SESSION FIVE
Embedded Files
"Art has long been a tool of expression and documentation in times of revolt, protest, and upheaval. Whether during periods of revolution, war, or social change, artists have always strived to capture the spirit of the moment" (8 Artworks of the Civil Rights Movement that Exemplify the Struggle for Equal Rights by Arnesia Young, My Modern Met, February 15, 2021)
STUDY QUESTIONS
Of the "8 Artworks of the Civil Rights Movement that Exemplify the Struggle for Equal Rights" (below) choose the one which you think is most representative of the Civil Rights Movement. Why?
How powerful were the responses of these individual artists in 'Painting Black Power" (Dana Chandler, Elizabeth Catlett, Philip Lindsay Mason, Archibald Motley) as tools of "expression and documentation"? How do these responses differ ?
PAINTING 'BLACK POWER' (1963 - 1972)
PAINTING 'BLACK POWER' (1963 - 1972)
An excerpt from 'The art of Black Power then and now, in 'Soul of a Nation' by Queen Esther, Brooklyn Based, September 19, 2018, Updated Sept. 10, 2018 at 6:24am
"In 1966, Stokely Carmichael (now Kwame Ture), the national chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a staunch adherent of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolent philosophy, coined the phrase Black Power after an especially harrowing student march that ended in Greenwood, Mississippi. Although both black and white conservatives and moderates were shocked by the Howard University undergrad’s subversive speech—Dr. King called it “an unfortunate choice of words—to some, it made a lot of sense. The laws that federal, state and local governments diligently crafted to deprive African captives of their basic human rights were expanded and strengthened during Reconstruction and solidified in later decades to more thoroughly disenfranchise all people of color from every aspect of society. They did this while turning a blind eye to the millions of African-American men, women and children who were terrorized, lynched, murdered, raped, unjustly incarcerated and driven from their homes.
In his 1968 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Mr. Ture defines Black Power as “a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community—it is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.” His ideas echoed that of pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, a proponent of black self-reliance. Impatient for immediate change in the wake of sweeping civil rights advances as injustice and institutionalized racism flourished, a younger generation embraced this phrase. It also took flight internationally with African revolutionaries and the separatist movement that ignited the African diaspora in the early 20th century was reborn. Black self-reliance was a key element that allowed for survival within an inherently racist system and literally, to paraphrase some old Southern black folk I know, made a way out of no way."
PAINTING 'BLACK POWER', cont.
Powerful Artworks in the Struggle for Civil Rights
Powerful Artworks in the Struggle for Civil Rights
8 Artworks of the Civil Rights Movement that Exemplify the Struggle for Equal Rights" by Arnesia Young, My Modern Met, February 15, 2021
8 Artworks of the Civil Rights Movement that Exemplify the Struggle for Equal Rights" by Arnesia Young, My Modern Met, February 15, 2021
# 1. Jacob Lawrence, Bar and Grill (1941)
"Jacob Lawrence painted this scene after a visit to New Orleans in 1941. Though he had been told stories of the South and even depicted them in the numerous canvases of his Migration series, this was the first time he had been faced head-on with the realities of the heightened racism and Jim Crow laws of the South. His mother was from Virginia and his father from South Carolina, but he had never experienced life in the South firsthand—having grown up mainly in the New York neighborhood of Harlem."
#2. David Driskell, Behold Thy Son, 1956
"David C. Driskell had just moved to the South only weeks after the infamous lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Knowing the power of art to “stir the consciousness of a people,” he painted Behold thy Son in response to that horrifying event. Drawing on religious iconography and symbols from paintings of the crucifixion of Christ and the Pieta, Driskell evokes themes of innocent sacrifice in his emotional and jarring work.
# 3.Charles Henry Alston, Walking, 1958
"Alston was inspired by the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to paint his striking abstract scene entitled Walking. Rather than painting one of the more well-known figures of the movement—such as Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr.—he chose to focus his scene on the nondescript forms of women and children who walked to work and school day after day in protest of the segregated city buses. It was these boycotters themselves who comprised the backbone of the movement, though they are often overlooked in favor of more prominent activists and leaders.
This scene also serves to elicit the electrifying spirit of the marches for equality and justice that defined the Civil Rights Movement."
# 4."Norman Lewis, Evening Rendezvous, 1962
'In addition to the enactment of Jim Crow laws that barred them access to many basic civil rights, African Americans and other minorities were also menaced by the threat of attacks from white supremacist groups. In this almost abstract depiction with flamelike swirls of red and blue infiltrating masses of gray gloom and tiny jagged figures of white, Lewis alludes to the ominous nighttime meetings of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The mingling of red, white, and blue call to mind the American flag, which was often flown at such gatherings—using the façade of patriotism to justify their hatred and attacks.
Lewis transitioned more towards abstract art throughout his career and believed that “esthetic ideas should have preference” over political or social concerns. However, as evidenced in Evening Rendezvous, his disquiet at the problems of his day and the African American struggle for civil rights often inspired his work."
# 5. Untitled (Birmingham, Alabama), 1964, Andy Warhol.
"Andy Warhol was known to blur the line between art and mass media. In the 1960s, he began to create a variety of prints based on images from popular media such as news sources and magazines, which he would then alter and display as art. This image in particular is based on a photograph taken by Charles Moore of a man being attacked by dogs under the command of the police, who were seeking to break up a series of protests against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The police efforts quickly turned violent, and the images captured of the fallout became iconic."
# 6.Sam Gilliam, April 4 (1969)
'Using a variety of staining techniques to achieve abstract compositions with no figurative point of reference, Sam Gilliam began using diluted acrylics to create paintings like this one in the late 60s. Without its title, the viewer has no parameters to operate within when interpreting the imagery and visual experience the painting provides. The artist entitled this abstract work "April 4"—the day when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.'
# 7. Barbara Jones - Hogu, Unite (1971)
'The late 1960s and the onset of the 70s saw the rise of the Black Power movement—a somewhat more radical offshoot of the Civil Rights movement that sought to encourage pride in Black American’s African heritage and reject the norms of conformity to white cultural standards. In this graphic print, two of the more well-known symbols of the movement are evident—their raised fists in the Black Power salute and their hair styled in afros. The bold message to “unite” is printed in bright contrasting colors in the background, in an attempt to encourage the unified efforts necessary to bring about change.
Barbara Jones-Hogu—the artist who created this piece—was a founding member of a collective of artists who sought to visually represent and bring attention to the ideals of the Black Power movement. This artist collective was known as AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists).'
# 8. Jacob Lawrence, The 1920s....The Migrants Cast Their Ballots (1974)
'Jacob Lawrence created this print to submit as part of a portfolio of art commissioned in celebration of the American Bicentennial. Artists were asked to respond to the question, “What does independence mean to you?” Of his own contribution, Lawrence said, “Among the many advantages the migrants found in the north was the freedom to vote. In my print, migrants are represented exercising that freedom.” '
ARTISTS OF NOTE : DANA CHANDLER, ELIZABETH CATLETT , PHILIP LINDSAY MASON and ARCHIBALD MOTLEY
# 1. ARTIST OF NOTE - DANA CHANDLER (b. 1941, born in Lynn, MA), also known as "Akin Duro"
Dana Chandler (“Akin Duro”) is an artist and educator best known for his protest works of the 1960s-1980s. As a young activist in the 1950s racial integration movement, he worked with the NAACP, the organization formerly known as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the New England Federation of Temple Youth. His activist art was later born from witnessing the police brutality and riots in Boston in 1967. By 1970, he was a nationally recognized political activist, artist, and lecturer and was named the Boston NAACP’s Man of the Year.
From 1971 until his retirement in 2004, Professor Chandler served on the faculty at Simmons College where he transformed the college’s art program by integrating Afrocentrism into the curriculum. In 1974, Chandler became Northeastern University’s first African American artist in residence and was honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1978, he founded the African American Master Artist in Residence Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
(From MassArt - the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Press Release, Boston, MA, October 31, 2018)
DANA CHANDLER
OPTIONAL LISTENING Black Power in Print: Dana Chandler in Boston, MFA Program Calendar, Program Events, Thursday, October 28, 2021, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm (a recording via YouTube)
Black Power in Print: Dana Chandler in Boston, Jan 10, 2022, YouTube, (1 hour)
In this online, public conversation, artist and activist Dana Chandler—who rallied the MFA to support work by Black artists in 1970—speaks with former Boston-area Black Panther Party captain Doug Miranda, and Northeastern University professor Margaret A. Burnham about his Black liberation activist history and the power of visual art within movements for social change.
This virtual event was presented in conjunction with the MFA's digital archive project "Black Power in Print": https://www.mfa.org/beyond-the-galler...
DANA CHANDLER,cont.
MFA Acquires Major Work Artist Dana Chandler Created After Black Panther Fred Hampton's Assassination by Andrea Shea, Local Coverage, wbur, April 07, 2021.
Click on the image on the right to find out more about the history of this work by Dana Chandler.
An excerpt:
"Chandler created the piece in 1974 as a statement. It's a bullet-ridden door with frame painted in the symbolic green and red of the Pan-African Flag that represents solidarity among people of African decent. The artist splattered more red paint across his wooden canvas that looks like blood. He also added a pale blue seal to the door's top right corner with four white stars and the words “U.S. Approved.”
The artist's first version of "Fred Hampton's Door" was a small-scale printing. A 1970 issue of Time Magazine featured Chandler and the painting, after which it was stolen in Spokane, Washington State from "Expo 74." Liz Munsell, curator of contemporary art at the MFA, said the second iteration was Chandler's way of making the image much harder to lift."
Dana Chandler's "Fred Hampton's Door, 2", 1975, in "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power" at New York's Brooklyn Museum.
DANA CHANDLER, cont.
'At the MFA, a door opens to the history of Black art in Boston' by Murray Whyte, Globe Staff, Boston Globe, September 2, 2021.
A self-portrait of Dana Chandler in his Boston studio in 1976.
Click this article to learn more about the life of Dana Chandler.
An excerpt:
"As a child, Dana Chandler Jr. would trek the two blocks from his home in Roxbury to the imposing granite hulk of the Museum of Fine Arts with its towering neoclassical columns and grand staircase.
Seventy years later, what he remembers with crystal clarity, along with the European masterworks, is being followed closely by museum guards, eyeing him as he drank in what the museum had to offer. “They were watching me, this little Black kid, walking around on my own,” Chandler said. “So I went up to them, and I told them: ‘I’m going to show my work in this museum someday.’”
5 Att the MFA, a door opens to the history of Black art in Boston - The Boston Globe.pdfDANA CHANDLER, cont.
"How Dana Chandler Brought Black Power to Boston Art, Murals and Museums", WONDERLAND, Jan. 21, 2019.
"A Proposal to Eradicate Institutional Racism at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Submitted by Dana C. Chandler, Jr., Black Artist, Boston, 1/15/70"
Dana Chandler’s 1970 “A Proposal to Eradicate Institutional Racism at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”
Chandler repeatedly challenged the de facto White-artists-only segregation of Boston area museums—calling on Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts to feature Black artists. “The Museum of Fine Arts was right across the street from the Black community and didn’t show Black art until the 1970s,” Chandler says.
In January 1970, Chandler arrived at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts with a letter addressed to museum director Perry T. Rathbone and the board of directors: “A Proposal to Eradicate Institutional Racism at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
OPTIONAL READ Click this link to read the full text of Dana Chandler's letter to the MFA. : https://collections.mfa.org/pdf/D-CCM475.pdf
OPTIONAL READ DANA CHANDLER, cont.
"How Dana Chandler Brought Black Power to Boston Art, Murals and Museums", WONDERLAND, Jan. 21, 2019, cont.
An excerpt:
"Black Revolutionary Change
Dana Chandler Jr. was at the African American artistic vanguard as the Civil Rights movement shifted to Black Power. “Black Power was coming out of an urgency, out of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965,” says Ashley James, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, who oversaw the presentation of “Soul of a Nation” there. It was coming out of the shooting of James Meredith, the first black man to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1962, during the second day of his “March Against Fear” from Memphis to Jackson in June 1966. It was coming out of frustration over the Voting Rights Act being passed in 1965, but Black folks still prevented from voting. “There was a sense of a real disenchantment with nonviolence and legal means of achieving equality."
"Here, Dana Chandler is photographed in his studio for the postcard for his “The more things change, the more things remain the same, Let My People Go!” retrospective at Massachusetts College of Art, Feb. 23 to March 20, 1987.
Above on the left on the postcard is his painting “The Beast,” 1967-68, and on the right is “The Beast Revisited-Forsyth County, Georgia,” 1987."
Dana Chandler, "Leroi James Arrested," late 1960s/early 70's " (Collection of the National Center Afro-American Artists, Boston)
“Dana comes into his own in a moment when artists are being called upon, if you’re plugged into the vibe, to take a role in the social struggle,” Gaither says. “Dana participates in this new and stronger direction in which visual artists are being called to engage in art that is involved in Black revolutionary change.”
Dana Chandler’s “Devil’s Children: The Rise of Right Wing AmeriKKKlan Nazis,” c. 1970 (Collection of the National Center of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston)
OPTIONAL READ DANA CHANDLER, cont.
How Dana Chandler Brought Black Power to Boston Art, Murals and Museums", WONDERLAND, Jan. 21, 2019, cont.
The African American Master Artists in Residence Program.
Click on the image on the right to learn more about Dana Chandler's leadership role in the artist community.
An excerpt:
“Dana was certainly a catalytic personality in the Black art scene,” Gaither says. “He stood at the head of an activist element of the artist community, especially from the late ‘60s into the ‘80s. … He was never one to mince his words or retreat from confrontation. In fact, I think he liked that much more than others in the art community. So he was always making a way, making a space that others could consolidate. I think he also thought a lot about artists as a community (that isn’t to suggest he hasn’t always had a great affection for himself, he has a good ego) that is expressed more than anything else in how he forged AAMARP. He could have shaped that only as a personal opportunity. … But he chose to make that a bigger thing.”
Members of the African American Master Artists in Residence Program and friends gather at a celebration of founder Dana Chandler (seated in black shirt), Nov. 3, 2018.
# 2. ARTIST OF NOTE - ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915 - 2012, born in Washington, D.C.)
Elizabeth Catlett, 1986 (photograph by Fran Logan)
“Art is only important to the extent that it aids in the liberation of our people.”
― Elizabeth Catlett, Traditions And Transformations: Contemporary Afro American Sculpture: The Bronx Museum Of The Arts, February 21 May 27, 1989
“No other field is closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.”
― Elizabeth Catlett, Women Artists Of Color: A Bio Critical Sourcebook To 20th Century Artists In The Americas
ELIZABETH CATLETT
"A realist who monumentalized ordinary people"
"A realist who monumentalized ordinary people"
Elizabeth Catlett’s prints and sculptures of Black Americans living their lives are the subject of a new Worcester show
Elizabeth Catlett’s prints and sculptures of Black Americans living their lives are the subject of a new Worcester show
By Cate McQuaid Globe Correspondent,Updated November 10, 2021, 2:00 p.m.
"These Two Generations," part of "The Art of Elizabeth Catlett from the Collection of Samella Lewis" at Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery
These Two Generations," part of "The Art of Elizabeth Catlett from the Collection of Samella Lewis" at Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery
Click on the image on the right to learn about Elizabeth Catlett.
A beginning excerpt:
In the mid-1940s, as Jackson Pollock flung paint onto a canvas, Elizabeth Catlett set out to create a series of prints, “The Negro Woman,” later renamed “The Black Woman.”
Like many Black artists when abstraction was the coin of the realm, Catlett, who died in 2012 at 96, was a realist who portrayed the untold stories of Black Americans.
A realist who monumentalized ordinary people - The Boston Globe.pdfELIZABETH CATLETT
Elizabeth Catlett (1915- 2012) by Melanie Herzog, Professor of Art History at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin
Click on the image on the right to read about the life of Elizabeth Catlett.
An excerpt:
'One of the most important American artists of the past century, Elizabeth Catlett is honored as a foremother by subsequent generations. In the United States and in Mexico, where she resided for over sixty years, she produced an unparalleled body of politically charged and aesthetically compelling graphic and sculptural images that were grounded in what she regarded as the historically based necessity to render visible that which had not been the subject of art. She followed the advice of Grant Wood, her graduate school mentor, that she “take as her subject what she knew best” as she dedicated herself to making art primarily for African American – and later Mexican – audiences, determined to give voice to the enduring dignity, strength, and achievements of black women and other oppressed peoples.'
Elizabeth Catlett, "Sharecropper", 1952)
“Because I am a woman and know how a woman feels in body and mind, I sculpt, draw, and print women, generally black women.”
—Elizabeth Catlett, 2005
ELIZABETH CATLETT, cont.
American painter and sculptor, Elizabeth Catlett
From "Archives of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions", Paris
"Excluded from Carnegie-Mellon University because of the colour of her skin, Elizabeth Catlett later attended Dunbar High School in Washington, where she studied with Lois Mailou Jones and then in the University of Iowa with Grant Wood, an expert on rural America. Her sculpture Mother and Child (1939), created for her final-year thesis, earned her first prize at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940. The visual power and clear ethnic heritage of this mother embracing her child was met with great success. After moving to New York with her husband Charles White – a major figure in the social realism movement – E. Catlett was introduced to cubism by sculptor Ossip Zadkine. At the same time, she took part in the activities of the Harlem Artists’ Guild, as well as the Harlem Community Art Center. In 1946, she created The Negro Woman, a series of lithographs which included I Helped Hundreds to Freedom, a representation of the “black people’s Moses”, Harriet Tubman, powerfully leading slaves to freedom. These lithographs inaugurated a whole series of works paying tribute to the courage and beauty of African American women.
In 1947, E. Catlett moved to Mexico with her second husband, artist Francisco Mora and studied alongside major figures of Mexican sculpture, Francisco Zúñiga and Jose L. Ruiz, whose struggle to create art in the service of the people deeply inspired her. Despite her expat status, she remained heavily involved in the civil rights and Black Power movements. The latter even used one of her most famous works as one of its emblems: Malcolm X Speaks for Us (1969). The first woman to be named head of the sculpture department of the University of Mexico, in 1959, she won numerous awards, such as the Tlatilco at the first biennial of sculpture held in Mexico City in 1962. Criticized by the US Embassy in Mexico City, which has a negative view of her relations with members of the Communist and Socialist Party, she abandons American citizenship to become a Mexican citizen, and she is declared undesirable in the United States. Nicknamed the “Mother of the Black Art Movement”, she obtained a special visa authorizing her to return to the United States, for a retrospective of her work organised by the Studio Museum in Harlem."
ELIZABETH CATLETT, cont.
Hunter Museum of American Art, Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012), "Singing Head' circa 1980. Bronze, edition of 9, recast from original sculpture cast in 1960.
"Artist, teacher, and social activist Elizabeth Catlett was best known for her work in printmaking and sculpture. Many of her works feature female faces. To Catlett, the face was “key to both racial identity and the inner essence of humanity.” This sculpture of a female head lifted in song reflects Catlett’s exploration of black heritage, as well as the role of women leaders in the community."
(above) Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012), "Singing Head' circa 1980. Bronze, edition of 9, recast from original sculpture cast in 1960.
ELIZABETH CATLETT, cont.
Elizabeth Catlett, 'Black Unity", 1968, An Other, July 11, 2017.
An excerpt:
"Washington-hailing Catlett was one of the first people in the US to get an MFA. After she graduated, she travelled to Mexico City and started to work in the Socialist Realist tradition popular at the time. In this large wood sculpture, Whitley says the artist created a fist that would have immediately resonated as a symbol of black power at the time, made from mahogany wood “as if it was black skin”.
A second excerpt (source below):
"There was Elizabeth Catlett — who once said that art “must answer a question, or wake somebody up, or give a shove in the right direction” — whose remarkable sculpture “Black Unity” (1968), a raised fist sculpted out of cedar, evokes the Black Power movement’s enduring symbol." ('Once Overlooked, Black Abstract Painters are Finally Given Their Due', NYTimes, Updated Oct. 13, 2021)
Elizabeth Catlett, 'Black Unity", 1968
# 3. ARTIST OF NOTE: PHILIP LINDSAY MASON (b. 1939, born in St. Louis, Missouri)
Philip Lindsay Mason, 'The Hero', 1968 (No photo located of artist)
PHILIP LINDSAY MASON , cont.
Electrifying Art of Black Power in 'Soul of a Nation' by Emily Wilson, 48hills February 18, 2020.
An Excerpt:
An Excerpt:
"The relevance of the artwork can be seen over and over in Soul of a Nation, Palmor said. “A work by Phillip Lindsay Mason, 'Manchild in the Promised Land' was painted in 1968, but if you cover the label, it could be a reflection on Travon Martin,” she said. “It’s galling to see how little has changed. The perspective in the painting is you looking down on a red target on the boy’s chest, like his body is a target for a potential aggressor.”
"The relevance of the artwork can be seen over and over in Soul of a Nation, Palmor said. “A work by Phillip Lindsay Mason, 'Manchild in the Promised Land' was painted in 1968, but if you cover the label, it could be a reflection on Travon Martin,” she said. “It’s galling to see how little has changed. The perspective in the painting is you looking down on a red target on the boy’s chest, like his body is a target for a potential aggressor.”
Provided by Indiana State University Library.
Manchild in the Promised Land', 1968.
Manchild in the Promised Land', 1968.
Media:Acrylic on Canvas
Colors:Black, Blue, Brown, Grey, Red, White
Description:Portrait of an African American youth sitting in a doorway. The painting takes its title from the 1965 autobiographical novel of the same name by Claude Brown. The novel is a coming of age story set in 1940s - 50s Harlem that drew attention to the experiences of poor black, urban youth. From Art in America: "California (Berkeley) artist Phillip Lindsay Mason uses the simplified realism of pop art to paint angry images of a black American scene, with its cracked and peeling ghetto walls, and homeless brooding children." The young boy is not dead, or not yet dead, as is the fallen Malcolm X style figure in Mason's painting from the same time period, 'The Deathmakers'. Here, the youth's expression is engaging, active, defiant despite the pressures of bearing the target that is growing up Black in America.
PHILIP LINDSAY MASON, cont.
deYoung Museum, Conserving Phillip Lindsay Mason's "The Hero", Oct. 29, 2019
Click on the right to read about this conservation effort.
An excerpt:
"The Hero, painted in Berkeley, California in 1968 by Phillip Lindsay Mason, has not been exhibited since its acquisition by the Mills College Art Museum in 1979. The acrylic painting on canvas, although in good condition overall, had a thick layer of accumulated grime, mold, and staining on its surface. The lenders generously allowed us to treat the painting for its inclusion in the exhibition "Soul of a Nation' at the de Young."
PHILIP LINDSAY MASON, cont.
Phillip Lindsay Mason’s “Deathmakers”, 1968.
Phillip Lindsay Mason’s “Deathmakers”, 1968.
" Phillip Lindsay Mason’s The Deathmakers, (1968), a chilling painting showing Malcolm X’s corpse raising an accusing finger at the skeletal white policemen carrying his body."
"The Deathmakers. . . recalls the assassination of Malcolm X. In this painting Mason points an accusing finger at the Establishment while it, represented by skeletal policemen, points an accusing finger at the fallen Malcolm. Prominent among the bright, primary colors that make up this tense scene is the chrome yellow of the field, a pictorial frame that alternately advances and retreats, depending on the colors that touch it. Figures are realized through abrupt value changes in shape than through the use of light and shadow. The dramatic bars of the American flag serve as a bull's-eye backdrop that further intensifies the death scene." African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis, © 1990 Samellla Lewis, p.169)"
PHILIP LINDSAY MASON, cont.
Rainbow Dream, 1970
Phillip Lindsay Mason, “Rainbow Dream” (1970)
PHILIP LINDSAY MASON, cont.
OPTIONAL READ Glass Cube, Mills College Art Museum, Search Terms: Looking for Phillip Lindsay Mason, Nov. 15, 2019.
Click on the right to read about the search for Phillip Lindsay Mason and questions to be asked.
An excerpt:
'With the lack of information in the folder, I set off to try and find Phillip Lindsay Mason. I wanted to ask him about his Hero. Where was he bolting off to? How could he still move so fast and be so powerful with chains around his waist? Were there more paintings of him?'
# 4. ARTIST OF NOTE: ARCHIBALD MOTLEY (1891 - 1981, born in New Orleans, Louisiana.)
Background from Camden Civil Rights Project , August 22, 2015
Archibald John Motley, Jr. (1891-1981) exemplifies the cultural diversity within the American modernist art community known as the New Negro Movement. Motley is best known for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience during the 1920s and 1930s, depicting a vivid, urban black culture that bore little resemblance to the conventional and marginalizing rustic images of black Southerners which were common during this era.
Although ideologically associated with the Harlem Renaissance artists, Motley never became part of the enclave of artists who formed the Harlem art community. Motley was born in New Orleans and spent the majority of his life in Chicago, participating in the Chicago Black Renaissance. His nightclub and crowd scenes, heavily influenced by the jazz culture of Chicago’s “Black Belt” district, remain some of his most popular works.
Motley was ideologically influenced by the writings of reformer and sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois and Harlem Renaissance leader Alain Locke. Like many of the artists associated with the New Negro Movement, Motley believed that art could be used as a device to create cultural awareness. At the same time, he recognized that African American artists were overlooked and under supported, compelling him to write The Negro in Art, an essay on the limitations placed on black artists that was printed in the July 6, 1918, edition of the influential African American newspaper, Chicago Defender.
Motley sought to educate individuals on the politics of skin tone. Motley himself was of mixed ethnicity, which included, African-American, European, Creole, and Native American ancestry. He recognized that different statuses were attributed to African-Americans based on the the color of their skin, and that society equated lighter skin tone with privilege. Motley examined and distinguished ethnic identities and miscegenation through images of women of mixed ancestry.
Even as Motley’s focus shifted from individual portraits to nightclub and crowd scenes, he continued his motif of racial diversity. Rather than limiting his palette to a single color, Motley’s street scenes took care to denote a variety of complexions for African Americans. In a 1978 interview with the Smithsonian Magazine, Motley describes how each individual he paints has a unique skin tone:
They’re not all the same color, they’re not all black, they’re not all, as they used to say years ago, high yellow, they’re not all brown. I try to give each one of them character as individuals. And that’s hard to do when you have so many figures to do, putting them all together and still have them have their characteristics.
ARCHIBALD MOTLEY, cont.
'Another View of America: The Paintings of Archibald Motley' by John Yau, December 27, 2015, Hyperallergic
Click on the image on the right to learn more about the work of Archibald Motley.
An excerpt:
'Let’s begin with the street on which the museum (Whitney Museum) is located. Herman Melville’s brother was named Gansevoort after their mother’s family, which was Dutch. In Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), in the chapter about Moby-Dick (1851), which helped revive Melville’s reputation, D.H. Lawrence wrote that the doomed whaling ship, Pequod carried “many races, many peoples, many nations, under the Stars and Stripes.”
It would seem that the Whitney Museum – in its new building – is finally intent on doing the same. For with the Motley exhibition, the museum presents an alternative view of American art history to the one they championed in their black granite fortress on Madison Avenue. With more than three thousand works by Edward Hopper in its collection, the museum mounted numerous exhibitions of an artist who is widely regarded as the quintessential chronicler of the isolation and loneliness that are synonymous with America’s cities and countryside. This is true if you recognize that Hopper’s cast of anonymous characters is white, and that he conformed to the status quo of a segregated society. You don’t see African Americans, Hispanics or Asian Americans in Hopper’s work, not even in “Chop Suey” (1929).
Archibald Motley, Jr; 'Carnival', 1937,
Archibald Motley, Jr; 'Black Belt', 1934
'There is a recurring figure in these crowd scenes – an overweight bald man wearing a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up and his hands in his pockets. Sometimes a hat is pulled down over his eyes. Does his demeanor indicate that no one sees him, or that he doesn’t want to be seen, or that he doesn’t see, but instead perceives everything through his skin? Everyone around him is engaged in some kind of activity, but he appears to be passing through, unattached and isolated from the merriment. This isolated figure – which might be Motley’s alter ego – infuses the scenes of revelers with a sense of deep isolation and sadness, a feeling that for all of the collective happiness that we are witnessing, some people are left out and can never belong. The paintings are deeply perplexing and engaging, and one feels as if they will never quite reconcile all the contradictory feelings running through them. Motley is touching a raw nerve in these paintings. We are just not sure whose.'
ARCHIBALD MOTLEY, cont.
The First One Hundred Years by Archibald Motley: A Racial Lament Painting, Art and Theology, posted on January 19, 2021 by Victoria Emily Jones.
Click on the right to read more about this last work by Archibald Motley.
An excerpt :
Archibald J. Motley Jr. (1891–1981) was one of the most important artists of the Harlem Renaissance. He’s best known for his paintings of urban Black culture, especially the Chicago jazz scene and other nightlife, and he was also a wonderful portraitist.
His final painting, however, shows none of the carefree conviviality that was characteristic of much of his work. On the contrary, its nightmarish. Begun in 1963 and reworked over the course of a decade, The First One Hundred Years: He Amongst You Who is Without Sin Shall Cast the First Stone: Forgive Them Father For They Know Not What They Do chronicles race relations in the United States from the Civil War to the civil rights era. It’s the most overtly political painting in Motley’s oeuvre, and once completed, he didn’t paint for the remaining nine years of his life.
Archibald J. Motley, Jr., The First Hundred Years: He Amongst You Who Is Without Sin Shall Cast the First Stone: Forgive Them Father For They Know Not What They Do, c. 1963-72.
"Above this still life is a Black person on horseback, operating a plow right next to a coffin. Besides the obvious reference to plantation labor, the vignette also evokes the African American spiritual that goes, “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on”—a song of endurance through hardship."
"In the shadow of the cross is a sea of protest and counterprotest signs. Alongside slogans like “We Want to Vote,” “Black Power,” and “We Shall Overcome” are swastikas, “America for Whites, Africa for Blacks,” and “Go home, niggers, and get your relief check.” To the left of this activity, a white police officer beats a Black man with a baton, and a fireman turns a high-pressure hose on Lady Justice. This vignette evokes the chilling news footage from May 1963, when Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered the use of fire hoses and attack dogs on peaceful Black protesters, including children. The force of the jet streams ripped off boys’ shirts and pushed girls over the tops of cars. It was a physical assault on Black bodies and on justice itself."
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse