What Group of People Contributed to the Art and Literature During the Harlem Renaissance

Articles and Features

Art Movement: Harlem Renaissance

James Van der Zee, Racoon Couple in Car, 1932.
James Van der Zee, Racoon Couple in Car, 1932. Courtesy Museum of Modern Fine art

By Shira Wolfe

"I believe that the [African American's] advantages and opportunities are greater in Harlem than in any other place in the country, and that Harlem volition become the intellectual, the cultural and the financial heart for Negroes of the United states of america and will exert a vital influence upon all Negro peoples." —James Weldon Johnson, "Harlem: The Culture Capital," 1925

What was the Harlem Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement of African-American fine art, literature, music, and theatre. The motility emerged later on the First World State of war, and was active through the Great Depression of the 1930s until the start of the Second World War. Most of the artists associated with the move lived and worked in the predominantly African-American neighbourhood Harlem in New York, which became a great cultural hub flourishing with creativity. The artists associated with the Harlem Renaissance aimed to accept control over representations of their ain people, instead of accepting the stereotypical depictions by white people. They asserted pride in blackness life and identity, and rebelled against inequality and discrimination.

Fundamental period: 1919-1930s

Key region: Harlem, New York

Cardinal words: identity, pride, agency, transformation, African American culture, African art, modernism, black avant-garde

Key artists: Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, James Lesesne Wells, Archibald John Motley, Beauford Delaney, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, James van der Zee, Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence, Allen Lohan Crite

School's Out (1936) by Allen Rohan Crite
Allen Rohan Crite, School's Out, 1936. Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be aback – I, too am America." – Langston Hughes, excerpt from "I, besides"

Historical and Social Context of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance started afterward a summertime of encarmine race-related riots in 1919, known as the Carmine Summer. It was half a century later the abolition of slavery, and lynchings were yet mutual in the South, attempts to laissez passer an anti-lynching bill in Congress were repeatedly refused, and white supremacy was widely accepted and reinforced by the prevailing cultural forces of contemporary books and movies.

This was besides the period that effectually 200.000 African-American soldiers returned from the state of war in Europe. They had been treated with far more respect and equality whist away in France than they were used to dorsum dwelling. When they returned, their demand for equality had a renewed potency and urgency. In the meantime, during the war years in Europe, half a 1000000 African-Americans had left the American Due south for industrialised Northern cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus and Cleveland in search of employment and communities less rife with discrimination. In New York, the Harlem neighbourhood had been planned for center-class white families but had been overdeveloped, and then many black families started moving there.

I, Too, Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100

Curator and author Wil Haygood talks about the Harlem Renaissance and the 2018/2019 exhibition "I, Besides, Sing America" at Columbus Museum of Art. Courtesy Columbus Museum of Art

The Unlike Disciplines of the Harlem Renaissance

A burgeoning blackness creativity began to arise in Harlem. Writers, artists, musicians and theatre practitioners inspired each other and often worked across disciplines, aiming for fine art that defied stereotypes and that fought against injustice and discrimination.

Providing well-nigh of the intellectual grounding for the Harlem Renaissance was the philosopher, sociologist, author, and patron of the arts Alain LeRoy Locke and his essay "Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro." The essay introduced Harlem and its cultural smash to a wider public. He expanded on these ideas in his album of essays The New Negro: An Estimation (1925) which included his influential essay "The New Negro". The initial name of the movement, "The New Negro," derives from this anthology and essay. The essay called for a "new dynamic phase… of renewed self-respect and self-dependence" in the community.

Leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance include Langston Huges, Zora Neale Thurston, Arna Bontemps, Jean Toorner and Claude McKay. Langston Hughes wrote the brilliant poem "I, too" (1926), which demonstrates a yearning and demand for equality:

I, too, sing America / I am the darker brother. / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When visitor comes, / But I laugh, /And eat well, /And grow potent. / Tomorrow, / I'll exist at the table / When company comes. / Nobody'll dare / Say to me, / "Eat in the kitchen," / Then. / Besides / They'll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed – / I, also am America.

In terms of music, the popularity of jazz spread more and more, with musicians like Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington associated with the Harlem Renaissance. In theatre and performance, great actors like Paul Robeson and Josephine Bakery were making their mark.

In the visual arts, artists portrayed African American life, taking agency over the portrayal of their own people. Moreover, it was an avant-garde move where artists were experimenting and allowing themselves a vast variety of influences, including, for example, the European modernists.

The Negro in an African Setting (from mural series Aspects of Negro Life), 1934.
Aaron Douglas, The Negro in an African Setting (from mural serial Aspects of Negro Life: ), 1934. Courtesy New York Public :Library

The Visual Arts of the Harlem Renaissance

Sculptors, painters and printmakers were key contributors to the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas, who is sometimes referred to equally "the father of African American art", was an important figure in the movement, who defined a modern visual linguistic communication representing blackness Americans in a new light. In his cycle of four murals, "Aspects of Negro Life", commissioned by the Public Works of Art Project to decorate the section of the New York Public Library intended for research into black culture, Douglas combined imagery from African-American history with scenes from contemporary life, fusing the influences of African sculpture, jazz music and geometric abstraction. Douglas was influenced by modernist movements such equally Cubism, and he and other artists besides found a great source of inspiration in West Africa, in particular the stylised sculptures and masks from Benin, Congo and Senegal. They viewed this fine art as a link to their African heritage.

Many artists also turned to the art of antiquity, especially Egyptian sculpture. One of these artists is Meta Warrick Fuller, a female sculptor who became a protégé of Auguste Rodin in Paris, before returning to work in the United States. Her sculpture Ethiopia (1921), was inspired past the menstruum of the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt, and is widely considered the start Pan-African American work of art. Her sculpture was an apologue for the musical and industrial contributions of African Americans to the development of the The states.

Meta Warrick Fuller, Ethiopia (detail), 1921.
Meta Warrick Fuller, Ethiopia (detail), 1921. Courtesy National Museum of African American History and Culture

Printmakers James Lesesne Wells and Hale Woodruff explored a streamlined arroyo, cartoon from African and European artistic influences. They worked with block printing, lithography and etching, creating a distinctive visual language and making a mark with their inventive, modern printmaking.

Looking Upward (1928) by James Lesesne Wells.
James Lesesne Wells, Looking Upwards, 1928. Courtesy Ruth and Jacob Kainen Collection and National Gallery of Art

Photography was also an important element in the Harlem Renaissance. The most iconic photographs capturing this art move, this very specific time and identify, were taken by photographer James Van Der Zee. He recognised the incredible richness of the intellectual and artistic life in Harlem during those years, and realised he had to capture information technology on film. Van Der Zee produced thousands of photographs of and for Harlem's flourishing middle class. He took both formal, posed photographs in his studio, and photo essays of street scenes, cabarets, restaurants, barbershops and church services. His images immortalise the story of this thriving creative community.

Harlem Renaissance. Norman Lewis, Jumping Jive, 1942.
Norman Lewis, Jumping Jive, 1942. Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

The Legacy of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance left a huge legacy. For one, the stars of the next African American artistic generation, like Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence, were taught by Augusta Savage, a fundamental effigy of the Harlem Renaissance. Furthermore, the movement inspired generations of black artists to come. In the words of Wil Haygood:

"Were information technology not for this movement, other art movements may non fifty-fifty accept sprung upwardly. The Harlem Renaissance gave women, gave impoverished people all over this state a hint of merely what you can exercise if you want to put your art on the line, because all they actually wanted was to show America that, if you requite united states a off-white gamble, we will produce greatness. From that motion they have stitched, the blackness American, forevermore, into the artistic fabric of this country."

Relevantsources to acquire more

Notice more near this catamenia of flourishing inventiveness centred around Harlem hither:

National Gallery of Art

The Washington Mail

Phaidon


What was the Harlem Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance was an influential movement of African American art, literature, music, and theatre that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s in Harlem, New York.


Who were the key artists of the Harlem Renaissance?

The key artists of the Harlem Renaissance were Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, James Lesesne Wells, Archibald John Motley, Beauford Delaney, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, James van der Zee, Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence and Allen Lohan Crite.


What was the manner of the Harlem Renaissance?

Artists worked in many different styles, but a general trend was to explore a fusion of realism, modernism, African art, and even elements of antiquity.

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Source: https://magazine.artland.com/art-movement-harlem-renaissance/

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