Sunday, December 2, 2012

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


Saturday, December 1, 2012

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