BEST OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART Part 1

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The Thankful Poor, 1894. Henry Ossawa Tanner

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Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting, 1934, by Aaron Douglas. It is in Gouache on Whatman artist’s board, but was actually a study sketch in preparation for a mural!

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aron Douglas completed this finished sketch in preparation for a mural he painted under WPA/FAP sponsorship for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). The four-panel series Aspects of Negro Lifetracks the journey of African Americans from freedom in Africa to enslavement in the United States and from liberation after the Civil War to life in the modern city. In this study for the first panel, a man and woman in Africa dance to the beat of drums as concentric circles of light emphasize the heat and rhythm of their movements. A sculpture floating in a central circle above the dancers’ heads suggests the importance of spirits in African culture.Kansas-born Douglas was a leading member of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, which flourished in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood during the 1920s. This period of intense creativity in the visual arts, literature, music, and dance inspired African Americans to be proud of the heritage of their race. In the early 20th century, European artists such as Pablo Picasso borrowed elements of African art for their own works. Douglas, however, was among the first African Americans to consciously incorporate African imagery, culture, and history into his art. Although he had never visited Africa, the painter was able to create this image from his imagination. It combines the influence of ancient Egyptian sculpture with the modern Art Deco style

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	Glenn Ligon
	American, born 1960
	© Glenn Ligon		Stranger in the Village #13, 1998 Enamel, oil and acrylic paint, gesso, and coal dust on canvas 182.9 x 335.3 cm Gift of the Peter Norton Family Foundation, 1999.303 View enlargement
	Glenn Ligon is best known for text-based paintings that engage themes of authorship, history, and identity. Borrowing from writers such as Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, Ligon systematically stencils quotations across his canvases. Stranger in the Village #13is part of a series that the artist began in 1997, in which he rendered passages from James Baldwin’s 1953 essay of the same title in nearly illegible black paint. In response to Baldwin’s experience as an African American living in a remote village in Switzerland, Ligon commented, “The gravity and weight and panoramic nature of that work inspired me . . . and the addition of the coal dust seemed to me to do that because it literally bulked up the text.” Allowing the words to degrade as part of his process, Ligon incorporated Baldwin’s meditations on colonialism, race, and national identity while addressing language’s inability to fully articulate experience.Read passages from Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village.”

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2. African American Rugs
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The Art of Kadir Nelson

www.kadirnelson.com/

Walter Ellison
American, 1899-1977
		Train Station, 1936 Oil on canvas 20 x 36 cm Charles M. Kurtz Charitable Trust and Barbara Neff and Solomon Byron Smith funds; through prior gifts of Florence Jane Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison, and estate of Celia Schmidt, 1990.134 View enlargementView movie from American Visions

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Nightlife, 1943

Oil on canvas

91.4 x 121.3 cm

Archibald J. Motley Jr. American, 1891-1981

1. © Archibald J. Motley. The Art Institute of Chicago

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2. By Mequitta Ahuja

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	Kerry James Marshall
	American, born 1955
	© Kerry James Marshall		Many Mansions, 1994 Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas 290 x 343 cm Max V. Kohnstamm Fund, 1995.147 View enlargement
	In the mid-1990s, Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall became intrigued by the frequent use of the word “garden” in the names of public-housing projects in Chicago and Los Angeles. He set out to explore the successes and failures of these developments in the series Garden Project.In these works, the artist (who has himself lived in projects in Birmingham and Los Angeles) hoped to challenge the stereotypes of public housing. “We think of projects as places of despair,” he explained. “All we hear of is the incredible poverty, abuse, violence, and misery that exists there, but there is also a great deal of hopefulness, joy, pleasure, and fun.”In the background of Many Mansionsloom the angular, modern towers of Chicago’s Stateway Gardens, an immense complex comprising eight high-rises. The more impersonal, official name of the housing project (IL 2-22) appears in bright red at the upper right. In the foreground, three men tend an elaborate garden; its curving, decorative forms provide a stark contrast to the straight lines and right angles of the apartment buildings behind. The white dress shirts and ties of the three young men working in the garden are intended in part to contradict the false, negative image of the African American male. The difference in scale between the tall men and the small towers makes the figures appear heroic.Although it is full of details that suggest the grim realities of urban life, Many Mansions also reveals a sense of community. Marshall deliberately chose to depict spring, the season of joy, hope, and resurrection. At left, two bluebirds support a banner that reads “Bless Our Happy Home.” Floating above the entire scene is a red ribbon whose message: “In My Mother’s House There Are Many Mansions” is an adaptation of a Biblical passage from the Book of John that reads “in my father’s house . . .” The reference expresses the warmth of home and offers a promise of happiness. Whether the springtime sweetness and religious sentiment should be taken at face value or understood as an ironic critique, however, remains an open question.

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	Jacob Lawrence
	American, 1917-2000
			The Wedding, 1948 Tempera on gessoed panel 50.8 x 61 cm Gift of Mary P. Hines in memory of her mother, Frances W. Pick, 1993.258 View enlargement
	In The Wedding,a couple exchanges marriage vows before a minister as attendants stand nearby. The curving shapes of the figures, together with the brightly colored flowers and stained-glass windows, create a composition full of movement and energy.Born in Atlantic City in 1917, Jacob Lawrence moved to New York‘s Harlem neighborhood in 1930. At age 15, he enrolled in the Harlem Art Workshop at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). A talented student, Lawrence rapidly developed a bold, unique style, which he applied to seldom-treated subjects from black history and contemporary life in Harlem. At the age of 20 he had his first one-man exhibition of Harlem scenes.In addition to small genre scenes such as this one, Lawrence created epic cycles depicting moments in African American history, including the Great Migration and episodes in the lives of abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Later in his career, Lawrence moved from the east coast to Seattle, where he taught at the University of Washington.

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   LOS ANGELES CHILDREN’S EARTH DAY 2009: A Wild Day of Environmental Education and Celebration at the STAR ECO Station

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Sharecropper, 1957 (printed 1970)

Color linocut on cream Japanese paper

54.4 x 51.3 cm

Restricted gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Hartman, 1992.182

View enlargement

	Elizabeth Catlett
	Mexican (born United States), born 1915
	© Elizabeth Catlett / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
	Sharecropperreveals Elizabeth Catlett’s lifelong concern for the oppressed and her assertion of the dignity of women. The print focuses on a female farm worker whose face, made rough and leathery by years of toil, is nonetheless determined and commanding.After the Civil War, many former slaves became sharecroppers, or farmers who worked on rented land and received an agreed share of the crop as payment. This economic system trapped many of these African Americans, as well as white workers, in a cycle of poverty. Set in the 1950s, Catlett’s Sharecropper refers to the injustices that this unfair system exerted on the poor. Emphasizing the triumph of the worker over her harsh conditions, Catlett represented this poor, anonymous figure with the strength, dignity, and heroism generally reserved for individuals of power.

Catlett, a sculptor and graphic artist, has lived and worked in Mexico for many years. Born in Washington, D.C., she attended Howard University and the University of Iowa. In 1946, Catlett traveled to Mexico, where she worked with the People’s Graphic Arts Workshop (Taller de Gráfica Popular), a group of printmakers dedicated to using their art to promote social change. Catlett became a Mexican citizen in 1962. She became the first female professor of sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, a position she held until retiring in 1975.

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