Nightlife by Archibald John Motley Jr.
During the 1940’s, the world found itself dealing with World War II and in the United States ,a huge African culture movement swept throughout the north-eastern states. One specific artist that captivated the “Nightlife” of African Americans during that era was Archibald Motley Jr. He painted a series of paintings that involved African Americans and their culture. In the painting, “Nightlife” we see a group of African Americans dancing at a club/bar, enjoying life, and swaying their hips to the music. Perhaps, in this painting, Motley wanted his public to notice the breakthrough, blacks had during the 1940’s and wanted to show how music took their mind on a different stroll apart from the troubling issues the world was dealing with. Archibald wanted the world to notice the dynamic and exciting Negro culture.
Archibald Motley Jr. was born in 1891 in New Orleans. Ever since, Archibald was a child he had the desire to be an artist. His family moved to a Chicago neighborhood in the 1890’s, but the family would take frequent trips back to New Orleans in the summer. Later we find out that these two similar settings were the determining factor for Archibald’s paintings. He decided to study art at the Institute of Chicago and was recognized by being one of the few African American artists during that time.
During the 1940’s the world found itself entangled in World War II. However, in the United States, a movement known as the Chicago Renaissance flushed through Illinois. An era of black literature, music and culture began. Specifically, jazz music became increasingly popular and was the popular hit of most hotspots located in Chicago and may other cities in the nation. In the painting Nightl...
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...thin this painting is appealing to the eye. With regards to linear perspective, this painting has a diagonal in which the figures line up and converge to one point.
Overall, the painting “Nightlife” was one of the few paintings that were celebrated to Archibald Motley. Coming from an African American culture, Motley wanted to capture the warmth and richness belonging to their culture. In this painting, we truly discover the heightened tensions felt during that time by the intricate patterns and skeptic perspectives Motley presents. However, by including warm tones such as red and violet, we get the feel of the liveliness and carelessness of the Negro culture through music. We understand that music such as jazz was an escape from everyday racism. Motley successfully executed a painting that sends a message and makes the person wonder the motives for his selections.
Ernie Barnes was and still is one of the most popular and well-respected black artists today. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, in 1938, during the time the south as segregated, Ernie Barnes was not expected to become a famous artist. However, as a young boy, Barnes would, “often [accompany] his mother to the home of the prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., where she worked as a [housekeeper]” (Artist Vitae, The Company of Art, 1999). Fuller was able to spark Barnes’ interest in art when he was only seven years old. Fuller told him about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, and the museums he visited (Barnes, 1995, p. 7). Fuller further introduced Barnes to the works of such artists as, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, which later influenced Barnes’ mannerist style of painting.
While visiting the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the works of Archibald Motley caught my attention. Two paintings by the same artist are the focus of this compare and contrast paper. Both are oil paintings during the same time period. Portrait of my Grandmother was painted in 1922 and Hot Rhythm was painted in 1934 only 12 years later. Although the paintings are by the same artist and have similarities, there are also differences which make the artist’s work interesting. Portrait of My Grandmother and Hot Rhythm are two paintings by Motley that capture different emotions (aspects would be a better word) of African Americans.
The painting has an order and there are different shapes and angles. Rectangular shape is main trend around this piece, including the wooden chest, the leg rest and the canvass. Also things overlap, creating the illusion of the shape look closer to viewer than the shape behind it. The example in this piece would be the chair on which Adelaide Labille Guiard sits be close to viewer than the girls behind it. This adds depth to the space. Also due to linear perspective girls behind the chair are smaller due to being farther away.
By the end of World War I, Black Americans were facing their lowest point in history since slavery. Most of the blacks migrated to the northern states such as New York and Chicago. It was in New York where the “Harlem Renaissance” was born. This movement with jazz was used to rid of the restraints held against African Americans. One of the main reasons that jazz was so popular was that it allowed the performer to create the rhythm. With This in Mind performers realized that there could no...
as "the New Negro Movement" later the Harlem renaissance." The art today isn't really memorable
Throughout history, and even today, music has shaped America’s culture, society, and even politics. One of the most outstanding and enduring musical movement has been from African American artists, ranging from bebop to jazz to hip-hop to rap. During the 1920’s , jazz artists stepped into the limelight and began their impact on American and even world history. Louis Armstrong was one of the most influential leaders during the Harlem Renaissance and his jazz legacy and impact of American history is everlasting. A master of his craft, Armstrong and his music heavily influenced America’s white and black populations from the 1920’s and up until his death.
In order to add something to their lives, [black families] decorated their tenements and their homes in all of these colors. I've been asked, is anyone in my family artistically inclined? I've always felt ashamed of my response and I always said no, not realizing that my artistic sensibility came from this ambiance.... It's only in retrospect that I realized I was surrounded by art. You'd walk Seventh Avenue and took in the windows and you'd see all these colors in the depths of the depression. All these colors.
George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.
Also known as the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, the American people felt that they deserved to have some fun in order to forget the emotional toll and social scars left from the war. The Jazz Age was appropriately named due to the illegal activities and good times, which included music, parties, and flapper girls. Jazz was a new style of music that originated out of the New Orleans area, where one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time – Louis Armstrong – began his career. The energy of jazz was a very new and almost uncomfortable style for the very traditional, rigid family of the 1920s. Young people in particular seemed to enjoy this new music the most, as it made them feel carefree. The energy of jazz was symbolic of the era’s trans...
The word “jazz” is significant to America, and it has many meanings. Jazz could simply be defined as a genre or style of music that originated in America, but it can also be described as a movement which “bounced into the world somewhere about the year 1911.”. This is important because jazz is constantly changing, evolving, adapting, and improvising. By analyzing the creators, critics, and consumers of jazz in the context of cultural, political, and economic issues, I will illustrate the movement from the 1930’s swing era to the birth of bebop and modern jazz. As the 1930’s began, the effects of the Great Depression still ravaged the United States, which in turn caused a dramatic change in the music industry.
African-American music is a vibrant art form that describes the difficult lives of African American people. This can be proven by examining slave music, which shows its listeners how the slaves felt when they were working, and gives us insight into the problems of slavery; the blues, which expresses the significant connection with American history, discusses what the American spirit looks like and teaches a great deal from the stories it tells; and hip-hop, which started on the streets and includes topics such as misogyny, sex, and black-on-black violence to reveal the reactions to the circumstances faced by modern African Americans. First is about the effect of slave music on American history and African American music. The slave music’s
The Harlem Renaissance refers to a prolific period of unique works of African-American expression from about the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Although it is most commonly associated with the literary works produced during those years, the Harlem Renaissance was much more than a literary movement; similarly, it was not simply a reaction against and criticism of racism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired, cultivated, and, most importantly, legitimated the very idea of an African-American cultural consciousness. Concerned with a wide range of issues and possessing different interpretations and solutions of these issues affecting the Black population, the writers, artists, performers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance had one important commonality: "they dealt with Black life from a Black perspective." This included the use of Black folklore in fiction, the use of African-inspired iconography in visual arts, and the introduction of jazz to the North.[i] In order to fully understand the lasting legacies of the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to examine the key events that led to its beginnings as well as the diversity of influences that flourished during its time.
Music nurtured the African American tradition and their struggle towards equality in the same century.... ... middle of paper ... ... Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds Pub. Carter, D. (2009).
As it mentioned above, the title itself, draws attention to the world-renowned music created by African Americans in the 1920s’ as well as to the book’s jazz-like narrative structure and themes. Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues
The 1920s and 1930s were the years of the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance. This period of the Roaring Twenties is said to have begun around the end of the war and lasted well until the Great Depression. Partially due to the migration of more and more African Americans into the north of the United States, the national literature, arts and music movement developed into something, until then, completely new and literary modernism spread further (Perkins and Perkins 212). The 1920s were a time of immense change, with women becoming eligible to vote, alcoholic beverages become prohibited to sell, and later on the crash of the stock market (Perkins and Perkins). With modernism and the invention of new things like the television, Americans had more time to enjoy life and culture, which promoted the popularity of African American arts as well. Great artists like Louis Armstrong made Jazz more popular and engaged even large crowds of white Americans. At the same time, the migration of African Americans to the north, especially New York City, sparked a movement called the Harlem Renaissance. Renaissance is the french word for revival or rebirth, which is exactly how the Harlem Renaissance can be described. The New York City neighborhood Harlem grew bigger and bigger and soon became one of the world's largest communities for people of African descent. While the African American poetry, arts and music scene expanded immensely, it subsided abruptly with the onset of the Great Depression (Perkins and Perkins). However, a few people including “Claude McKay, Jean Tooner, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes” (Perkins and Perkins) carried on with this new cultural awareness and contributed immensely to the American literary scene.