African-American paintings, sculptures and literary works: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York brings the “Harlem Renaissance” artistic movement born from the Great Migration of millions of black people from the South to the North of the States out of marginality -United at the beginning of the 20th century.
Starting Sunday, one of the world’s most prestigious museums presents 160 pieces of modern art from African-American universities, art centers and foundations, for the exhibition “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism”, already announced by the Met last summer in a simple press release.
This grandiose museum backed by Central Park presented to the press this week a complete overview of the first international modern art movement founded by African-American artists, supposed to represent “the modern daily life of new black neighborhoods like Harlem in New York and South Side in Chicago in the 1920s-1940s.
“The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” is “an opening and broadening of the history of art and its stories,” Met director Max Hollein told AFP.
The interwar period in the United States marked the first decades of the Great African-American Migration (which stretched from 1910 to 1970 according to historians) when some six million people left southern states subject to racial segregation towards northern metropolises — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia — the center and the west supposed to offer freedom, equality and better living conditions.
“Modern black subject”
“Thanks to portraits, scenes of urban and night life, by major artists of the time, this exhibition highlights the central role of the + Harlem Renaissance + movement in shaping the modern black subject and even modern art of the beginning of the 20th century,” explained Mr. Hollein in August.
Featured artists include Charles Alston, Miguel Covarrubias, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee and Laura Wheeler Waring.
Part of the exhibition compares paintings by African-American artists expatriated for a time in Europe with portraits of Africans made by Europeans Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Germaine Casse, Kees Van Dongen, Jacob Epstein and Ronald Moody.
Mr. Hollein thus hopes to demarginalize and enhance the status of the “Harlem Renaissance”, a movement neither structured over time nor confined to Harlem, a multicultural and popular neighborhood in northern Manhattan.
“This exhibition is one of the ways to change that,” thinks the art historian.
Beyond New York and the interwar period, the Met honors the Chicago painter Motley (1891-1981), the poet Langston Hughes (1901-1967) who wrote until his death, or the painter Jacob Lawrence, renowned abroad, and who worked until his death in 2000.
African American descendants
The patron of the exhibition, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, was also delighted that descendants of African-American artists “have preserved works whose value they knew at a time when they did not have any ” Again.
Like Madeline Murphy Rabb, who struggled to suppress her tears while admiring the painting “Girl With Pomegranate” (1940) by her great-aunt Laura Wheeler Waring.
“I worked for decades to ensure that my great-aunt was recognized as she deserved,” she told AFP.
She confides that she has “always aimed for a wider audience to see this important work” in the United States, often scarred by discrimination and racism and where “so many white people and some black people have stereotypes about what black artists do.” paint”.
“Harlem Renaissance” is also associated with African-American thinkers, writers, sociologists such as William Edward Burghardt “WEB” Du Bois (1868-1963) and Alain Locke (1885-1954).
In his book “The New Negro” (1925), Locke was interested in the potential of the “young generation” of blacks capable of leading society towards “something close to spiritual emancipation” rather than classical political issues.
The essayist thus urged African-American painters to open up to the visual arts of Africa and modern European art, recalls museum curator Denise Murrell.
Thus, William H. Johnson (1901-1970) emigrated from his native South Carolina to New York before living in Tunisia, France and Denmark.
2024-02-24 14:14:34
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