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The harlem renaissance: the rebirth of black arts and culture in the north
The harlem renaissance: the rebirth of black arts and culture in the north
The harlem renaissance: the rebirth of black arts and culture in the north
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Jacob was an African-American artist, who eventually flourished in the art world during the Depression of 1920s, painting African-Americans life in Harlem, making social statements and thus, explaining their life during that time. Additionally, this made his art significant to spectators who praised his works. With no formal training in painting, it was easy for Jacob to ignore the rules that set him apart from other African-American painters and others, before him and in his time, such as Palmer C. Hayden, and Archibald Motely, Jr to whom he was compared. Jacob Lawrence artwork communicated historical data and his perspective of people he was familiar with in his culture. His work expressed how African- Americans struggled for health and social justice, how they were ignored by the Republican administrations, racial equality and eventually, why African-American voters would shift to the Democratic Party.
After reviewing Jacob Lawrence’s direct and dramatic paintings, it was clear that his painting helped him express himself. The painting was and still is a product of the economic and cultural self-determination that African-American dealt in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, during the migration and still evident in society today. The visual qualities in Jacob Lawrence artwork that is appealing are the vibrant colors and his clever way of self-expressing the time he was so familiar. In final analysis, his artwork expressed how he felt about his environment and what his perspective were during that time. And, how restrained his painting were, for instance, Street Scene – Restaurant, even though African- Americans had access to restaurants in the neighboring area but, he still place patriot outside the restaurant waiti...
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...ce was recognized for his talent. Despite the primitive look of Lawrence’s painting the gesture are read and reveals a set of principles inspired by African-Americans. Thus, the modernist aesthetic of his art shows the critical faith of a people oppressed and striving to get ahead. Therefore, elements of his work and themes like man’s struggle produce one of the United States most famous African-American Artist of all times Jacob Lawrence.
Works Cited
Cotter, Holland. "The New York Times." Visions of a People in Motion (2007): n.p.
Herberholz, Barbara. "Jacob Lawrence: The Glory of Expression." Arts and Activities 129.1 (2001): 12. ProQuest. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
Romare Bearden, Harry Henderson. A History Of African-American Artists. New York : Pantheon Books , 1992.
Turner, Elizabeth Hutton. The Great Migration . New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
There has been much debate over the Negro during the Harlem Renaissance. Two philosophers have created their own interpretations of the Negro during this Period. In Alain Locke’s essay, The New Negro, he distinguishes the difference of the “old” and “new” Negro, while in Langston Hughes essay, When the Negro Was in Vogue, looks at the circumstances of the “new” Negro from a more critical perspective.
Kehinde Wiley was born in 1977 in Los Angeles, California. He is a New York visual artist who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of black people in heroic poses. As a child, his mother supported his interest in art and enrolled him in after school art classes. When Wiley was 12 years old he attended an art school in Russia for a short time. At the age of 20 he traveled to Nigeria to learn about his African roots and to meet his father. He has firmly situated himself within art’s history’s portrait painting tradition. He earned his BFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and he received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2001.
Schultz, Elizabeth. "African and Afro-American Roots in Contemporary Afro-American Literature: The Difficult Search for Family Origins." Studies in American Fiction 8.2 (1980): 126-145.
Between 1910 and 1930, Harlem began thriving with African- American arts such as literature, theatre and painting, and music. This era was soon known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this time racial pride became a very big thing among African- American artists, but the only problem was how to best show this pride. Both high art and folk art can give a good expression of racial pride.
Some themes that Jacob Lawrence used in his paintings were constant throughout most of his paintings. Not only does he use the same theme throughout most of them Jacob Lawrence names his paintings based on other themes that he uses. Lawrence portrayed the hardship of African Americans daily life struggles through his paintings. One of the paintings that I chose was Migration. The painting was one of the first that had to do with that particular subject. The painting shows many African Americans walking towards three different stations with three different cities which are: Chicago, New York, and St. Louis. The theme in this painting is not having equal rights as well. African American decided to migrate and live a better life than the one
Henry Tanner and Alice Barney were both exceeding talented artists. Great artistic ability can be seen in both “The face of a Jew in Palestine and “the face of a Negro Boy’. While their painting techniques are similar, the two artists have their differences. In comparing these two works of art, I have learned that each artist possesses their own unique way of expressing their talent, even if it is art work of the same medium and style.
"An Artists's Life." Litzmann, Berthold. An Artist's Life. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. 532. Book.
Jacob Lawrence has painted figurative and narrative pictures of the black community and black history for more than 60 years in a consistent modernist style, using expressive, strong design and flat areas of color. Jacob Lawrence was a great artist. During Harlem Renaissance, he helped establish African American artists. He gave lectures at Washington University, and he enjoyed working with students of all ages.
Greenberg, Kenneth. A. & Greenberg, Nat Turner. Oxford University Press, US, 2004. The "Nat Turner". Africans in America. 1995.
The Harlem Renaissance, originally known as “the New Negro Movement”, was a cultural, social, and artistic movement during the 1920’s that took place in Harlem. This movement occurred after the World War I and drew in many African Americans who wanted to escape from the South to the North where they could freely express their artistic abilities. This movement was known as The Great Migration. During the 1920’s, many black writers, singers, musicians, artists, and poets gained success including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Du Bois. These creative black artists made an influence to society in the 1920’s and an impact on the Harlem Renaissance.
Jacob Lawrence was an American painter, and the most widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. He was known for producing great works of art such as the Migration Series and War Series. This brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns placed side by side with vivid colors. Lawrence used social realism and modern abstraction, among other things, to create the stories of African American experiences. At 25 years of age, he gained national attention with his 60-panel Migration Series that was painted on cardboard. This series depicted the Great Migration of African- Americans from the rural south to the urban north. Another example of the life’s of African Americans would be the Toussaint L’Ouverture
The Harlem Renaissance had a lot of influence on modern day art because many artist white and black drew inspiration from traditional African sculptures. In the 1900s, “the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art.”(“African
3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.
Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
Wiley’s art gives a different perspective with race “African American” and inner city citizens through his paintings. Kenhinde Wiley also express