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American Scene Painting

Harlem Renaissance The Changing American Scene—isolation Rebellion and Social Issues

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American Art Forms _ Harlem Renaissance

In his 1925 essay, "The New Negro", Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke encouraged African American artists to create a school of African American art with an identifiable style and aesthetic, and to look to African culture and African American folk life for subject matter and inspiration. Locke's ideas, coupled with a new ethnic awareness that was occurring in urban areas, inspired up and coming African American artists. The New Negro movement would later be known as the Harlem Renaissance.

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These artists rejected landscapes for the figurative, rural and urban scenes. They also focused on class, culture and Africa to bring ethnic consciousness into art and create a new black identity. Many, like Aaron Douglas, did large scale public murals as opposed to paintings that would be seen in art galleries and museums. AARON DOUGLAS, Noah’s Ark, ca. 1927. Oil on masonite, 4’ x 3’. Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.

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Influenced by African sculpture, Gauguin, Picasso and Matisse. Douglas developed a style for his work that was illustrative and powerful.

Murals represent origins, history, and development of a peoples identity. Douglas designed a five part mural series titled, Aspects of Negro Life, commissioned by the 135th Street Branch of

the New York Public Library, now the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, under the WPA Federal Arts Project.  Aspects of Negro Life chronicles the journey of African Americans in a four-part series. 

  AARON DOUGLAS, Aspect of Negro Life: Slavery to Reconstruction, ca. 1929. Oil on Masonite, 4’ x 3’. Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.

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Hayden was among the first African American artists to use African subjects and designs in his painting. In his later works Hayden focused on the African American experience, capturing both rural gatherings in the South and the urban milieu of New York. Palmer Hayden, Midsummer Night in Harlem, ca. 1938.

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Palmer Hayden was known for his paintings of the African American scene. In an interview he described The Janitor Who Paints, created around 1930, as "a sort of protest painting" of his own economic and social standing as well as that of his fellow African Americans. Palmer Hayden, The Janitor who Paints, ca. 1930. Oil on canvas, 39”x 33”. Smithsonian

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EDWARD HOPPER, Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas, 2’ 6” x 4’ 8 11/16”. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Friends of American Art Collection).

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Edward Hopper, Gas Pump 19, Paintings that show the isolation of City Life and changing situation in rural areas. Isolation is the theme all around, isolation in Modern American Life.

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JACOB LAWRENCE, No. 49 from The Migration of the Negro, 1940–1941. Tempera on masonite, 1’ 6” x 1’. The Phillips Collection, Washington.

Jacob Lawrence is among the best-known 20th-century African-American painters. He was 23 when he gained national recognition with his 60-panel Migration Series, painted on cardboard. The series depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.

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Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism," though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.

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Photography for social change

•  Works Project Administration •  The Federal Art Project

•  The Federal Photography Project

Dorothea Lange, Bread Line,

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Photography for social change

•  Works Project Administration •  The Federal Art Project

•  The Federal Photography Project

Dorothea Lange

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DOROTHEA LANGE, Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley, 1935. Gelatin silver print. Copyright © the Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland (gift of Paul S. Taylor). Bread Line (above)

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American Regionalism

The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life. Partly due to the Great Depression, Regionalism became one of the dominant art movements in America in the 1930s.

GRANT WOOD, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on beaverboard, 2’ 5 7/8” x 2’ 7/8”. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (Friends of American Art Collection).

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GRANT WOOD, Stone City Iowa, 1930. Oil on panel, Art Institute of Chicago.

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Thomas Hart Benton: Arts of the West. 1932

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THOMAS HART BENTON, Pioneer Days and Early Settlers, State Capitol, Jefferson City, 1936. Mural. Copyright © T. H. Benton and R. P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

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Thomas Hart Benton: The Sources of Country Music, 1975, 75 x 120 in. Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville, Tn.

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The Mexican Muralists

Mexican muralism was the promotion of mural painting starting in the 1920s, generally with social and political messages as part of efforts to reunify the country under the post Mexican Revolution government. It was headed by, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. From the 1920s to about 1970s a large number of murals with nationalistic, social and political messages were created on public buildings.

In the 1930s these artists worked in New York on public (sometimes controversial) commissions and influenced the next generation of artists.

Diego Rivera, Mural depicting the history of the Mexican People, on the wall of the National Palace, Mexico City.

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DIEGO RIVERA, Ancient Mexico, from the History of Mexico fresco murals, National Palace, Mexico City, 1929–1935. Fresco.

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JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO, Epic of American Civilization: Hispano-America (panel 16), Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, ca. 1932–1934. Fresco. Copyright © Orozco Valladares Family/SOMAAP, Mexico/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Challenged traditional thinking about the development of Aztec and Anglo-American civilizations in North America.

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Man at the Crossroads, (in progress) Diego Rivera, 1932-34, mural, Rockefeller Center, New York, destroyed. The figure of Lenin is visible in the center right. © Banco De Mexico, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Av

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Siqueiros, one of the Mexican mural painters of the 1920s and 1930s, advocated what he called “a monumental, heroic, and public art.” Collective Suicide is both a memorial to the doomed pre-Hispanic cultures of the Americas and a rallying cry against contemporary totalitarian regimes. 1936, lacquer on wood, 49”x 6 ‘.