Cynthia H. Roberts
ROMARE H. BEARDON
Born 1914-
Beardon grew up in Harlem and was a graduate of New York University. He studied at the Art Student’s League in New York. Beardon was influenced by the artists he men in New York and later in Paris.
During World War II Beardon served in the army. Upon his return he had his first oneman exhibition in Washington, D.C.
Beardon’s vision reflects the life of black people throughout our country. Mixed in with his paints, we find bits and pieces of paper and cloth that Beardon has picked up here and there in his travels through AfroAmerican.
To be sure, the ethnic character of black experience is unmistakably rich and unique. However, Beardon goes further than simply providing straight documentation. Because his art is larger than life he gives us much more than mere illustration. His collages vividly project classic themes that are common to all humanity. Love, Anger, Death, and loneliness for example are treated with awesome power and brilliant inventiveness.
In a typical Beardon piece we may see a picture of a mother and child. They are Black. That is important for their identity. But, even more important, they are human beings. The child is small and helpless. The mother is a tower of strength and support, lending security and love to the child in her lap. You can’t help but feel touched deeply by the spirit and the mood of the picture.
Beardon brings contact with the basic humanity of his people. He shows us the groping reach of figures arising form a night’s sleep, the sense of belonging that comes from being part of a family sitting down to dinner together, or going to worship with each other—and always the scene comes through with poignancy and profound honesty.
For a Black person seeing the Beardon exhibition must have been rewarding and infinitely worthwhile because it unfolded layers of reality that confirmed the experience only black people have ever really known and felt in specifics of their life. For Nonblack person the Beardon exhibition was also worthwhile because through his work, the artist shared a wealth of experience that white people could never truly know except in a vague, approximate sort of way.
Through contact with Beardon’s art, a genuinely concerned person may sense something of the hopes and despair the flesh and the spirit, the pleasures and the pain, the inimitable, invincible blackness and the imposed whiteness that are the daytoday reality of life in Black America.
His paintings included: Black Manhattan, 1969, collage of paper and synthetic polymer paint. Collection Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Kheel, New York, Carolina Interior, 1970 collage of paper and synthetic polymer paint. Collection Shorewood Publisher, New York, Palm Sunday Processional 196768, Collection Cordier and Ekstrom, New York., Patchwork Quilt, 1970, Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Evening, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
HUGHIE LEESMITH
Born 1915-
Born in Eustis, Florida but went to school in Cleveland, Ohio, graduating from the Cleveland School of Art with high honors and a grant for postgraduate study. He served in the Navy during World War II, and there completed a series of paintings entitled the History of the Negro in the United States Navy. He had his first oneman show in Chicago 1945, and has exhibited his works in oneman, group and jury shows ever since.
Mr. LeeSmith began to win prizes in 1938 for his art, and has had such awards as the Detroit Institute Founders prize in 1953, that of the National Academy of Design (four times), the Emily Lowe Award (1957) and the 1960 award from the American Society of African Culture.
Hughie LeeSmith is a realistic and yet magical painter of the loneliness of decaying urban life. A fine draughtsman and quiet colorist, he paints with the precision of the surrealists in a highly poetic, minor key.
LeeSmith brings contact with the basic humanity of his people. A pervading sense of loneliness emanated from this painting. He best known for his painting called: Boy with a Tire (1952).
The artist is marvelously skilled at depicting textures. The care with which he minutely details non-organic objects—crumbling plaster, cement, wire, wood contributes to the overall feeling of desolation. The brooding intensity and penetrating honesty of his work have truth for all of contemporary Western civilization.
JOSEPH OVERSTREET
Born 1934-
Born in Conehatta, Mississippi, when he was a boy, his family moved to California. In the early fifties, he lived and worked in Berkeley and San Francisco where he had his own gallery for a while. In 1955, he worked for Walt Disney in Los Angeles, drawing the characters in animated films.
He exhibited in several oneman shows and group shows at the Artist Cooperative in San Francisco 1958, Aegis Gallery, St Mark’s Church 1963, C.O.R.E. exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery 1963, The Pearl Gallery 1966, Countee Cullen Library 1964, Pan American Building 1968, Allen Stone Gallery 1969, Studio Museum 1969, Brooklyn Museum 1969, Boston Museum of Fine Arts 1970 and the Hudson River Museum 1970.
Overstreet wanted his paintings to have an “eye catching ‘melody’ to them—where the viewer can see patterns with changes in color, design and spaced and when the viewer is away from them [the paints], they will get flashes of the paintings that linger on the mind like that of a tune or melody of a song that catches up on people’s ears—my painting will catch up on the people’s ears and mind.”
There is a feeling of magic and ritual evoked in his paintings which strongly relates to Overstreet’s ideas on Black art. Overstreet likes to think of black as being infinity and not as having a scientific scale. Black are is a spiritual movement like black magic or witchcraft. He believed that his paintings have such qualities in them—earth qualities. He was best known for the painting, Justice, Faith, Hope and Peace (1969).
MARIE JOHNSON
Born 1920-
Born in Baltimore, Johnson first attended Coppin State Teachers College there and was awarded an elementary school teaching certificate. Marie Johnson is a busy, committed woman. In addition to her professional activities, plus an active exhibition schedule, she is involved in community work.
Johnson is dedicated to the human values that unite mankind, the values that have too often been abandoned in the name of technologic and economic progress. As a black and an artist she is seeking to rediscover her roots, to examine the poignancy, dignity, humor, and beauty in the black experience. These are the themes of her work. Some of her work include; Mrs. Jackson, 1968, and Hope Street 1968.
In the Hope Street painting and elderly black man is framed by a window on which is perched a bird cage containing a live canary. Johnson is preoccupied with human values, Johnson states that her work is aim to depict the disparity between humanistic ideas and an increasingly impersonal and repressive society. She tries to create images which are intimate reelections of the lives of black people, images which are deeply rooted in black strength and black love. It is important to Marie Johnson that black people understand and identity with her work. She also looks at the dreams, suffering pride, and anger in her paintings. She wants her work to be recognized by black americans.
LESSON PLAN # 1
Students will select a Novel to read and write a two to three page book report. These Novels will be displayed in the classroom. Novels will include: l) Italians, 2) Afro-Americans, 3) American Indians, 4) Hispanics etc.
Students will share written book reports with the class.
The Format for the book report includes:
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a. Title Page
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b. Introduction
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c. Body
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d. Conclusion
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e. Likes and Dislikes about the book
LESSON PLAN # 2
Students will be given a short passage on an AfroAmerican Artist, his works and background information. Students will then read and answer comprehension questions 1-10.
GEOFFREY HOLDER
Born 1930 in PortofSpain, Trinidad, of mixed French, African and Irish descent, was brought up surrounded by art, for his grandfather was a French painter and his elder brother is, like Holder himself, a painter and a dancer. Holder attended the Queen’s Royal College and taught himself to paint at the age of fifteen when a minor illness kept him at home and gave him the opportunity to “steal” his brother’s paints.
Holder is passionately devoted to painting in oil and to drawing. In addition to easel paintings, he has executed two large murals, both in TrinidadHilton Hotel and one at the University of the West Indies. He has also designed costumes for ballets, and in 1968 worked on costumes, sets and choreography for a ballet on a Brazilian theme for the Rebekah Harkness foundation.
Tempo (1963)
The black experience in the Caribbean is at once more African and more European than it is American. There was not as much pressure placed on African slaves in the Caribbean Islands to break with their past.
1.
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Where was Geoffrey Holder born?
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2.
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Who were his ancestors? (3)
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3.
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What did his grandfather do?
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4.
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His older brother was a ____________ and a ____________like
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Geoffrey.
5.
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What school did Geoffrey Holder attend?
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6.
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How did Geoffrey get paints when he was 15 and ill at home?
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7.
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What famous opera company in New York was Mr. Holder the first dancer?
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8.
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What two types of art is Geoffrey Holder devoted to?
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9.
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Where would you find two of his large murals?
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10.
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Write two sentences that describe “Tempo”.
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