Celeste-Marie Bernier - African American Visual Arts (British Association for American Studies (BAAS)

AFRICAN AMERICAN VISUAL ARTS

BAAS Paperbacks

Series Editors : Simon Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Chair in American Studies at the University of Glasgow; and Carol R. Smith, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies at the University of Winchester.

Titles in the series include:

The Cultures of the American New West
Neil Campbell

Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film
Jude Davies and Carol R. Smith

The United States and World War II: The Awakening Giant
Martin Folly

The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest
M. J. Heale

Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States
Mark Hulsether

The Civil War in American Culture
Will Kaufman

The United States and European Reconstruction, 19451960
John Killick

American Exceptionalism
Deborah L. Madsen

The American Landscape
Stephen F. Mills

Slavery and Servitude in North America, 16071800
Kenneth Morgan

The Civil Rights Movement
Mark Newman

The Twenties in America: Politics and History
Niall Palmer

The Vietnam War in History, Literature and Film
Mark Taylor

Contemporary Native American Literature
Rebecca Tillett

Jazz in American Culture
Peter Townsend

The New Deal
Fiona Venn

Animation and America
Paul Wells

Political Scandals in the USA
Robert Williams

African American
Visual Arts

CELESTE-MARIE BARNIER

Edinburgh University Press

Celeste-Marie Bernier, 2008

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 george Square, Edinburgh

Typeset in Fournier by
Koinonia, Manchester, and
printed and bound in great Britain by
MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7486 2356 3 (paperback)

Cover illustration: Jacob Lawrence (American, 19172000). Although the Negro was used to lynching, he found this an opportune time to leave where one had occurred, 194041.

Tempera on gesso on composition board, 18 x 12" (45.7 x 30.5 cm).
Gift of Mrs David M. Levy. 2007 Jacob Lawrence.

Digital image 2006 Museum of Modern Art,
New York/Scala, Florence.

Includes 16 colour photographs.

Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.eup.ed.ac.uk

ISBN 978 0 7486 2356 3

: The Slave who Paints: Beginnings and the Visual Arts Tradition
Dave the Potter James P. Ball Harriet Powers
Edmonia Lewis Henry O. Tanner

: Establishing an Art Era in the Harlem Renaissance
Aaron Douglas Archibald J. Motley, Jr Charles Alston

: Struggle, Survival and Early Abstraction
William Edmondson Horace Pippin Jacob Lawrence

: Images are Weapons: History, Narrative and a Peoples Art
Charles White Elizabeth Catlett Gordon Parks

: Art comes to have a life of its own: Aesthetics, Experimentation and a New Visual Language
Norman Lewis Romare Bearden Betye Saar

: Racist Pathology is the Muck: Towards a Transgressive Visual Poetics
David Hammons Howardena Pindell Kara Walker

This book would not have been possible without the wonderful generosity and assistance of the following individuals for granting permission to quote from these unmicrofilmed and microfilmed materials and interviews. Please note that the abbreviations used throughout this book are identified in brackets at the end of each citation.

Papers

Charles Henry Alston Papers, 19281980 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution [Microfilm reel numbers 4222, 4223]. ( CAP )

Correspondence in the Charles Henry Alston Papers, 19281980. Owned by Charles H. Alston [Microfilm reel number N70-23]. Cited by kind permission from Lawrence Randall, Randall galleries, Ltd, the Charles Alston Estate.

Correspondence and unmicrofilmed material in the Romare Bearden Papers, 19371982 . Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Cited by kind permission from Diedra Harris-Kelley, the Romare Bearden Foundation.

[Microfilm reel number N68-87]. Other material on Microfilm reel number N6887 was microfilmed by the Archives of American Art and is owned by Romare Bearden]. ( RBP ), ( URBP )

Elizabeth Catlett Papers, 19571980, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel number: 2249]. ( ECP )

Aaron Douglas Papers, 19211973 . Owned by Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections. microfilmed by Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel numbers: 4520 4523. Cited by kind permission from Professor Beth Howse, Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections. ( ADP )

William Johnson Papers, 19221968, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Unmicrofilmed portion and Microfilm reel numbers: 2678, 3829]. ( WJP )

Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Papers, 19451995 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Unmicrofilmed portion and Microfilm reel numbers 45714573]. (JLP), (UJLP)

Archibald J. Motley Jr. Papers, 19251977 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel number: 3161]. (AMP)Horace Pippin Papers, 19201943, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel numbers: 4018, 138]: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/collections_list.cfm/fuseaction/Items.Brow-seImages/ lter_type/Collection/ lter_key/8586(HPP)

Henry Ossawa Tanner Papers, 1860s1978 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel numbers: D306-D307, 107. (HTP)

Charles Wilbert White Papers, ca. 19301982 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Unmicrofilmed portion and Microfilm reel numbers 2041, 31893195]. (CWP), (UCWP)

Hale Woodruff Papers, 19271977 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Microfilm reel numbers: N70-60, 4222]. (HWP)

Interviews

Romare Bearden, interview conducted by Avis Berman, 31 July 1980, transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Cited by kind permission from Avis Berman, August 2007.

Aaron Douglas, interview conducted by L. M. Collins, 16 July 1971, transcript, Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections. Cit- ed by kind permission from Professor Beth Howse, Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections.

Aaron Douglas, interview conducted by Ann Allen Shockley, 19. November 1973, transcript, Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections. Cited by kind permission from Professor Beth Howse, Fisk University, Franklin Library Special Collections.

Jacob Lawrence, interview conducted by Avis Berman, 20 July 1982, transcript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Cited by kind permission from Avis Berman, August 2007.

Betye Saar, African-American Artists of Los Angeles Oral History Transcript, 19901991 . Transcript of oral history conducted during 19901 by Karen Ann Mason. Collection 300/457. Department of Special Collections, young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles c.1996. Cited with the kind permission from Aislinn Sotelo.

I would like to offer sincere thanks for the generosity of the following art gallery curators and experts: Bill Hodges, Corinne Jennings, June Kelly and Marylou Hultgren. Special thanks must extend to Joy Weiner at the Archives of American Art who has been exceptionally kind and impressively organised in dealing with my incessant queries and problems. I would like to thank Giorgio Mariani for permission to include a discussion of Elizabeth Catletts prints and sculptures in this book, a topic which I had also explored in an essay written for his edited collection published in 2007. I would like to thank the University of Nottingham for a New Lecturers Award (2005), a sabbatical and additional research leave which all made it possible to complete this project.