Artist+9

==﻿﻿﻿﻿ The Harlem Renaissance Artists ==

=  Artist only Area. =

Visual artists played a key role in creating depictions of the New Negro. Alongside their counterparts in literature, music, and theater, painters Palmer C. Hayden, Malvin Gray Johnson, and Laura Wheeler Waring, among others, exhibited bold, stylized portraits of African Americans during this period, as well as scenes of black life from a variety of perspectives. Sculptors Richmond Barthé, Sargent Johnson, and Augusta Savage used clay, wood, and bronze to create comparable representations.





James Van Der Zee:
Photographer. Born June 29, 1886 in Lenox, Massachusetts. After attending schools in Lenox, he went to New York City c.1906 and held a series of jobs as a waiter and elevator operator. From 1909 to 1915 he played in Fletcher Henderson's band and the John Wanamaker Orchestra (and in an orchestra that accompanied silent films). Attracted to photography, Van Der Zee got a job as a darkroom assistant, and after learning the fundamentals of photography he opened his own studio in Harlem (1916). On the upper end of Manhattan, Harlem was only then becoming a haven for African Americans, and during the next five decades he would photograph African Americans of all social classes and occupations. He took thousands of pictures - mostly indoor portraits, though he occasionally went out and photographed the Harlem scene. Although Van Der Zee photographed many of the African American celebrities who passed through Harlem, most of his work was of the straightforward commercial studio variety - weddings and funerals (including pictures of the dead for grieving families), family groups, teams, lodges, clubs, or people simply wanting to have a record of themselves in fine clothes. He often supplied props or costumes and in his developing - which he did himself - he would add pictorial touches with an air brush or double-printed images. Forgotten for many years, Van Der Zee had retired and was reduced to poverty when in 1969 the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted an exhibition called //Harlem on My Mind// that brought him and his work renewed attention and rewards. He took up photography again in 1980 until his death.

Aaron Douglas (1898-1979)

Aaron Douglas was the Harlem Renaissance artist whose work best exemplified the 'New Negro' philosophy. He painted murals for public buildings and produced illustrations and cover designs for many black publications including The Crisis and Opportunity. In 1940 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for twenty nine years."...Our problem is to conceive, develop, establish an art era. Not white art painting black...let's bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible. Let's create something transcendentally material, mystically objective. Earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic." Aaron Douglas

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