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Inside the Represent Catalogue | ImaginingModernity
From the Represent:
200 Years of African American Art catalogue
essay “Imagining Modernity” by Consulting Curator Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw:
“The challenge of how to be a modern avant-garde artist in
tune with the stylistic trends of the day and yet remain socially responsible
to a broad racial community was one that artists of African descent took
seriously as they moved into the twentieth century.”
“Imagining
Modernity” is the third thematic chapter in the Represent exhibition catalogue. It examines works of African
American artists who walked the tightrope between opportunity and oppression,
artistic freedom and cultural responsibility. Somewhere between post–Civil War
and the height of the civil rights movement, a new creative space was forged.
This space was defined by expressions of “representation and social realism,”
what DuBois Shaw describes as two signature elements of “race-conscious African
American art.” In the early 20th century, artists like Henry Ossawa
Tanner, Edward Mitchell Bannister, and May Howard Jackson opened doors for
African American and women artists at institutions like the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the National Academy of Design in
New York. These gains were not without the pain of rejection and harsh
demonstrations of racism and sexism that often drove black and women artists to
foreign cities like Paris, where they could pursue their craft without
limitations and persecution. Out of the smoke and dust of World War I and the
stock market crash of 1929 arose the New Negro spirit and Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s New Deal. After W.E.B. DuBois’s The
Crisis came Alain Locke’s The New
Negro, a publication providing literary and philosophical platform for
artists, writers, and thinkers of African descent. Exciting opportunities were
offered to emerging artists like Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., and Dox Thrash
through New Deal programs like the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal
Art Act. These programs and the artistic work supported by them sparked
developments for arts centers and workshops across the country as well as new
techniques and approaches to creative practice that impacted art history.
For
the complete “Imagining Modernity” essay, other writings, and additional Represent artworks available only in the
catalogue, pick up your copy in the Museum Store or our online store today.
“Slabtown,
Phoebus, Virginia,” c. 1908, James
VanDerZee
“Mother
and Child,” c. 1956, Elizabeth Catlett
“Saturday Night,” c. 1942-45, Dox Thrash