The influence of African Americans: Early Modern Era Exhibit

The Influence of African Americans: Overview

The influence that African Americans had on the Early Modern Era is centered around the Harlem Renaissance. The events leading up to the Harlem Renaissance included The Great Migration which began in the year 1910. Large numbers of African Americans moved from the “rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities” to escape the widespread “discrimination and violence of the segregated South and seeking opportunities for work” (The Art Story). Due to limited civil rights and the Jim Crow laws of the south this encouraged thousands of African Americans to migrate. Northern companies were offering “incentives to recruit black workers” and would intensify “during World War I when war mobilization diminished the industrial workforce” (The Art Story). As African Americans moved to Northern cities they began filling those industrial and railway jobs. Furthermore, this created racial tensions. By the year 1919, white mobs in more than “three-dozen American cities instigated riots, attacking and lynching African Americans, destroying their neighborhoods and businesses” this was called The Red Summer (The Art Story). Due to the violence of the red Summer, this was the contributing factor that developed the Harlem Renaissance. African American communities were organizing nonviolent protests as a response. The NAACP protested to “President Woodrow Wilson, the group grew in membership and visibility” (The Art Story). The Harlem Renaissance “touched every aspect of African American literary and artistic creativity from the end of World War I through the Great Depression” (Wintz). The Harlem Renaissance does not have a “defined ideological or stylistic standard that unified its participants and defined the movement” (Wintz). However, most participants “resisted black or white efforts to define or narrowly categorize their art” and were determined to “express the African American experience in all of its variety and complexity as realistically as possible” (Wintz). In the poem If We Must Die, by Claude McKay he “expressed the passion for equality and respect that became central themes of the Harlem Renaissance”. He stated that "If we must die, O let us nobly die.../Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!" (The Art Story). The artworks in this exhibition lay out the vision of America from an African American perspective.

Works of art from Harlem Renaissance

Painting 1: Fétiche et Fleurs By Palmer Hayden around 1932 and 1933.

Background

This painting is located at the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles. Hayden painted this picture using the medium oil on canvas. Fétiche et Fleurs is called Fetish and Flowers. This painting is an "iconic still life showing a Fang reliquary head from Gabon placed on top of Kuba raffia cloth from Central Africa"(The Museum Of African American Art). This painting best expresses the African American identity while referencing African cultural roots.Furthermore, Fétiche et Fleurs won the Rockefeller prize in the 1933 Harmon Foundation exhibit in New York. This piece was completed when Hayden returned to "New York City after living in Paris from 1927 to 1932"(The Museum Of African American Art). While Hayden was in Paris, it allowed him to reflect on how he viewed himself as an American by living "outside America"(The Museum Of African American Art). His time in Paris "gave him a chance to reflect specifically on what it meant to be African American and expanded the range of his subjects and themes with an emphasis on the narrative aspects"(The Museum Of African American Art). When he returned to America, he became an "American scene painter of the Black experience" (The Museum Of African American Art).

Artistic Analysis

Hayden's Fétiche et Fleurs is absolutely amazing! After I read the background, I immediately see how the African American identity is established with the influence of African roots. First you see this northern American home possibly an apartment from the chair placed in the background. The table is decorated with African inspired objects like the mask, cloth, and curtains. I love the symbolism shown, it comes off to me as even though African Americans migrated to the north they still remember where they came from. It is a sense of pride. Hayden predominately uses a warm palette for this piece to allow maybe a warm comforting feeling as you look at the picture. There are a few cooler shades seen to add contrast to objects to make them "pop" like the vase, ashtray, chair cushion, and glassware on the shelf in the back. There is a lot of roughness to this painting. I think it was done intentionally, rather than the painting just being old and worn. You can see bits of the canvas that the paint was not applied thick to which created this kind of ancient hazy look, in my opinion.  I love the highlighted portion of the mask so that you can see its expression and detail in the facial features. 

                                                                                                                                                                           

Painting 2: The Octoroon Girl by Archibald J. Motley Jr in the year 1925. Located in a Gallery, New York.

"I sincerely believe Negro art is some day going to contribute to our culture, our civilization". -Archibald J. Motley Jr.

                                                                         Background

The Octoroon Girl by Motley is considered one of his best portraits. The title refers to an individual who "supposedly possessed one eighth"of African American blood (Los Angles County Museum of Art). The Octoroon Girl is one of six portraits in which Motley represented women of mixed race. According to the exhibition curator, these "portraits provide viewers with opportunities to contemplate physical variances and what that might mean for social status"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). Motley’s comments that this chic, light-skinned woman was "fashionably attired and a little brazen"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). Basically in 1920s jargon, a “New Negro:" which is a "modern, sophisticated type that people encountered in neighborhoods like Chicago’s South Side or New York City’s Harlem"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). Motley’s portraits of African Americans express a sense of dignity as you can see in this painting. He also wanted to show white people " the beauty and accomplishments of African Americans, hoping this might dispel negative stereotypes and racism"(Whitney Museum of Art).

Artistic Analysis

In The Octoroon Girl, Motley portrayed an elegant young woman sitting on a sofa against a maroon background. Drawing on his academic training, Motley here creates a "perfectly balanced composition"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). The woman pictured is sitting off center while staring back at the viewer. She sits elegantly with immense detail in her jewelry and the decor of her hat showing her worth. On the wall behind her there is a gold framed painting that stands out against the wall. Motley demonstrates his "mastery of texture in his depiction of her stylish dress, hat, and leather gloves"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). Furthermore, the couch that the woman sits on show great detail in the embellishment and pattern even though it's faint, as you look it guides you to the woman. The woman's face is emotionless but her elegance and confidence shines through from her posture and body language. Her clear, "steady gaze conveys a sense of confidence, composure, and dignity"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). Her facial structure is softly highlighted and contoured to accent her bone structure and collar bone. I agree that "this woman embodies the ideals of timeless beauty and elegance"(Los Angles County Museum of Art). This painting speaks volumes to me personally. I am biracial and this is a powerful painting to me. I love how the woman sitting is portrayed with elegance and the accents of red to me in this painting shows power. For the first time I am able to see a painting that embodies me from a time period where African Americans are seen from an African American perspective. Motley "hoped that seeing themselves portrayed in art would help black people feel proud and confident in their identities" (Whitney Museum of Art). I can honestly say that this painting makes me feel prideful of myself, and my identity as not only biracial, but African American.

                                                                                                                                                                           

 

Painting 3: Into Bondage by Aaron Douglas in 1936. Located in the Corcoran Gallery of Art

Background

Into Bondage is one part of a four-part mural series in the Hall of Negro Life at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. Aaron Douglas is considered to be a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first African American artists to draw on "contemporary black culture as subject matter for his work"(Wingate). Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas of the year 1899. He attended the University of Nebraska and was the only African American student pursuing art. After teaching art in high school in Kansas City, Missouri, Douglas relocated to New York City pursuing art. Douglas’ first commissioned piece was "Alain Locke’s 1925 compilation of contemporary African American prose, The New Negro"(Wingate). His artistic intention was to "create and present fresh, modern images depicting the contributions of African Americans to the state’s history and achievements"(Wingate) . Even though this painting portrays slavery, Douglas believed that understanding the "past was essential to moving forward in the future"(Wingate). Into Bondage showcases Douglas’ unique "compositional style which includes radiating circles, silhouetted forms with few interior details, and Cubist-influenced overlapping shapes"(Wingate). His use of this "reddish orange color of the manacles and star contrasts the analogous palette of misty blues, mauves, and lavenders"(Wingate). The chained figures seem to be walking "toward two large ships that are set to transport the Africans across the Atlantic to their future of enslavement"(Wingate). While most of the men’s heads are looking down there is one silhouette said to be a woman looking up and "raises her shackled hands above the horizon line". The main figure who is seen looking up at this single star has facial features that are reminiscent "the masks of the Dan people of Africa". His "profiled head and chest and twist of the hips" demonstrate Douglas’ "predilection for ancient Egyptian art"(Wingate). Furthermore, that same man "stands on a pedestal referencing the auction block from which he will be sold"(Wingate). Aaron Douglas gave African Americans a voice and gave them pride through his artwork.

Artistic Analysis

This piece by Aaron Douglas, in my opinion, embodies what the Harlem Renaissance stood for. He made such powerful images in the form of cubism but its the symbolism and not the detail that stands out the most. This painting's detail comes from the use of concentric circles, contrasting warm and cool colors. For example, if you look at the main figure he is painted blue, but his shackles around his wrist are a mauve color making it more striking and adding emphasis that these figures are slaves. In the background you see a major color shift to this whitish-yellow hue that shows slave ships in the back further allowing the viewer to interpret these figures going into slavery. The foliage around the image represents these figures are still in Africa and being taken away. The most powerful part of this image to me is not the figure holding their hands up, or the figures whose heads are down as they go towards the slave ships, it's the figure standing looking up at the star which symbolizes "the North Star, which guided slaves on the Underground Railroad, illuminates his face and foreshadows his ultimate freedom"(Wingate). The ray of light and how it changes the color of whatever it touches showing that the figure is seeing the light, the hope of some day being free.

References:

The Art Story. “Beginnings of Harlem Renaissance Art.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/harlem-renaissance/history-and-concepts/#nav.

Wintz, Cary D. “The Harlem Renaissance: What Was It, and Why Does It Matter?” Humanities Texas, 2015, https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/harlem-renaissance-what-was-it-and-why-does-it-matter.

 

Wingate, Jennifer. "Aaron Douglas" http://visualartshowardcounty.weebly.com/uploads/7/0/6/0/7060133/aaron_douglas.pdf

Whitney Museum of Art. "Archibald J. Motley Jr., The Octoroon Girl, 1925" https://whitney.org/media/1260

Los Angles County Museum of Art. "Evenings for Educators" 2014-15. http://www.lacma.org/sites/default/files/MotleyImages.pdf

The Museum Of African American Art. "Palmer C. Hayden Collection". https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/palmer-c-hayden-collection-the-museum-of-african-american-art/iAIyxo80jfOQIw?hl=en