Aaron Douglas, The New Negro Movements Essay

By the age of 15 he was able to open his own workshop and developed a unique artistic style. He painted realistic but sad-looking figures. Like many Renaissance artists, he looked to ancient Greek and Roman mythology for inspiration for his work. However, the themes of his paintings could also be from Christianity so he was

The Black Arts movement refers to a period of “furious flowering” of African American creativity beginning in the mid-1960’s and continuing through much of the 1970’s (Perceptions of Black). Linked both chronologically and ideologically with the Black Power Movement, The BAM recognized the idea of two cultural Americas: one black and one white. The BAM pressed for the creation of a distinctive Black Aesthetic in which black artists created for black audiences. The movement saw artistic production as the key to revising Black American’s perceptions of themselves, thus the Black Aesthetic was believed to be an integral component of the economic, political, and cultural empowerment of the Black

The Harlem Renaissance was an event that started during World War One and lasted until the 1930’s. The Harlem Renaissance reshaped art, music, literature and theatre in the African American community. One debated during the Harlem Renaissance was whether folk art or high art best represented racial pride. Folk art best represents racial pride because it does not imitate other people’s art it shows the lives of everyday people, and people could relate to it.

The intersection of social movements and Art is one that can be observed throughout the civil right movements of America in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The sixties in America saw a substantial cultural and social change through activism against the Vietnam war, women’s right and against the segregation of the African - American communities. Art became a prominent method of activism to advocate the civil rights movement. It was a way to express self-identity as well as the struggle that people went through and by means of visual imagery a way to show political ideals and forms of resistance. To examine how a specific movement can have a profound effects on the visual art, this essay will focus on the black art movement of the 1960s and

In the 1920s the expanding culture of African Americans was wildly represented by the Harlem Renaissance. It happened after the Great Migration, when they started to develop new styles of literature, art, and music (doc. 6,7). The 1920s were called the “Jazz Age” because musicians recombined blues, European- based music, and ragtime. The Harlem Renaissance changed the way African Americans were looked at by other people in the U.S. and how they lived. It did this by giving them the chance to overcome the things they had gone through in the past. The Harlem Renaissance also allowed them to express how they feeled and show their talents.

During the 1920s and early 1930s nearly half a million African Americans migrated to the northern cities, in a movement called the Great Migration. Many of the southern African Americans migrated to a city called Harlem in New York. They relocated due to dogmatism and intolerance of melanin diverging out the of pores of many white southerners. The African Americans who migrated found new opportunities both economic and artistic that resulted to the creation of a stable middle class Black –Americans (Dover, 2006). This was the Harlem Renaissance a cultural, social, and artistic explosion. The core of Harlem expressed by Alain Locke is that through art, “negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self-determination.” (The New Negro 1925) Harlem became the center of a literary movement and a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.” The Harlem Renaissance facilitated the rebirth of African American literature, identity, and the birth of black pride. The great works “Passing”, “Miss Cynthie”, and “The City of Refuge” depict this new Negro movement in different classes of Harlem that took place during this great cultural and artistic awakening.

The Harlem Renaissance was part of the 1920’s. This was an important time for African American culture because jazz, art and literature become popular for the African American people. Ethnic neighborhoods contributed to the rise of jazz, art, and literature that promoted a new influence among the African community. Now, other ethnicities began to appreciate and adopt this new culture.

His style was that of works that had a narrative feeling to them. The storyteller in him started to become evident when they became available for display in New York City.

The New Negro Movement, also known as The Harlem Renaissance, was a time in the early twentieth century where African Americans embraced literature, music, theatre, and visual arts (Alchin). They were inspired and gave inspiration to many blacks in the community. The Great Migration was the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance – it is, where it began the most significant movement in the black history. After World War I, “more than six million African Americans” traveled from “the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West” to achieve economic and social benefit, and a new home in Harlem, New York City (History.com Staff). It “has been a synonym for being a center of culture, intelligence, and fashion” (Harlem). That exact time period gave black people opportunity to grow, to prosper, and to express. Through art, they have shown the value of life, even though there was brutal racism, injustice in black identity, and slavery. This is a movement in the black culture to show that they are just more than the color of their skin.

From the 1920’s to the mid 1930’s a literary, intellectual, and artistic movement occurred that kindled the African Americans a new cultural identity. This movement became known as the Harlem Renaissance, which is also known as the “New Negro Movement”. With this movement, African Americans sought out to challenge the “Negro” stereotype that they had received from others while developing innovation and great cultural activity. The Harlem Renaissance became an artistic explosion in the creative arts. Thus, many African Americans turned to writing, art, music, and theatrics to express their selves.

For a long time, his art was criticized, being told that his pictures were more of caricatures, rather than soulful representations of African Americans, “His abstracted representations of African Americans were more popular among white Parisian patrons”( Michael Rosenfeld Art). He took these critiques sensitively, and in “Janitor Who Paints” you can see he painted over the bodies to make much more forgiving scenes. In time, people began to appreciate his art for what it really was, rather than being repulsed by it because they weren't familiar with what they were seeing. Palmer Hayden lived his life traveling and expressing the real African American

His early paintings had an unconventional, unique, and unfinished look about them. The images were known to everyone in everyday life.

He was inspired and influenced by Vincent van Gogh Paul Gauguin, and many more. He influenced Georges Braque, Joan Miró, and even more.

He lived in the classical period, he developed and evolved several subtle ways in the most influential structural principle. His idea of perfection

hi His primary contribution was the ready-made. The ready-mades involved challenging the idea on what is art by discharging in ways that provoke the viewer to