Black Artists of the Harlem Renaissance in Western Survey Textbooks: Narratives of Omission and Representation

• In Event: The Past Is Present: Ignored Histories of Art Education

Abstract

Black Americans have been a vital part of the United States history for centuries, included in the American slave trade, the agricultural growth of the nation, and the industrial revolution. Yet, the story of Black American artists in mainstream Western art history has been one of shocking and consistent omission and misrepresentation (hooks, 1995 and Pinder (1999). The system of White supremacy that caused and maintained slavery also managed to subliminally corrode the possibility of cultural equity with those who had editorial control of Western historical texts. This presentation will examine the omission and misrepresentation of Harlem Renaissance artists in three western art history textbooks: (a) Kleiner, Mamiya and Tansey’s (2001) Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, the eleventh edition (b) Adams’ (2001) A History of Western Art, (c) Getlein’s (2005) Gilbert’s Living with Art.
Using Kymberly Pinder’s (1999) theory of the “native informant” which focuses on positioning a few Black artists as the voices of an entire racial history while simultaneously omitting and silencing alternate Black artistic voices. As well as other major ideas surrounding Black visual omission and representation. This presentation is intended to augment the body of scholarship addressing and challenging this tradition of White supremacy in art history using critical analysis of Modernism and early 20th century art in order to specifically analyze representations of Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Cultural critic bell hooks (1995) argues Black artists “must continually confront an art world so rooted in a politics of White-supremacist capitalist patriarchal exclusion that our relationship to art and aesthetics can be submerged by the effort to challenge and change this existing structure” (p. xii). Black artists have remained largely invisible in mainstream narratives of art education history, and when they have gained mention, the commentary has often been inaccurate and grounded in racist narratives of ‘primitivism.’
I will first discuss the Great Migration, explaining how this Southern exodus was essential to the birth of the Harlem Renaissance. Next, I will discuss the rise and resistance of Black artists against racial prejudice within the art world (including the contribution of contemporaneous critic and philosopher Alain Locke) and examine how this prejudice led to a lack of fair and comprehensive analysis in Western art history. I argue that although there is a great deal of critical contemporary scholarship around the Harlem Renaissance period, three problematic narratives still persist in college-level textbooks: (a) the omission of Black American artists from the larger narrative of Modernist art, (b) the misrepresentation of major themes of Harlem Renaissance art, and (c) a continued focus on Modernist tropes of primitivism. I will conclude with a visual analysis of several major art history textbooks, returning to the question of why Black artists do not occupy a more prominent place in mainstream art historical narratives. Finally, I examine possible implications of these problematic narratives within the context of the curricular and pedagogical implications for art educators, students, and historians.

Author

• Alphonso Walter Grant, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville