IMAGINING AFRICAN AMERICANS IN AMERICAN ART
Early Representations of African Americans
Until the 20th century, with a few exceptions, black artists were barred from the mainstream art world, and the lives of African Americans were largely ignored as subject matter. With these historical boundaries in mind, consider a painting from before the Civil War that depicts African Americans.
Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia is one of the most important images of African American life from before the Civil War. Significantly, it was painted by a white man. Christian Mayr was born and trained in the German city of Nuremberg and came to America probably as a young man. He specialized in genre pictures or scenes of everyday life but earned his living as a portrait painter, traveling up and down the eastern seaboard in search of patrons. It is no surprise, then, that in the summer of 1838 we find him at the resort of White Sulphur Springs, in the mountains of Virginia (later West Virginia). The resort, a favorite summer retreat for plantation families from the steamy Carolina low country, teemed with potential patrons. What is surprising, though, is how Mayr apparently ignored them all and focused his attention on their servants.
Though rare, slave balls were not unheard of in the South. Sponsored by white masters, for their more privileged slaves, these festivities adopted the genteel social conventions of white society. Why do you think this particular celebration was held? Our best guess is the obvious one: it is a wedding, the bride and groom, both in white, step to a vigorous dance, accompanied by musicians playing flute, fiddle and cello. Other couples join in the dancing while onlookers crowd around.
The painting is remarkable on several counts. First, it is almost unique in its depiction of slave life in the antebellum South. Despite its pervasiveness in southern culture, slavery was virtually ignored in art. Why? Was it just too impolite? Would it have made the viewer uncomfortable? Would it have provoked unwelcome questions? It is difficult to answer these questions with certainty today.
The second remarkable thing about this painting is the way it depicts slaves - without the crude caricatures typical of the time. Mayr portrays individuals, old and young, thin and stout, some with dark complexions, others lighter skinned. Painting more than 20 years before the Civil War, the artist grants his subjects a full ration of humanity - and this at a time when the U.S. Constitution recognized slaves as having only three-fifths the value of whites.
Then there is a more complex and disturbing interpretation, one that insists on the crucial but easily overlooked fact that everyone in this jolly company is in bondage. They are slaves - well fed and well dressed for sure - but still slaves. So, two questions can be asked: in depicting the polite revels of a privileged class of slaves, was the artist not willfully skirting the harsh reality of slavery? Was he, in fact, softening that harshness, making slavery palatable to polite white society?
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Untitled, 1994
John Thomas Biggers (American, 1924 - 2001)
The African American Experience in 20th-Century Art
In the 20th century, artists such as John Biggers and Jacob Lawrence each developed their own styles and visual languages for portraying the African American experience. These African American artists broke the boundaries that had kept them out of the history of American art. African Americans were now both artists and subjects.
John Biggers sought to synthesize memories of his bittersweet childhood in the
segregated South (he was born and raised in rural North Carolina) with his own experiences of postcolonial Africa. On a more spiritual level, he sought to reunite through art Africa and her scattered children. He developed a rich and complex visual language that addressed, often in the same image, the past, present and future of his race.
Though untitled, this 1994 painting is a
symbolic,
ritualized union of African and African American experience. Two African women protectively flank a family group. Goddesslike in scale, they allude to Africa's role as birth mother. The creation theme is further explored in the three generations of family, who emerge from a pool or river teeming with fish and a crocodile. Here Biggers makes reference to both Christian baptism and the watery origins of life. Other
symbols reinforce the connection of people to their past. For example, the guardian women uphold intricately carved African combs, their designs incorporating
ritual animals: birds, elephant and serpent.
In this painting, the African American family stands together, bonded by affection, facing across a tilled field, a schoolhouse (or church) on the right and a sharecropper's house on the left. Looking beyond the hardship of their lives, they face the dawn. In the
foreground, behind his elders, a child outstretches his arms, like a bird in flight, the boy at the start of his life's journey.
Is it possible the boy is the young John Biggers? Though he personally experienced the often tragic struggle of African Americans, Biggers held to an essentially hopeful and profound vision of the human condition. Paintings like this one celebrate the enduring strength of community and faith.
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