Harlem Visual Arts- Photographers

"Happiness is perfume, you can't pour it on somebody else

without getting a few drops on yourself."

"I tried to pose each person in such a way as to tell a story..."

James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee 

1886-1983, photographer, pianist, violinist.

Marcus Garvey Rally, 1924.
Gelatin silver print, 7 1/8 × 9 3/8 in. (18.1 × 23.8 cm).
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

CARL VAN VECHTEN
1880-1964 Photographer and writer

 In 1906, he moved to New York City. Van Vechten was interested in black writers and artists,

and knew and promoted many of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance,

including Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters, Richard Wright, and Wallace Thurman.

Van Vechten's controversial novel Nigger Heaven was published in 1926.

His essay "Negro Blues Singers" was published in Vanity Fair in 1926.

  

Photography by Carl Van Vechten-

Gladys Bentley 1932, Harlem

Langston Hughes, 1936

Romare Bearden, 1944

 Zora Neal Hurston, 1938



Harlem Renaissance Visual Arts- Sculptors

Augusta Savage- 1900-1962 
sculptor, activist, educator

Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” Lift Every Voice and Sing
 (The Harp), 1939

plaster sculpture created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, exhibited outside the

Contemporary Art Building height app. 16’ (destroyed after the fair).

"Gamin"  Bronze, 1929
Painted plaster 9x5 ¾ x 4 3/8 in.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

 HENRY BANNARN, 1910-1965 
artists, Sculptor, teacher

"Cleota"  Painted plaster, 1932
  17x7 1/4x9 1/4 inches. Signed, dated "6/9/32" and inscribed "To Cleota" in the plaster, 
at the rear of the neck truncation. Titled in the plaster, at the front edge of the base . 
Provenance: private collection.




"Applied Art is that art which has a use or can be used. . . . Fine Art is that art which has no use, save its esthetic value and beauty, the size of the work has nothing to do with whether it's applied or fine arts. . . . Connoisseurs both in America and a broad [sic] have my works in their collections as fine arts, in 1934 I was listed as an American Sculptor,-medium Wood carving. . . . I am of the opinion that [the curator] doesn't know very much about art. "Leslie Garland Bolling to Evelyn S. Brown, 27 March 1939, Harmon Foundation Papers, Library of Congress.

LESLIE GARLAN BOLLING  1898-1955 
wood carver, teacher
He also completed a sculpture of Rose McClendon for Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House. 

Aunt Monday 1932, Wood, Courtesy of Joseph L. Antrim

Cousin-on-Friday, 1935 Maple 6 ¾ x 5 ¾ x 9 ¼ inches

Gift of the Honorable and Mrs. Alexander W. Weddell

Richmond Barthé 1901-1989 sculptor

Blackberry Woman, modeled by 1930, cast 1932

bronze 35 1/2 x 12 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Pair of Busts  Booker T. Washington, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1928

 Painted plaster 20 x 8 1/4 x 9 5/8 and 18 x 7 3/4 x 9 Private Collector

SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON 1888-1967

sculptor, potter, painter, ceramist, print-maker, carver

  Mask ,1933 
Swan Galleries/private collector

Chester, 1930 
sculpture painted terracotta 11 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.

"Hold fast to your dreams, for without them

life is a broken winged bird

that cannot fly."
Langston Hughes



Harlem Renaissance Visual Arts- Painters

                                                                                                                         

"Each body has its art, each body has its pose."

Gwendolyn  Brooks                                                   

 Aaron Douglas

1899-1979
Illustrator, Modernist Artist, Muralist.                                                                                                         

"Aspiration" 

1936 Oil on Canvas, 60x60 in. 

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

 "We can go to African life and get 

a certain amount of form and color, 

understanding and using this knowledge 

in development of an expression that 

interprets our life." 

– Aaron Douglas

 Archibald J. Motley

 1891-1981,  Artist

"Blues" 
1929 Oil on canvas, 80 x 100.3 cm

Collection of Archie Motley and Valerie Gerrard Browne

© Archie Motley

 "Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going."

Langston Hughes

Beauford Joseph Delaney

1901-1979, Modernist Painter

        "Greene Street" 

1940, Oil on Canvas. 39 x 27 inch. 

Private Collection

"I would like you to know, 

I am a doctor of music."

Nina Simone

Charles Alston

1907-1977
Artist, Sculptor, Muralist, Teacher

"Modern Medicine"

1936 oil on canvas.

Mural in Harlem Hospital.

                                                                                                     

Artist must be free to

choose what he does, certainly,

but he must also never be 

afraid to do what he might choose."

Langston Hughes

      

Hale Woodruff 

1900-1980

 Artist, Muralist, Teacher

"Amistad Mutiny"

1938, three panel mural

can be found at Talladega College in Alabama. 

 "No matter how far a person can go

 the horizon is still way beyond you." 

Zora Neal Hurston

Jacob Lawrence
1917-2000
Artist, Dynamic Cubism                                                                                 

  "The Migration of the Negro" Panel 1 

1940-41, Casein tempera on cardboard 12 x 18 in. 

The Whitney Museum

"I have discovered in life 

that there are ways of getting 

almost anywhere you want to go, 

if you really want to go." 

Langston Hughes

JAMES LESESNE WELLS

(1902-1992) 

Graphic Artist, Teacher.

 "The flight into Egypt" 

1930, oil on canvas 

Private Collection of James L. Wells

"What we play is life."

Louis Armstrong

Lois Mailou James

1905-1998

Textile Designer, Painter

    

   "Ascent To Ethiopia" 

1932, oil on canvas

     Lois M. James

"The Artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination."

Richard Wright

 

PALMER HAYDEN 

1890-1973 Painter

      

"Midsummer Night in Harlem"

oil on canvas, 1938  

Harmon Collection

                                                                                               

"I paint what us Negroes, colored people, us Americans know. We're a brand new race, raised 

and manufactured in the United States.

 I do like to paint what they did." 

Palmer Hayden     

 Prentiss Taylor 

1907-1991

 Illustrator, Lithographer, Painter

                                                                                                

"Eight Black Boys in a Southern Jail" 

1932, Lithography on paper, 9 1/8 x 6" 

The University of Arizona Museum Art

(based on the Scottsboro Trial).

   “Practically all great artists 

accept the influence of others. But . . .

the artist with vision 

sees his material, chooses, changes,

   and by integrating what he has

   learned with his own experiences,

   finally molds something distinctly Personnel."

   Romare Bearden

                                                                                     

Romare Bearden 

1911-1988 Artist, Writer                

"The Cotton Pickers" 

1941 Gouache on board, 

The Romare Bearden Foundation

If it is to be, It is up to me. 

- William H. Johnson

WILLIAM H. JOHNSON 

1901-1970 Artist                                                             

"Street Life, Harlem"

 1939-40, oil on plywood 45 5/8 x 38 5/8 in. 

Smithsonian American Art Museum

 "There are some people that

 if they don't know, 

you can't tell them." 

Louis Armstrong

Harlem Renaissance Musicians

James Rosamond Johnson 

1874-1954, Composer

James Weldon Johnson, and James Rosamond Johnson, Brothers

 "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g19Q6i_e7tA.              

 It was originally performed as a poem for Lincoln's birthday in 1900, by 500 students at Stanton School, and written by it's principal James Weldon Johnson, Johnson's brother. He wrote it to introduce their honored guest, Booker T. Washington. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem" and it became the inspiration of the New Negro Movement.

Lil Harden Armstrong 1898-1971

Composer, jazz pianist, singer, and band leader.

 "Oriental Swing"1936-1940

  http://www.encyclopedia.com/video/mMDBluSMUas-lil-hardin-armstrong-her-swing.aspx.  Taken from her album "Lil Harden Armstrong and Her Swing Orchestra  She grew up with her grandmother, a former slave in Mississippi. She is the second wife of Louis Armstrong and they collaborated on many recordings in the 1920's.

Duke Ellington 1899-1974

Composer, Pianist, and Band Leader.

"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" 1931 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FvsgGp8rSE.

 Lyrics by Irving Mills. Ellington wrote about this song ""as the expression of a sentiment which prevailed among jazz musicians at the time." It introduced the term "Swing" into everyday language. He is the 20th century's best-known artist. A major trend setter of Harlem Renaissance music.

"If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll."

Louis Armstrong