How the undying spirit of Black Americans shone through their sufferings in the form of art:
an examination and curation of pieces by Dominique Nanquil
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Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1928
William H. Johnson
Oil on canvas
[Plaque provided by MFAH]
After a childhood in rural South Carolina, William H. Johnson joined the Great Migration to New York’s Harlem in 1918; three years later, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where Charles Hawthorne became an important mentor. In 1926, Hawthorne sponsored Johnson’s travels to France, where he settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer. The Mediterranean village became the subject of many paintings, expressively distorted as if viewed through a concave lens. Johnson wrote to Hawthorne, “Here the sun is everything… I am not afraid to exaggerate a contour, a form, or anything that gives more character and movement to the canvas.”
This painting expresses Johnson’s worldview and how it had drastically changed. After two years of living in this foreign town, free of Jim Crow, he depicts the world as expansive, stretching out towards the sky, exaggerated and moving. Unlike the rigid, color blocked composition of Lawrence’s Migration series, Johnson’s dynamic and organic expression of buildings as growing forms creates a sense of exciting freshness. The light blue sky, feathered with small clouds, pierces through the dull gray buildings, creating a hopeful canopy above the dwarfed figures below. Johnson’s use of oil paints allows for a painterly blend of colours, and his limited palette brings the sky to stand out as the colorful centerpiece. His brushwork expresses the freedom he felt in Cagnes-sur-Mer, unafraid to paint the world in exaggeration and growth.
This piece reflects Barthé’s admiration of his roots, wanting to depict the beauty and inherent grace of the Sengalese dancer, François Benga. Benga’s form is fluid and effortless, expressing the inherent beauty of the body in motion. His movement flows through the bronze, creating a visual guide of sweeping curves. Barthé calls attention to beauty, first and foremost. The small scale of the statue draws the viewer closer, causing them to notice the detail in Benga’s face, his muscles, his pose. The marble base raises the dancer to a position worthy of admiration, striking curiosity and interest in the viewer’s heart. This piece shows that there is an intrinsic beauty in the African body, in its purest form, despite the toil and suffering its color bears.
Feral Benga, 1935
Richmond Barthé
Cast bronze
[Plaque provided by MFAH]
Among the foremost artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Richmond Barthe encountered Francois “Feral” Benga, a Sengalese cabaret dancer in Paris in 1934. Barthe began modeling Feral Benga immediately after his return to New York, rendering the figure with an Art Deco sinuousness that captures the dancer’s grace and deliberate exoticism. James A. Porter wrote admiringly of Barthe in 1943: “[His works] are so close to perfection of statement that their effect on the spectator is transporting.”
All images taken by myself, pictures of the plaques were also taken and transcribed here.
The Cradle, 1950
John Biggers
Conté crayon on paper board
[Plaque provided by MFAH]
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Recognized by New York’s Museum of Modern Art as early as 1943, John Biggers was a new force on the Texas scene in 1950, having recently joined the faculty of Texas Southern University, a historically Black university. The Cradle was featured in the Museum’s 25th Annual Houston Artists Exhibition that year, where it was awarded the annual purchase prize and became the first work by an artist of African descent to enter the collection. However, the Museum, like nearly all civic and cultural institutions in Houston at the time, strictly regulated admission in line with Jim Crow laws, and Biggers was excluded from the exhibition opening. Using this egregious injustice as an example, the director James Chillman forced the board of trustees to fully open the Museum to people of color.
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The Cradle portrays a mother sheltering her children, a theme that Biggers returned to frequently. He later described the mother figure as “a mountain of refuge, ravaged by time, yet remaining both strong and tender--protecting life--poised to absorb hostility without flinching.”
Biggers expertly captures the struggle that African American mothers faced no matter where they lived: raising their children. This huddled mass of life is bleak and dark, the silhouette creating one form encompassing the little lives beneath it. The mother’s expression is stark and fearful, and her children face away from the viewer. Their clothes are plain, and Biggers instead hones his detail in the thinness of the mother’s arms and sunken face. She is the focus here, sheltering the ones she would protect at the cost of her own health. Biggers’ use of conté crayon on paper board and layered hatching creates a grainy, detailed piece that evokes a sense of bareness and scarcity. It is an unfortunately realistic representation of the burden that African American mothers had to bear for the hope of their future. One can only hope that, beneath their thin clothes, the children are healthy and fed, unlike their cradling mother.