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The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was germinated by Alain LeRoy Locke's The New Negro (1925). This philosophy brought upon a movement reflective of a new African-American identity based in independence and pride. Visually this work repatriates the trend of primitivism as a means of illustrating a heritage connection between Africa and America. In tandem, the geometric and flattened abstraction in European modern art was utilized to reflect a novel black culture.
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Ethiopia Awakening
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
Plaster
69 × 20 × 16 in. Commissioned by W.E.B. DuBois, this sculpture shows a partially enwrapped Egyptian figure, expanding with newly unbound arms as if taking a breath for the first time in generations. This represents a reemergence from a long opression, mirroring the renaissance of African American identity and imagery independent from their oppressive history.of state sanctioned violence. The gaze looks forward to a new, fully unbound, future. -
Baptism in Kansas
John Steuart Curry
O/c
40in ×50 in
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York This work shows us the midwestern heartland of America in a scene of religious ritual. Lining up for a baptism are a group of white gowned red headed children, surrounded by well dressed townsfolk delivered by a new buggy. Executed with realistic figures and modern day accoutrements. This work shows Kansas before the Dustbowl of 1930, and offered urbanites a view of the regional rural lifestyle. -
American Regionalism is an early 20th century art movement reflective of regional lifestyle within the U.S. rural people and environments. Rejecting the evolving avant garde styles of Modern Art in Europe, this movement regresses to academic style with realist figures and narratives. Often steeped in nationalist and nostalgia inducing American positivism, works of this time could also contain critiques of American repression and mythology. FDR's WPA funded major artworks for public reception.
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Social Realism, or American Realism is a slightly more emotionally honest depiction of American culture surrounding the economic, environmental, and social discord within the country. Social Realism presents a relevant portrait of more complex identity issues such a labor and identity, the heroic worker, the forgotten man, and the rural struggle. Where rural realists maintained standard realistic figures, urban realists took up modernist techniques, such as dynamism, to depict city spaces.
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American Gothic
Grant Wood
Oil on beaverboard
30 ×25
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Wood’s iconic dual portrait shows a Van-Eyckian subtle elongated narrowness to these to rural figureheads. Woods’ devotion to Iowa is shown in a rural duo with a reassuringly sturdy grip on both home and land. As the Great Depression persisted, the nostalgia factor of this work became magnified, reflecting a simpler time of stability. Grant was made director of the PWAP mural project for Iowa in 1934. -
Migrant Mother
Dorothea Lange
gelatin silver print photograph
11in ×8in
Museum of Modern Art, New York Lange’s Mother is an image often synonymous with The Great Depression . This shows a woman, her children curled in her sides, with an expression of anxiety and exhaustion. She gazes distantly unsure of what the next day will bring. Lange often photographed food scarcity in the US during the 30’s, whether breadlines in the cities or rural migrant workers surviving on canned food. -
Chicago: Epoch of a Great City
Harry Sternberg
O/c
24’’ x 7’’
Lakeview Post Office, Chicago This takes notes from the Mexican Muralist movement due to its narrative expanse, federal funding, and public placement. This abstracted and flattened work narrates the juxtaposed history of Chicago, from its agrarian roots, fire of 1871, and the modern industrial. The postures of the workers reflect a new labor identity, the heroic industrial worker and the forgotten rural worker of color. -
Augusta Savage
Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp)
Plaster
16ft
Original Destroyed/Replicas across multiple establishments Originally displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair, this swelling sculpture in the shape of a heart is mean to symbolize African American Music. The expanding shape also mirrors DuBois’ theory of the Talented Ten- a proposition of educating an elite 10% of African Americans to guides to liberation for the black community. the time is the Black National Anthem. -
Jacob Lawrence
The Great Migration (Panel 1 Pictured)
Casein tempera on hardboard
12in ×18
The Phillips Collection/
Museum of Modern Art Jacob Lawrence studied under Augusta Savage, and his dynamic cubist works align in subject with both social realism and the Harlem Renaissance. In this 60 panel work, we see the history of the great migration of African American citizens, leaving the violence they faced from the South and into new types of social discrimination that came in the North. -
Edward Hopper
Nighthawks
oil on canvas
84.1 x 152.4 cm
The Art Institute, Chicago This classic painting, along with Hoppers other works, reflects a sense of loneliness and isolation present in the American psyche as the violence of WWII rages on. This work highlights the passing moments away from the hustle of modern life, a reflective moment where the rest of the world seems to sleep, the thoughts that occupy the mind when one feels entirely alone, even when others are around. -
Norman Rockwell
O/C
45in ×35 in
Norman Rockwell Museum,
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Inspired by FDR’s 1941 State of the Union Address, Rockwell shows us one of the Four Freedoms- freedom from want. This resplendent and pastel Thanksgiving meal is a patriotic message reflecting American virtues with a smiling nuclear family. Ironically, this work was shown scarcer time due to WWII, and is nostalgic of a more prosperous era in the hopes of inspiring nationalist pride through propaganda.