a quote from Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Lynda Hartigan gets close to what may have been the intention of Hampton’s vision: “to create a vehicle for religious renewal and teaching.” She points out that there are numerous references to AJ Tyler in the throne assemblage. Tyler was a popular black preacher at the Mount Airy Baptist Church, not far from Hampton’s boarding house, who died in 1936. Many pieces of the throne bear labels reading “Tyler Baptist Church”, which never existed, and in his notebook Hampton indicates that “St James” is the pastor of the Tyler Baptist Church. Had he lived longer, Hampton may well have set up a storefront ministry using his throne to teach and inspire. As it was, the “Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity”, as Hampton called himself, lay on his deathbed not knowing what would become of the work that had so consumed him for 14 years. An enigma left in a dingy garage, testament that God moves in mysterious ways.

 

St. James had bigger plans in mind and there were sketches for an even larger throne found in his sketchbooks. [See below.]