The Tamarind Institute’s site features Cole’s work with irons!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
The first time I saw the paintings of William H. Johnson, they were works from his expressionist period, the first time he lived in Europe (1926-1929). Needless to say, it was one of those “holy cow!” moments, because I find those expressionist landscapes awesome! As an exhibiting/selling artist, he did not have a heck of a lot success, either in Europe or America. He had a challenging, emotionally turbulent life, rather like van Gogh did, and, like van Gogh, he seems to have expressed some of that intensity of feeling through the vibrant colors he used in his painting.
Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina. He discovered a love for drawing at an early age, but it was not until he was twenty that he could afford to start art training. He went to New York, which he considered to be the artistic center of the US. He learned the rigid, disciplined way of painting at the conservative National Academy of Design.
Between 1924 and 1926 he won several important prizes for his painting while working in the studio of Ash Can School painter George Luks (1867-1933). Luks’s painterly canvases and recommendation to paint life’s moving experiences particularly influenced Johnson. Between 1926 and 1929 Johnson painted in Europe. He was drawn to the expressionist color and forms in the work of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), and considered himself a primitive painter in the manner of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Although encouraged by another expatriate African American in Paris, Henry Tanner (1859-1937), Johnson never achieved the same success in Europe. Johnson won the Harmon gold medal in 1930. Beginning in the 1920s, the Harmon Foundation, a white philanthropic group, had sponsored yearly exhibits called “Negro Art.”
Like many artists of the Harlem Renaissance, he worked on WPA mural projects from 1939 to 1943. Jitterbugs reflects the radical change Johnson adapted in his work during the late 1930s. After seeing Jacob Lawrence’s (1917-2000) Harlem scenes, Johnson abandoned the Soutine-type of Expressionism for one which reflected black life and culture. The emphasis on music, especially jazz, reflected Johnson’s pride in what he considered a uniquely African American art form. The simplified forms reflected Horace Pippin’s naïve paintings and Lawrence’s use of flattened shapes. The distorted space reflects the lingering European influences of Expressionism and Cubism. Johnson produced paintings of the Jitterbugs subjects and the subsequent prints after those paintings were widely popular.
A nice retrospective of Johnson’s work that shows his progression from Expressionism to simplified abstract forms from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Monday, February 8, 2010
To celebrate African American History Month, I’m going to feature black artists the month of February. Naturally I’m going to start with one of my favorites, Horace Pippin. One of the most interesting phenomena when studying African American art, I think, is the period known as the
Pippin grew up in rural
In World War I Pippin was seriously injured in the right arm. His early paintings depicted scenes of the horrors of the war. By the 1930s, he returned to subject matter that reflected everyday African American life. He felt confident enough in his paintings by the late 1930s to start selling them. His work attracted the attention of illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945, father of painter Andrew Wyeth). This led to a one-person show in
In his Self-Portrait Pippin places himself within a great tradition in western art. He joins the likes of Judith Leyster, Rembrandt, and van Gogh, depicting himself at the easel. This beautifully simple portrait shows Pippin’s pride in his chosen vocation, while revealing the essence of his mature style: flat planes of color, even lighting, and flattened space and form. Pippin always felt that artists did not need to learn too much about technique, but rather to paint what they felt in their heart. His earnest, dignified depictions of African American life are a tribute to the triumph of the African American spirit coming out of the Harlem Renaissance.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Revivalist art styles affected all art forms, but especially architecture. Revivalism really took off during the nineteenth century, in part as a romantic reaction to the impersonal nature of the industrial revolution. Mass production of objects, including furniture and art, caused people to hark back to the “good old days,” firmly rooted in the prevailing trend of Romanticism. No past style was safe from “updating” during the nineteenth century, especially in the
The Gothic Revival style was popular for public buildings, churches, of course, and even mansions and more modest private homes. It was introduced in the
When I first moved to