African American art

By: Regenia A. Perry

Source:

 Grove Art Online

African American art

African American [Afro-American; Black American] art.

Term used to describe art made by Americans of African descent. While the crafts of African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries continued largely to reflect African artistic traditions (see Africa, §VIII ), the earliest fine art made by professional African American artists was in an academic western style.

1. Before c. 1920.

The first African American artist to be documented was joshua Johnson, a portrait painter who practised in and around Baltimore, MD. Possibly a former slave in the West Indies, he executed plain, linear portraits for middle-class families (e.g. Sarah Ogden Gustin, c. 1798–1802; Washington, DC, N.G.A.). Only one of the c. 83 portraits attributed to Johnson is signed, and none is dated. There are only two African American sitters among Johnson’s attributions. Among the second generation of prominent 19th-century African American artists were the portrait-painter William E. Simpson (1818–72) of Buffalo, NY, Robert Douglass jr (1809–87) and Douglass’s cousin and pupil David Bowser (1820–1900) of Philadelphia. Douglass, none of whose works survives, started as a sign-painter and then painted portraits as a disciple of Thomas Sully. Engravings and lithographs were produced by Patrick Reason (b 1817) of New York, whose parents were from Haiti. His engravings included illustrations for publications supporting the abolition of slavery and also portraits (e.g. Granville Sharp, 1835; Washington, DC, Gal. A., Howard U.).

Julian Hudson ( fl c. 1831–44) was the earliest documented African American painter in the South. Having studied in Paris, he returned to his home town, New Orleans, where he taught art and painted portraits. Although his quarter-length figures were rigidly conventional, Hudson was a skilful painter of faces. His Self-portrait (1839; New Orleans, LA State Mus.) is the earliest surviving self-portrait by an African American artist. Jules Lion (1810–66) also studied and practised in Paris prior to returning to New Orleans, where he produced paintings and lithographs. He was also credited with introducing the daguerreotype to the city, where he was one of the earliest professional photographers.

Throughout the 19th century African American artists in Louisiana apparently did not experience as much professional discrimination as their peers in other areas of the USA. However, even in Louisiana there are few examples of work commissioned by African Americans at this time. The Melrose Plantation House, built c. 1833 for the mulatto Metoyer family in Melrose, near Natchitoches, LA, is the only surviving plantation manor house built by an African American family in the southern states. It contained portraits of members of the family, probably executed by an unknown mulatto painter before 1830. The brick and timber African House, an out-house used in part as a prison for the control of slaves in the plantation at Melrose, was remarkable for the width and height of its roof: it was probably constructed during the early 19th century by African-born slaves owned by the Metoyer family.

Another artist from New Orleans, Eugene Warbourg (1826–59), was among the leading black sculptors of the 19th century. He worked in Rome, developing a Neo-classical style, as did Mary Edmonia Lewis, who trained in Boston before becoming the first professional African American sculptor, producing such works as Death of Cleopatra .

The most important African American landscape painters of the 19th century were robert s. Duncanson, Edward Mitchell Bannister and Grafton Tyler Brown (1841–1918). Duncanson, who worked in Cincinnati and Detroit, was the earliest professional African American landscape painter. He studied in Glasgow and travelled extensively in Italy, France and England, as well as in Minnesota, Vermont and Canada. He was the first African American artist to receive international recognition. Although Duncanson painted portraits and still-lifes, he is best known as a Romantic realist landscape painter in the Hudson River school tradition. His largest commission came in 1848, when he painted eight large landscape panels and four over-door compositions in the main entrance hall of Nicholas Longworth’s mansion, Belmont (now the Taft Museum), in Cincinnati.

Bannister was the leading painter in Providence, RI, during the 1870s and 1880s. Born in Nova Scotia, he started by making solar prints and attended an evening drawing class in Boston. He is reported to have taken up painting in reaction to a newspaper statement in 1867 that blacks could appreciate art but not produce it. He was a moderately talented painter of poetic landscapes (e.g. Landscape, c. 1870–75; Providence, RI Sch. Des., Mus. A.), influenced by Alexander Helwig Wyant and the Hudson River school. He was the earliest African American artist to receive a national award when he received a gold medal for Under the Oaks (untraced) at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. He was also one of the seven founder-members in 1873 of the Providence Art Club, which became the nucleus of the Rhode Island School of Design. He was the only prominent African American artist of the 19th century not to travel or study in Europe.

Brown was the earliest documented professional African American artist in California. He was first employed in San Francisco as a draughtsman and lithographer, also printing street maps and stock certificates, before turning to landscape painting. His most productive years were during the 1880s, when he painted many Canadian landscapes and scenes of the American north-west. He also lived in Portland, OR, and Washington. After 1891 Brown apparently ceased painting and in 1892 moved to St Paul, MN, where he worked as a draughtsman.

The most distinguished African American artist who worked in the 19th century was henry ossawa Tanner. His early paintings of the 1890s included African American genre subjects and reflect the realist tradition of Thomas Eakins under whom Tanner studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. From 1903 he painted religious subjects, portraits and landscapes, primarily in subdued blues and greens. Like the majority of prominent 19th-century African American artists, Tanner went to Europe for further training and to escape racial and professional discrimination: he lived in Paris during most of his career and developed a painterly style influenced by Symbolism. He held his first one-man exhibition of religious paintings, however, at the American Art Galleries in New York in 1908, and in 1909 he became the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Design.

In 1907 the Tercentennial Exposition in Jamestown, VA, included among the pavilions a ‘Negro Building’: its exhibits focused primarily on African American crafts, carpentry and inventions. Although there were 484 paintings and drawings, no works by prominent African American painters were included. The most important African American artist to be included in the Jamestown exhibition was the sculptor Meta Vaux Fuller, who had studied in Paris, where she had gained the approval of Rodin: she exhibited a series of dioramas depicting various aspects of black life in America. Other contemporary exhibitions, however, such as that of the Eight (see Eight, the (ii) ) in 1908 and the Armory Show in 1913, both held in New York, had little initial stylistic impact on African American art.

2. c 1920–c 1960.

The most significant African American stylistic and aesthetic movement of the early 20th century was the Harlem Renaissance or ‘New Negro’ movement of the 1920s. The Harlem district of New York became, during the decade, the ‘cultural capital of black America’. The ensuing Harlem Renaissance drew upon the community’s African heritage and was the earliest race-conscious cultural movement by African Americans. Primarily political and literary, the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance was most eloquently expressed by Alain Locke in his book The New Negro (New York, 1925). The earliest African American painter consciously to incorporate African imagery in his work was Aaron Douglas, a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance and later. Other significant artists who contributed to the movement included Meta Vaux Fuller, Palmer Hayden (1890–1964), who painted satirical images of life in Harlem, William E. Scott (1884–1964) and Malvin Gray Johnson (1896–1934). The most important African American photographer of that period was James Van Der Zee, who photographed people and scenes in Harlem for more than 50 years and also served as the official photographer for the Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey during his frequent parades and rallies in Harlem.

The artists of the Harlem Renaissance received a great stimulus from the exhibitions of the Harmon Foundation. This was founded in New York in 1922 by William E. Harmon, a white Ohio-born philanthropist and real estate developer, and in 1926 it began promoting African American artistic talents and offering awards in the fine arts. The foundation’s first Exhibit of Fine Arts Productions of American Negro Artists opened at International House in New York in January 1928. Following the success of the pilot exhibition, the foundation mounted additional shows at International House in 1929 and 1930. In 1931 it moved the location of its exhibitions to the galleries of the Art Center in E. 56th Street in New York. During the early years of the foundation’s operation, annual travelling exhibitions were organized that introduced African American art to broad audiences for the first time. The exhibitions included artists working in traditional western, naive and modernist styles. Although some critics felt that the foundation’s jurors were not critical enough in their selection procedures, the Harmon Foundation’s awards, exhibitions and exhibition catalogues continued to promote African American art until 1966, when it closed. Its files, which formed the most comprehensive single body of materials relating specifically to African American art during the first half of the 20th century, were placed in the Library of Congress and the National Archives in Washington, DC. The large art collection that the foundation amassed was divided between the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, DC, Fisk University in Nashville, TN, and the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, VA.

The Stock Market crash of 1929 brought the golden era of the Harlem Renaissance to an end and plunged the USA into the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Depression paralysed the nation’s economy, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal Art Project (1935–43), a division of the Works Progress Administration (see United states of america, §VI ), which provided employment for many African American artists. The early school of African American muralists reached its apogee during the 1930s, and numerous murals by African American artists were commissioned to decorate schools, hospitals, banks, post offices and other public buildings.

These murals ranged greatly in style: such artists as Charles White (1918–79) and Hale Woodruff executed historical murals that showed the influence of Mexican social realism, for example the Amistad murals (1939) by Woodruff in the Slavery Library in Tallageda College, Tallageda, AL, which depicted a slave mutiny in 1839. Other artists produced mural work in a primitivist style, for example Aaron Douglas, whose murals of African life included elongated, angular figures with stylized features, and Charles Alston (?1907–78), a painter and sculptor. Alston painted mural panels (1937) in the Harlem Hospital, New York, depicting tribal African and modern scientific medicine in a style also characterized by expressively distorted figures. Some murals had themes that were not specific to African Americans, for example the mural panel by Archibald J. Motley (1891–1980) entitled United States Mail (1936) in the post office in Wood River, IL. Motley also made easel paintings of scenes from African, American and even Parisian life, employing both a naive and a highly naturalistic style. Murals were also produced by such artists as the painter William E. Scott (1884–1964) and the sculptors Sargent Johnson (1887–1967) and Richmond Barthe (1901–89), who carved reliefs with highly formalized figures. Barthe was also an accomplished painter and figure-sculptor of black subjects (e.g. Blackberry Woman, 1932; New York, Whitney), as well as executing portraits of theatrical characters. The sculpture of Sargent Johnson was characterized by ingenuous figure studies in various materials such as porcelain, terracotta and lacquered wood (e.g. Forever Free, 1936; San Francisco, CA, MOMA).

The most important national commission received by an African American artist during the 1930s went to the sculptor Augusta Savage, who created a large sculpture, The Harp (later called Lift Every Voice and Sing; painted plaster, h. 4.87 m) for the Negro Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair of 1939. It was intended to represent African American music and consisted of a receding line of singing figures arranged in the shape of a harp. The sculpture, cast in plaster and gilded to resemble bronze, never received permanent casting and was destroyed following the fair’s closing (see Dover, pl. 72). Selma Burke was another important African American female sculptor whose career blossomed during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1935 she received a Roosevelt Foundation Fellowship, and in 1943 she participated in a competition sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission of the District of Columbia to depict a bust of President Roosevelt. The bust, which was completed and unveiled in 1945, was adapted in 1946 for use on the American dime coin.

During and immediately after World War II, there arose to prominence a new school of African American artists, many of whom were the so-called ‘children of the Harlem Renaissance’. Such artists as Selma Burke, Charles White and William H. Johnson, who had attracted attention before the war, continued their achievements, for example in the social realism of the Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy (1953) in the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Johnson, who was influenced by Chaïm Soutine, worked in France, Denmark and Norway before returning to the USA in 1938. He painted Expressionist works and naive images of black life in the USA (e.g. Going to Church , c. 1940–44). Over 1000 of his works were in the collection of the Harmon Foundation when it closed. The art of African Americans was encouraged by the exhibition of the Art of the American Negro, 1851–1940, assembled by Alonso Aden with assistance from the Harmon Foundation and the Works Progress Administration, at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940. Among the artists exhibited was Jacob Lawrence (b 1917), who painted highly coloured naive images of black life and history, eschewing perspective (e.g. the 60 gouache panels of the Migration of the Negro Northwards, 1941; Washington, DC, Phillips Col. and New York, MOMA). Other prominent African American artists of this time were Elmer Simms Campbell, who contributed illustrations for such periodicals as Esquire, and the painters Romare Bearden (1912–88), Eldzier Cortor (b 1915), Frederick Flemister and Horace Pippin (1888–1947), whose paintings included depictions of figures from the history of black emancipation. Significant figure-sculpture was made by Elizabeth Catlett (b 1915) and William Artis (1914–77); the latter was a pupil of Augusta Savage and produced highly naturalistic portrait busts.

During the 1950s African American art was dominated by two stylistic trends: Abstract Expressionism and realism. Some artists developed an abstract style that was related to contemporary Abstract Expressionism but also was motivated by a belated interest in Cubism, most noticeable in the works of Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff and James Wells (b 1902). This contrasted with the realistic styles championed by Sargent Johnson and William Artis and heralded a new direction in African American art.

3. c 1960 and after.

In the 1960s and 1970s new classifications appeared in African American art based on continuing developments in abstract art and the rise of the figurative style known as Black Expressionism. A new generation of artists came to prominence, influenced by such developments as Abstract Expressionism, colour field painting and hard-edge painting. These artists produced large, colourful, non-representational art that was not racially identifiable: such work was more successful commercially and more likely to be included in museums, exhibitions and galleries than that of the Black Expressionists. The most prominent African American abstract painter was Sam Gilliam, based in Washington, DC, whose colour field painting employed folded, draped and hanging canvases as well as other forms of support (e.g. Abstraction, acrylic on aluminium-treated paper, 1969; Washington, DC, Evans-Tibbs Col., see 1989 exh. cat., p. 94).

The leading African American abstract sculptor was Richard Hunt from Chicago: in his youth he worked under Julio González, after which he went on to produce elegant welded and cast metal sculpture that included figurative and organic elements. A variety of other abstract styles also appeared in the work of such sculptors as Barbara Chase-Riboud (b 1936), Martin Puryear (b 1941), Daniel Johnson (b 1938), Juan Logan (b 1946) and Fred Eversley (b 1941). Chase–Riboud produced expressive, distorted sculptures, using various media (e.g. Monument III, bronze and silk, 2134×914×152 mm, 1970; New York, Betty Parsons Gal.). Logan’s sculpture, however, was concerned with the formal qualities of geometric shapes and the use of industrial materials (e.g. Traditional Trap, galvanized steel, 2.16×1.02×2.35 m, 1972; artist’s col., see 1974 exh. cat., fig. 57), while Eversley’s work aimed at producing complex optical effects (e.g. Untitled, polyester, 1970; New York, Whitney).

The 1960s and 1970s were also marked by fertile associations between the older and younger generations of abstract painters, such as the Spiral group, founded in New York in 1963 by Hale Woodruff, Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis (b 1909), which attracted such younger artists as Richard Mayhew (b 1934). Mayhew, who was also a jazz singer, expressed his love of music in lyrical, colourful abstractions (e.g. Vibrato, 1974; Washington, DC, Evans-Tibbs Col., see 1989 exh. cat., p. 86). Varying degrees of abstraction characterized the paintings of such artists as Norma Morgan (b 1928), Alvin Loving (b 1935), Bill Hutson (b 1936), William T. Williams (b 1942) and Robert Reid (b 1924). The development of innovative effects of colour and space also affected Robert Thompson (1937–66), who reinterpreted Renaissance themes with flat figures, colours influenced by Fauvism and rich impasto painting techniques (e.g. Music Lesson, 1962; Washington, DC, Evans-Tibbs Col., see 1989 exh. cat., p. 92).

Black Expressionism was a movement that grew out of the political unrest of the 1960s, in particular the struggle for civil rights. It also grew from the outrage of African American artists at the professional discrimination that they faced. As a result, many black artists began producing political art directed primarily towards black audiences. Black Expressionist art was always figurative and often employed bright colours, such as the black, red and green of the Black Nationalists’ flag: the works frequently bore slogans and extolled the virtues of black Africa. The racial pride and political radicalism of this art led to regular depictions of such subjects as Angela Davis, the Black Panther Party (e.g. Eliot Knight’s mural Panther Tribute, 10.97×7.32 m, early 1970s; Roxbury, MA, Warren Street, destr., see 1980 exh. cat., p. 10), Muhammad Ali and anti-Vietnam War slogans. The American flag was a constantly recurring motif and often appeared blood-spattered as a noose around the neck of a lynched black male or with yellow instead of white stripes to indicate the cowardice of the white American political structure.

Among the artists associated with Black Expressionism there was, however, a multiplicity of subjects, styles and techniques, ranging from the threatening images created by Dana Chandler (b 1941) even from such subjects as a domestic still-life, to the work of Faith Ringold (b 1934), who depicted ritualistic African subjects in so-called ‘soft sculpture’, while a preoccupation with unorthodox media is apparent in the collage paintings of Benny Andrews (b 1930), which contain real pieces of clothing. Other artists representative of the diversity of Black Expressionism included Charles Searles (b 1937), (1937–2004), Murry DePillars (b 1939), David Hammonds (b 1943), Joe Overstreet (b 1934), Melvin Edwards (b 1939), John Riddle (b 1933), Malcolm Bailey (b 1947), Gary Rickson (b 1942), Phillip Mason (b 1942) and Vincent Smith (b 1929). Black Expressionism also influenced older artists such as Romare Bearden, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence and John Biggers (b 1925).

One of the most important movements to develop out of Black Expressionism was the Black Neighborhood Mural Movement, which originated in Chicago during the early 1960s. Motivated partly by the fact that African Americans were not primarily museum-oriented and by the belief that American museums had few relevant programmes for African Americans, numerous artists transformed drab walls in run-down, predominantly black neighbourhoods with brilliant, glowing murals incorporating subject-matter with which almost every African American could identify. These served to instil black pride and a sense of heritage and racial identity. Chicago produced the largest number of murals, followed by Detroit; Boston; San Francisco; Washington, DC; Atlanta and New Orleans. The most famous were the Wall of Respect and Community as One in Chicago (1967; see 1989–91 exh. cat., p. 28) and the Wall of Dignity in Detroit, completed during the early 1960s: both were lost when the buildings on which they were painted were demolished.

The Wall of Respect and Community as One, which took as its general theme black heroes, was executed by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). This included Barbara Jones-Hogu (b 1938) and Jeff Donaldson (1932-2004). They were among a splinter group in Chicago which, after the mural was completed, formed the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCobra), ‘bad’ meaning ‘good’ in African American slang. AfriCobra artists employed fluorescent colours such as strawberry pink, ‘hot’ orange, lime green and grape purple in their highly rhythmic message-emblazoned art, which, they declared, was produced exclusively for African American audiences. They produced a series of high-quality screenprints that were originally sold very inexpensively to promote the doctrine of ‘black art for every black home in America’ (e.g. Unite by Barbara Jones-Hogu, 1969).

Another important group that developed in the 1960s was Weusi Nyumba Ya Sanaa (Swahili: Black House of Art) in Harlem. Founded in 1965, it established an academy and a gallery (1967–78). The Weusi artists incorporated some aspects of African iconography in all of their art: many members abandoned their former ‘slave’ names, officially adopting African names and converting to African religions. Weusi’s spokesman was Ademola Olugebefola (b 1941), who used traditional African materials such as cowrie shells to create ritualistic images.

Following such reforms as the Public Accommodations Act of 1964, which made racial discrimination in public places illegal, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enforced African Americans’ right to vote, there was an increasingly heavy reliance on West African and sometimes Egyptian themes as the militancy of Black Expressionism gradually diminished. The Weusi and AfriCobra collaborations continued, however, to produce colourful, message-bearing art for African American audiences. In 1987 AfriCobra experienced its first cross-cultural exposure when it was invited to exhibit with Groupe Fromagé in Martinique at the 16th annual Sermac festival of the arts and culture. AfriCobra and Groupe Fromagé shared a similar philosophy and an aesthetic based on African, African American and Caribbean forms.

Such artists as Sam Gilliam and Richard Hunt continued meanwhile to explore abstract art, both completing a number of large-scale public commissions. Gilliam’s paintings of the 1980s and early 1990s frequently employed metal, fabric and paint in dramatic impasto techniques, as well as using more conventional techniques such as acrylic and screenprinting (e.g. In Celebration , 1987). Martin Puryear emerged during the 1980s as a leading African American abstract sculptor, working primarily in wood in a post-Minimalist style and frequently incorporating such materials as rope, leather and hide. During the late 1970s and early 1980s Puryear created a number of public projects and wall pieces that were ring-shaped or reflected biomorphic forms and organic materials.

In the 1980s African American art was the subject of a number of pioneering exhibitions. In particular, in 1982 the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, mounted the first major travelling exhibition of African American folk or self-taught artists. The artists, the majority of whom were born and still lived in the southern states of the USA, were frequently elderly when their careers began, following retirement or a work-related injury. Many were self-styled religious ministers, prophets and missionaries. As well as referring to childhood experiences they frequently used bird, animal and reptilian imagery: they also often represented figures associated with emancipation and civil rights, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Such artists displayed an amazing ingenuity for converting objets trouvés and discarded materials, including costume jewellery, bones, bottle caps, chewing gum, foam packing, sawdust, mud, tree trunks, branches and Mardi Gras beads, into unique artefacts. The influence of traditional African culture on African American art was explored in an exhibition organized in 1989 by the Dallas Museum of Art. Black Art—Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art was the first major exhibition to bring together the works of African, Caribbean and African American academic and folk artists.