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.THE NEW NEGRO
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.A
new concept, a new movement |
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Brand
new to city-living, Black Americans brought their hopes and dreams
of a better life. Seeking social and political change, they encountered
a brand new school of thought that championed the arts as a means
to attain such. Educator and author Booker T. Washington was instrumental
in coining the term, ‘New Negro’ in the early 1900s.
The term represented the spirit of black self-awareness, artistic
consciousness and racial pride and was reflected in art, print,
photography and film. But
it was philosopher Alain Locke, a leading black intellectual,
who published it in an anthology. His 1925 "The
New Negro: An Interpretation," was a collection of fiction,
poetry, and essays on African and African-American art. It featured
his title essay, “The New Negro,” and works by writers
including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
and Claude McKay. Locke goaded the New Negro to demand civil rights
through artistic excellence versus political protest and replace
old stereotypes with a new vision of black identity.
This
vision of a new identity resonated with other African American
leaders who railed against negative imagery in mainstream media
by collaborating with photographers, newspaper editors and artists,
and creating campaigns to promote
Black beauty in visual culture. Locke, who was the first African
American to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, has been widely regarded
as the originator of the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance.
A gifted scholar, he taught at Howard University during the Renaissance.
In 1921, he became the chair of the Howard's Philosophy department
and remained there until his retirement in 1953.
His
New Negro concept, ignited an atmosphere of artistic revolt that
spread through black communities. Now a collective, critical and
creative mass, black culture was soon recognized for fresh new
talent...and for financial rewards.
.THE EXHIBITION
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.A
'golden age' for Black art |
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During
the Renaissance, African-American visual art came of age, and
the list of artist names from the period is a virtual who's who
in modern painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. Charles
White, William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Hale Woodruff,
Palmer Hayden, Richmond Barthé, Laura Wheeler Waring, Gordon
Parks and Beauford Delaney are all from the movement.
And
so are Romare Bearden, Allen
Rohan Crite, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, Horace Pippin,
Augusta Savage and James Van Der Zee - all of whom are featured
in I, Too Sing America. The exhibition, organized by
the Columbus
Museum of Art,
gets its name from a poem by Langston Hughes. It illuminates multiple
facets of the era and the lives of its people, telling a social
history. "The most vivid backstory of these Renaissance
artists," Haygood said, "was understanding and deciphering
the pressures they created under. They had bills and families
and sometimes relentless struggles in their daily lives. It’s
hard enough to produce something beautiful that will endure. To
be forced to produce such work under duress - and do it so well
- is amazing."
The
range of works reveal that artists literally transformed contemporary
representations of the black experience, and through group expression,
adapted the very American culture that sought to oppress them.
"I think more than anything, the Renaissance artists were
aware of their collective gifts." Haygood said. "I don’t
think they slowed up enough to anoint their movement as something
spectacular. The Renaissance needed time to gestate and be “discovered.”
I think it took several decades for the artists to fully appreciate
what they had accomplished."
In
addition to art, literature and theater, the first black filmmakers
and business leaders, like Madame CJ Walker, also emerged. Oscar
Micheaux produced more than thirty films, most of them between
1919 and 1935. Blacks appeared in Broadway musicals, but often
had to play stereotyped roles. Because of the demand for entertainment,
black music remains the biggest impact of the Renaissance.
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