 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
|
 |
Activities: Context Activities Primitivism: An Antidote for the Modern  Back to Context Activities
Perhaps only a few times has a piece of music changed the course of history. On March 29, 1913, at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, composer Igor Stravinsky conducted his ballet The Rite of Spring. The choreography seemed unnatural, the costumes outrageous, and the musical innovations ear-shattering; the ballet tells of pagan sacrifice, and many in the audience were repelled or elated by it. Riots erupted as the performance ended. The performance was a decisive historical moment, affirming that European and American modernism would need to reckon with primitivism, a fascination with art from cultures that nineteenth-century intellectuals and politicians had regarded with condescension and scorn. Part of the continuing importance of the Harlem Renaissance was the complex way in which it engaged with the "primitive" art of the marginalized African cultures which African Americans recognized as a collective past but which the Middle Passage and three hundred years in North America had made distant. In looking to "primitive" cultures for inspiration, writers were trying to recover a lost fundamental identity, perhaps a purer form of language, and a more graceful and personal way of representing experience. While many white Americans visiting Harlem or other black neighborhoods expected African American artists to portray what were really little more than stereotypes, many black artists, like Claude McKay and Langston Hughes, sought deeper and richer connections with Africa; they experimented with primitivism, and their work shows a tension between their European intellectual heritage and their African lineage. This struggle to represent a split identity left many African American writers feeling conflicted. Many of the Harlem Renaissance poets explored the notion of the black American not only as a part of American history, but also as an indispensable foundation for the building of the country. Their poetry often suggested that the black person was more American than many of the country's white citizens. This interest in African culture and tradition was not confined to Harlem. Indeed, Paris became known as the "Negro Colony" because so many African American artists moved there. As they mingled with other expatriates, they formed a network of learning and influence. Many of the artists studied formally at Parisian art schools, and their presence fostered an artistic exchange that changed modern art. The work of these black artists was recognized by French salons, publications, and exhibition spaces and contributed to modernist ferment on the Continent. Indeed, the connections between cubism and Africa are immediately recognizable in the angular lines, perspective, and subject matter of cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque. Perhaps the best-known African American artist of the period was Aaron Douglas (1898-1979), who arrived in Harlem in 1924. An avid reader of African American journals like Opportunity, Crisis, and Survey, he was an active force on the art scene. Douglas soon adopted an abstract "African" style that borrowed much from African culture and Cubism. His flat, stylized figures were immediately recognizable, and Douglas went on to illustrate the books of thirteen Harlem Renaissance writers, including Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson. Douglas's art, along with that of many of his contemporaries, was exhibited around the country by The Harmon Foundation, which was set up to expose white Americans to African American art. It remains one of the leading collections of African American visual art. Many of the Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, including Douglas, Hughes, and Hurston, relied on white patrons for financial support. White Americans like Paul Kellogg, Albert C. Barnes, Carl Van Vechten, and Charlotte Osgood Mason were instrumental in making it possible for these artists to create and display their work. Although the patrons had good intentions, their patronage raised complicated questions. Some believed that black art was compromised by white patronage because the African American artists felt it necessary to please their benefactors. The patronage relationship also underscored the perception that most of these artists never broke the connection to the larger culture. Indeed, according to Harlem Renaissance expert Nathan Huggins, much of the art was ultimately created for white audiences. Some critics have also observed that the patrons were so interested in encouraging black art that they did so without due regard for skill and talent, and that the real genius of the Harlem Renaissance was overwhelmed by mediocre work. African American painter Romare Bearden (1911-1988), for example, complained that too much African American art was unoriginal and uninspired. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed office in 1933 and initiated a host of governmental programs to recharge the American economy, artists and writers were recruited and paid to produce murals and sculpture for public places, books about American places and history, and literary works for a broad and dispirited populace, eventually turning out over 100,000 paintings, 18,000 sculptures, and 2,500 murals for post offices, courthouses, schools, and other public buildings. The arts in the United States were saved from insolvency by massive federal support. Along with the opportunity, however, some artists felt a pressure to adapt the imagination to government service, to become, in a sense, public employees. Though the American artist never experienced the regimentation and thought-control which overwhelmed the arts in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Soviet Union under Stalin, the freewheeling bohemianism down in Greenwich Village and up in Harlem gave way to production that was more predictable in intention and style. The liberalism and populism of the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal intensified the interest in American folk culture, fostering a home-grown variation on the "primitive." As early as 1901, W. E. B. Du Bois had praised the power of Negro spirituals in The Souls of Black Folk. Decades later, African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, who traveled to the black villages of Florida collecting folk tales, Langston Hughes, who wrote children's stories that drew on the folk tradition, and Jacob Lawrence, who painted ordinary African Americans in rural and urban settings and chronicled the Great Migration, contributed to a revival of interest in the culture of the common man and woman. Many poets, including Sterling Brown, experimented with writing exclusively in dialect-a move that not only recognized the importance of a black idiom, but also portrayed its vibrancy. Ordinary American life colors the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost. Frost revealed an enormous psychological and moral complexity behind the simple, austere surfaces of the New England back country; Williams found beauty in the most ordinary of urban places. Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Genevieve Taggard carried Whitman's legacy into the twentieth century, celebrating the sound of spontaneous vernacular voices and finding wonder in ordinary language and the pace of American speech. Even so, an interest in the ancient, the primitive, and folk traditions could carry artists in very different directions. Modernist poets like H.D., T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound unearthed and alluded to arcane texts, near-forgotten medieval ballads, classical verse, and primordial myths that seem to transcend cultures. Questions
[2944] Anonymous, Aaron Douglas with Arthur Schomburg and the Song of Towers Mural (1934), courtesy of Arthur Schomburg Photograph Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Douglas was commissioned to paint murals for the New York Public Library under the Works Progress Administration. This mural represents African American migration from the South to the urban North. [4410] Anonymous, Ernest Hemingway on Safari in Africa (1933), courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administrations, JFK Library. Photograph of Hemingway with elephant carcass and gun. Hemingway traveled exten-sively and based his novels in various locales. [4766] Aaron Douglas, The Judgement Day (1927), courtesy of The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art. Aaron Douglas, American (1899-1979). Gouache on paper; 11 3/4" x 9". Douglas's painting incor-porates images from jazz and African traditions and can be compared to "Harlem Shadows," by Claude McKay, and "The Weary Blues," by Langston Hughes. [5289] Aaron Douglas, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro Man in an African Setting (1934), courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago: Aaron Douglas, American, 1899-1979, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: the Negro in an African setting, before 1934, gouache on Whatman artist's board, 37.5 x 41 cm, Estate of Solomon Byron Smith; Margaret Fisher Fund, 1990.416. Sketch of Africans dancing and playing music. This became part of a Harlem mural sponsored by the Works Progress Administration chronicling African American history, from freedom in Africa to life in the contemporary United States. Africa and ancestry were themes of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," by Langston Hughes, and "Africa," by Claude McKay. [7170] Alfred Stieglitz, Negro Art Exhibition, November, 1914. BrancusiSculpture, March 1914 (1916), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62- 100177]. These photographs of two art exhibits illustrate the popularity of African American art and show how primitivism and African images influenced white artists such as Constantin Brancusi. [7408] Carl Van Vechten, Portrait of Bessie Smith Holding Feathers (1936), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-94955]. Writers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance debated how best to depict African Americans, espe-cially in terms of gender. Bessie Smith was a New Negro artist who embraced primitivism and the use of African images. |
|
 This tool builds multimedia presentations for classrooms or assignments.   An online collection of 3000 artifacts for classroom use.   Download the Instructor Guide PDF for this Unit. |
|
|
|