The term Harlem Renaissance refers to an artistic, cultural, and social beginning of writing about race and African American's place in America in the 1920's and early 1930's. It is very difficult to put an exact date on this period because what was going on during this time was long in developing. This movement was of such great magnitude that this period was renamed the New "Negro Movement" in Harlem. Harlem was the center of urban black life. If you wanted your writing to be known, you went to Harlem. If you wanted to effect the social change in the black communities you went to Harlem. If you wanted to compose music in jazz or blues, you went to Harlem. If you wanted to change your circumstances and you were black, you went to Harlem. It was considered the heart of the Renaissance in African American letters, and the heart of African American life. The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time mainstream black artists, writers and musicians were taken seriously and attracted significant attention from the art world at large.
The Harlem Renaissance at the beginning emerged as a social and intellectual uprising in the African American communities. There were many factors or concerns of African Americans that started the groundwork for this upheaval. These concerns began after The Great Migration. The Great Migration was the movement of hundreds of blacks from the economically depressed rural south to the north. African Americans moved to the North in order to take advantage of the employment opportunities created by World War I. During this time as more educated and individuals arrived in New York's Harlem, it developed into the political and social Mecca of the world. Also during this time there were black historians and sociologists like W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey who made an effort to voice racial equality for African Americans and was eventually instrumental in starting the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and others began to set the stage for literature in Harlem. One of DuBois's most notable books that describe the black American life is "The Souls of Black Folks" (1903). This particular book presaged the Harlem Renaissance, because DuBois believed that there was a distinct black aesthetic that should be cultivated.
Alain Locke, a scholar who graduated from Harvard, wrote a book titled "The New Negro. An Interpretation" (1925). This was the book that introduced America to what would be the Harlem Renaissance. Most of the writing done by James Weldon Johnson during the time of the Harlem Renaissance described the reality of black life in America and the struggle for racial identity.
There were three major events between 1924 and 1926 of African American literature that placed black writers in the mainstream and launched the Harlem Renaissance. The first event was the publication of the magazine "The Survey Graphic, " a Harlem community magazine that was produced its first issue in 1925. This particular issue focused on the writings of blacks and was edited by Alan Locke, a literary scholar. The second event was the publication of Nigger Heaven (1926), written by Carl Van Vechten a novelist writing about the black culture during the Harlem Renaissance. As a result of Vechten's book many African Americans were offended about the contents of the book, but the book also created a Negro Vogue that drew thousands to the excitement of Harlem. Finally in 1926, a group of young writers including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Wallace Thurman, eventually took control of the literary Renaissance in Harlem.
There was no common style or literary style that was prominent during the Renaissance. But, what united these artists, as one was their commitment to focusing on the artistic expression of the African American experience. Here were many common themes that were a reoccurrence in most of the writing during the Renaissance. These themes include the experience of African Americans in Africa and the rural south. There were also the themes of strong racial pride and the desire for social and political equality.
In the aspect of performing arts, blacks in the musical theater included such accomplished writers as Bob Cole, and J Rosamond Johnson who was the brother of James Weldon Johnson who later wrote the black national anthem Lift Every Voice and Sing. Also during this time the Jazz and Blues music was a major role player in the Harlem Renaissance. This type of music or sound had migrated from the south to the north and filtered into the bars, cabarets and nightclubs of Harlem.
Diversity and experimentation also flourished in the performing arts. This diversity and experimentation was reflected in the blues singing of Bessie Smith and in other forms of music such as Jazz and Ragtime. This diversity also brought about the weaving of the rhythms of African American music into the writings of Langston Hughes. This experimentation can be seen in Hughes poems of ghetto life, called The Weary Blues (1926).
Among the visual artists who responded to Alain Locke's vision in visual culture during the Harlem Renaissance were mainly four black artists, each who, like so many others were actively engaged in the art world of Harlem and the transitional period. These artists were Meta Fuller, Palmer Hayden, William H. Johnson and of course Aaron Douglas who produced socially relevant art that was realistically done in the exploration of Black life and artistic themes.
Meta Fuller played an early part of this transitional period in Harlem. Her artistic perception and understanding was well ahead of other artists of this time, and gained the attention of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance after she had spent many years working in Paris. As a sculptor in early 1902, Meta Fuller produced many African themes in her art pieces. Her influence of African themes resulted from her marriage to Dr. Solomon Fuller who was from Liberia, West Africa. Through this marriage she was able to interpret African folktales in her sculptures, and bring new insight to the portrayal of neo-African themes in American art. She was the first African American woman to become a professional artist.
@Text: Other works by Meta Fuller reflect the strong influence of Auguste Rodin, with whom she studied while at the Academie Colarossi in Paris. In 1914, Fuller created a sculpture, which anticipated the spirit and style of the Harlem Renaissance. The artwork entitled Ethiopia Awakening, symbolizes the emergence of the New Negro and idealizes the conditions of African Americans through a female figure. The sculptures composition reveals a partially wrapped mummy figure, that is bound from the waist down, but from the waist up, the hair and shoulders resemble that of a beautiful African woman. The representation of death that is used frequently by Fuller is very evident in the lower half of the figure, while the upper part of the torso is alive displaying the idea of motherhood, the rebirth of womanhood, and the emergence of nationhood the bottom half of the sculpture reveals the death of the old and the destroying of the past.
Palmer Hayden arrived in Harlem from Virginia after World War I as a self-trained artist who worked as a custodian. However there are records that indicate that he was a student of Cooper Union in New York and pursued courses at Boothbay Art Colony in Maine as an independent student artist. He also studied and painted in France, where he resided from 1927 until 1932. During his time in Harlem he became the principle artist who communicated Black folklore from the south through his paintings. He also expressed the native customs of Southern Blacks in his works visually.
An important elements in the paintings of Palmer Hayden included the people of the community and the fashions and manners that they portrayed. This can be seen in the painting, "Just Back from Washington". In this painting there is a young man who is fashionably dressed holding a strolling or walking cane. The figure of the man represents a city dude or city slicker, which is the perennial presence at the nightclubs in Harlem. Hayden's paintings of the 1930's and 1940's chronicle the various manners of dress found in the Black rural South and northern urban communities. His paintings, which tell the story of the Black experience, are often without particular reference to a specific time. But one is often left wondering from what community has Hayden captured his themes of the Black urban life? The place is evident, Harlem the home of the Renaissance of Black culture.
William H. Johnson arrived in Harlem from Florence, South Carolina in 1918. Upon his arrival in Harlem Johnson became a student at the National Academy of Design and was invited to assist the painter George Lucas. But like other artists such as Palmer Hayden in the 1920's, Johnson left the United States in 1926 to study art in Europe. Through his travel in London, he came in contact with the art of Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Chaim Soutine.
The style of William H. Johnson's work was often represented as naive, primitive, and geometrically drawn. He had also at this time around the mid 1930's reduced his palette to four or five colors. He also at this time became very interested in painting Black subjects that emphasized Christian themes. The compositions such as "Descent from the Cross" (c. 1939), "Mount Calvary" (1939), and "Nativity" (1939) shows Johnson's presentation of an all-Black cast as the family as Jesus.
William Johnson also painted subject that addressed political issues in Harlem. In the painting "Moon over Harlem" (1944), a bloody scene is depicted which shows the police and community citizens in a night brawl. During this period of political dissent Johnson also included depictions of Black heroes , world leaders, and abolitionist figures in his paintings. These paintings included figures such as George Washington Carver, in his laboratory, accepting awards from various officials, and displaying his numerous inventions such as peanuts and sweet potatoes.
Other political and social statements about Harlem in Johnson's work include "Café" (1939), and "Chain Gang" (1939-1940). These and other works that centered around the theme of the Black dancer were done while he lived in Harlem. In 1944, he began recounting his life and experiences of growing up in the South and painted families going to church on Sunday, farmers tending to their crops, as well of portraits of his own family in Li'l Sis (1944), Little Sweet (1944), and Mom and Dad (1944). In the painting Mom and Dad, the artist's mother who is Black is sitting in a rocker in the front of a portrait of a white man whom is Johnson's father. In this painting the artist is making a social statement about his illegitimate birth, the father that he never knew, and the limited knowledge he had about his family roots.
Johnson's work represented and important break in traditional art. It signaled the beginning of the acceptance of Black artists and Black art as part of the Christian experience in Western art. He work hard to develop an awareness of the social plight of Black people in America. Johnson used Harlem as a place for information, and the Renaissance evolved his sensitivity to the racial problems that existed in America. His last years of painting in Harlem centered around a plan to bring peace to himself through the creation of his art work and to present his own family history and heritage to enlighten the Black community as a whole.
Like William H. Johnson, Aaron Douglas introduced Black religious subjects into his work in the 1920's. Aaron Douglas, was a woodcut printer, illustrator, muralist and was considered the leading painter during the Harlem Renaissance. He arrived in Harlem in 1924 with a certification to teach visual arts. Having been influenced by African American painter Ossawa 0. Tanner, Douglas was very active in New York during the Renaissance. Most of the images that he painted were stylized African figures that contained geometric shapes that overlapped; similar to those painted by Picasso.
Like Picasso, Aaron Douglas' work created the sense of geometric movement and rhythm. Aaron Douglas seemed to be one of many African American artists who embraced the art world at the right time. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1922 and later received a degree from the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1944.
Douglas also explored racial themes in his art and turned to Africa as a source of beauty and artistic inspiration. Through his study of African art he was able to combine his knowledge of classical art with African art ‘s cubist forms. As a result of his study he created his own style of painting and modernism. His work became very stylized, elongated with angular figures on the picture plane exhibiting movement. Douglas was familiar with many of the literary writers during the Harlem Renaissance era. He illustrated the works of such figures as DuBois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson.
Some of Aaron Douglas's most notable works include GOD'S TROMBONES, a cubist style black and white rhythmic illustration that was created for James Weldon Johnson's books of poems and sermons in verse. This particular work depicted the Black history and customs of African American people and culture during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. The original series of paintings was completed in 1927, and included illustrations JUDGMENT DAY, LET MY PEOPLE GO. GO DOWN DEATH, NOAH'S ARK, and THE CRUCIFIXION. He also had created illustrations for a book that was written by Dr. Alain Locke, THE NEW NEGRO, published in 1925. Douglas' talents also allowed him to be commissioned to complete various murals around the world. The murals that he was instrumental in painting included a mural for the opening of the Club Ebony in New York during 1920. He also traveled to Chicago to create a mural for the Sherman Hotel's College Inn Ballroom and another mural in Nashville Tennessee at Fisk University. Douglas's art appeared frequently in The Crisis and Opportunity magazines. In these magazines his work always portrayed some aspect of African American life and experience.
In reference to the many political statements Aaron Douglas made in his works, the one that stands out the most is in his illustration of THE CRUCIFIXION. In this painting Douglas sought to illustrate the agony that Jesus had suffered for all mankind as he is walking quietly in the shadow of crosses. In the traditional paintings of Christian themes, white artists have omitted Blacks completely from God's creation except as servants. For this reason Douglas was determined to portray Blacks in his paintings as a part of the Biblical scene. The central figure in THE CRUCIFIXION is a black male who carries a cross much bigger than he is. Douglas conveys in this painting that the weight of the world is standing on this male figure's shoulders. THE CRUCIFIXION breaks with the traditional iconography because of the black theme that is dominant in a Christian theme. And the message comes alive in a visual sense that strikes out at the core of American political, social racism, tragic conditions of black slavery, human deprivation, and the denial of the black man's existence. According to Aaron Douglas THE CRUCIFIXION, had become every black American in the 1920's in Harlem.
Aaron Douglas was one of the first muralists to complete murals in New York during the Renaissance. His first mural was for the New York Ebony Club in 1927. Another completed for Fisk University in 1929 followed this mural. In 1931 Douglas traveled to Paris and upon his return he completed yet another mural Aspects of Negro Life for the Countee Cullen Branch of the Free Public Library in New York. In this mural Douglas demonstrated the history of African Americans, and served as a great signature of work for the Harlem Renaissance.
When Aaron Douglas completed his mural series in 1934 for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, he had already changed the use of realism in his paintings. During this time he had started responding to the art community's interest in portraiture and genre scenes. The attempts by Douglas to combine modernist aesthetics with African symbols gave him the chance to stylize his art in a manner which had not been achieved by any other Black American artist before him. Black heritage along with racial themes were the subjects he attempted to paint when became interested and aware that Black people were developing in their own history and heritage.
Although Douglas returned from time to time to portrait and landscape painting, the lasting impact that he made on America as a whole was his approach to painting themes that related to the Black experience and consciousness. His death in 1979, brought to a end a true African American artist whose artistic insight and creativity reached far beyond the Harlem Renaissance.