1. The Harlem Renaissance

2. Map of Harlem – 1920’s

3. In the early 1920s, African American artists, writers, musicians, and performers were part of a great cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.
The huge migration to the North after World War I brought African Americans of all ages and walks of life to the thriving New York City neighborhood called Harlem.
Doctors, singers, students, musicians, shopkeepers, painters, and writers, congregated, forming a vibrant mecca of cultural affirmation and inspiration.

4. W.E.B. DuBois
The notion of "twoness" , a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. DuBois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

5. Common themes:
alienation,
marginality,
the use of folk material,
the use of the blues tradition,
the problems of writing for an elite audience.
HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others.

6. Harlem Renaissance brought the Black experience clearly within the general American cultural history.
Remarkable coincidences and luck, provided a sizable chunk of real estate in the heart of Manhattan.
The Black migration, from south to north, changed their image from rural to urban, from peasant to sophisticate.
Harlem became a crossroads where Blacks interacted with and expanded their contacts internationally.
Harlem Renaissance profited from a spirit of self-determination which was widespread after W.W.I.

7. 2. The Harlem Renaissance had a huge significance in American culture at the time and in the future.
a. It became a symbol and a point of reference for everyone to recall.
b. The name, more than the place, became synonymous with new vitality, Black urbanity, and Black militancy.
c. It became a racial focal point for Blacks the world over; it remained for a time a race capital.
d. It stood for urban pluralism; Alain Locke wrote: "The peasant, the student, the businessman, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social outcast, each group has come with its own special motives ... but their greatest experience has been the finding of one another."
e. The complexity of the urban setting was important for Blacks to truly appreciate the variety of Black life. The race consciousness required that shared experience.

8. Harlem Renaissance's legacy is limited by the character of the Renaissance.
a. It encouraged the new appreciation of folk roots and culture.
b. Peasant folk materials and spirituals provided a rich source for racial imagination and it freed the Blacks from the establishment of past condition.
c. Harlem Renaissance was imprisoned by its innocence. The Harlem intellectuals, while proclaiming a new race consciousness, became mimics of Whites, wearing clothes and using manners of sophisticated Whites, earning a variety of epithets from the very people they were supposed to be championing.
d. Harlem Renaissance could not overcome the overwhelming White presence in commerce which defined art and culture. What was needed was a rejection of White values; they had to see Whites, without awe of love or awe of hate, and themselves truly, without myth or fantasy, in order that they could be themselves in life and art.

9. Art from the Harlem Renaissance
Jeunesse by Palmer Hayden
Street Life, Harlem, by William H. Johnson

10. Black painters and sculptors joined their fellow poets,
Langston Hughes wrote,
“Harlem was in vogue.”
Black painters and sculptors
joined their fellow poets,
novelists, actors, and
musicians in a creative
outpouring that established
Harlem as the
international capital of
Black culture.
Langston Hughes

11. Zora Neale Hurston was remarkable in that she was
the most widely published
black woman of her day. She authored more than fifty articles and short stories as well as four novels, two books on folklore, an autobiography, and some plays. At the height of her success she was known as the “Queen of the Harlem Renaissance.”
Zora Neale Hurston
American writer

12. In 1925, at the height of the jazz era in Paris, the sensational cast of musicians and dancers from Harlem, assembled as La Revue Negre, exploded on the stage of the Theatre des Champs Elysees. Its talented young star, Josephine Baker ( ), captivated audiences with a wild new dance called the Charleston.

13. “Louis Armstrong’s station in the history of jazz is unimpeachable
“Louis Armstrong’s station in the history of jazz is unimpeachable. If it weren’t for him, there wouldn’t be any of us.” Dizzy Gillespie, 1971

14. Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington brought a level of style and sophistication to Jazz that it hadn't seen before. By the time of his passing, he was considered amongst the world’s greatest composers and musicians.

15. silver print photograph
James Van Der Zee
Couple, Harlem 1933
silver print photograph

16. Harlem Renaissance era.
The visual art of the Harlem Renaissance was an attempt at developing a new African-American aesthetic in the fine arts.
Believing that their life experiences were valuable sources of material for their art, these artists created an iconography of the
Harlem Renaissance era.
Thematic content included
Africa as a source of inspiration,
African-American history,
folk idioms, (music and religion of the South), and social injustice.

17. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Sculptor 1877-1968
Meta Warrick Fuller was a sculptor who looked to
the songs of black Americans and to African
folk tales for inspirational
themes that focused on
pathos and joy in the
human condition. She
introduced these subjects to America long before
the Harlem Renaissance.

18. The Awakening of Ethiopia
This sculpture by Meta Warrick Fuller, anticipated the spirit and style of the Harlem Renaissance by symbolizing the emergence of the New Negro.
Fuller said she was thinking about the average African-American, whom she envisioned “awakening, gradually unwinding the bondage of his past and looking out on life again, expectant and unafraid.”
The garments and stance of this piece counter traditional representations of African-Americans in Western art by depicting a fully erect woman dressed in garments whose style evokes the costumes worn by ancient Egyptian queens.
It is also documented that according to art historian Judith Wilson, an important source of inspiration for The Awakening of Ethiopia may also have been the utopian, Pan-Africanist novel Ethiopia Unbound (1911) by the Gold Coast activist and newspaper publisher J.E. Casely Hayford. Both Casely Hayford and Fuller (who had ties to the Pan-Africanist movement) employed the metaphor of an enshrouded and awakening “Ethiopia”. Physically restrained yet emotional and visually rich, The Awakening of Ethiopia served the representational needs not only of a disillusioned but hopeful black elite in the years , but also of successive generations of “race” men and women.
The Awakening of Ethiopia
1914

19. highlighting the sense
Tanner wanted to show
a positive image of the
African-American by
highlighting the sense
of dignity and in the
touching moment of the
elder teaching the boy how to play the banjo. Tanner also chose the banjo because of its African origin and its being the most popular musical instrument used by the slaves in early America
Henry Ossawa Tanner
The Banjo Lesson, 1893

20. and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people.”
Aaron Douglas
“I refuse to
compromise
and see blacks as anything less than a
proud and majestic people.”
Window Cleaning, 1935

21. William H. Johnson Street-life Harlem

22. William H. Johnson
Chain Gang. 1939
Johnson arrived in
Harlem when the Renaissance was in the making. While there he created several paintings that dealt with political and social Harlem. Chain Gang is one example.

23. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot 1939
William H. Johnson
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
1939
Johnson always
showed great
devotion to painting
themes that celebrated
Black Christianity. This
painting is an example
of one based on a literal
interpretation of a
spiritual occasion.

24. In this symbolic self-portrait, Hayden is at work in his basement studio, surrounded by the tools of his dual professions, a palette, brushes and easel, and a garbage can, broom, and feather duster. The painter’s studio is also his bedroom, and his bed, night table, alarm clock, and a framed picture of a cat are seen in the background.
The artist is painting a portrait of a young mother seated and holding her well-bundled baby with its curious hypnotic stare. Nothing seems amiss in the painting; the artist wears a shirt, tie, and beret, the attractive mother is clad in a checkered dress, and a cat sleeps peacefully on the floor. When this painting was x-rayed several years ago, however, the under-painting revealed some startling discoveries. The well, dressed, beret-wearing janitor-artist was originally painted as a ludicrous, bald man with a bean-shaped head; the baby was grinning buffoon, and the the mother was depicted as an unflattering servant. Ironically, the cat in the framed picture was painted over a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
The present version, considerably more attractive and flattering, was undoubtedly altered by Hayden in response to widespread criticism of his works by his peers who felt that Hayden was caricaturing blacks for the amusement of whites.
Palmer Hayden,
The Janitor Who Paints, 1937

25. Palmer Hayden, The Blue Nile, 1964

26. Robert Gwathmey 1903-1988 Custodian, 1963
Gwathmey was raised in
Virginia, but it was not until his return to the South after years of art schooling in New York that he began to empathize with the African-American experience.
He commented, “If I had never gone back home, perhaps I would never have painted the Negro.”
Robert Gwathmey
Custodian, 1963

27. Jacob Lawrence was a painter who was inspired
to focus his work on the historical development
and struggle of people
from African descent. He used his canvas as a vehicle for making statements on Freedom, Dignity, Struggle, and Daily Life among the African-American peoples.
One of the most acclaimed African-American artists for more than fifty years, Jacob Lawrence has created numerous painting series depicting black historical figures and themes. As a young man he studied art and read extensively on the subject of African American history, which he translated into visual narratives, the best known of which is The Migration Series.
Jacob Lawrence

28. Jacob Lawrence Harlem Rooftops

29. Lawrence commented,
“What did I see when I arrived in Harlem in 1930? I was thirteen years of age. I remember seeing the movement, the life, the people, the excitement. We were going through a great, great depression at that time, but despite that, I think, there was always hope.”
Jacob Lawrence
Aspiration 1988

30. Jacob Lawrence Interior Scene, 1937

31. Dust to Dust (The Funeral) 1938
Jacob Lawrence
Dust to Dust (The Funeral) 1938

32. Jacob Lawrence Dancing Doll, 1947
Lawrence wrote that this painting, like his other genre scenes, was “mostly autobiographical in content, pertaining to and about my own personal experiences…It is a street scene of peddlers selling dolls which dance. The doll dances as it is manipulated by an invisible string.”
Jacob Lawrence Dancing Doll, 1947

33. Jacob Lawrence, The Builders, 1974 Jacob Lawrence, The Builders, 1998
Lawrence commented “The Builders (theme) came from my own observations of the human condition. If you look at a work closely, you see that it incorporates things other than the builders, like a street scene, or a family.”
Jacob Lawrence,
The Builders, 1974
Jacob Lawrence,
The Builders, 1998

34. “I’ve always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools…I don’t see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn’t paint just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. I am not a politician. I’m an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about…”
John Brown, while tending his flock in Ohio, first communicated with his sons and daughters his plans of attacking slavery by force.
With the support of northern abolutionists, John Brown organized a series of successful covert missions to liberate slaves from southern plantations. In the mid-1850’s Brown led antislavery troops in an effort to make Kansas a free state. Brown was later convicted of treason and hanged in 1859.
Lawrence commented “The inspiration to paint the…John Brown series was motivated by historical events as told to us by the adults of our community…the black community. The relating of these events, for many of us, was not only very informative but also most exciting to us, the men and women of these stories were strong, daring, and heroic,; and therefore we could and did relate to these by means of poetry, song, and paint.”
Legend of John Brown, 1977

35. Men Exist For
The Sake of One;
Teach Them Then or
Bear With Them
Jacob Lawrence