The use of folklore in African American visual art began in the late nineteenth century and has become, over time, one of the major elements of black twentieth-century art. Many different genres of folklore are represented in visual art, and in fact, artists have helped to identify some of the key folk motifs in African American culture. Besides the depiction of particular items or genres of folklore, scenes of black folklife are especially important in the tradition of black fine art.
In the earliest period of African American art, artists seldom depicted racial themes at all, choosing instead to paint portraits or romantic nature scenes, as was common for American artists of the late nineteenth century. Artists such as Joshua Johnston, Robert Duncanson, and Edward Bannister were facing enormous racism and exclusion and focused on creating works that would have the best chance of being accepted in the general American art world. One of the few works by these artists that alluded at all to racial themes was Duncanson’s Uncle Tom and Little Eva, which depicts a black “Uncle Tom” figure and a little white girl in a romantic, pastoral scene simply mirroring those in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The sculptures of Edmonia Lewis give a hint of racial themes; these include The Dying Cleopatra and Hagar. Even Henry O. Tanner, who was recognized by both black and white critics as a major artist of his day, was criticized by black intellectuals for not including more racial materials in his work. His widely known painting The Banjo Lesson, which portrays a young boy sitting on an older man’s knee as he learns the banjo, is one of the few paintings from his early period that focuses on folk traditions.
In the 1930s, there was a surge of interest in racial themes among African American artists. This period corresponded roughly with the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance and the advent of “primitivism” among white artists. This movement included art by self-taught artists as well as paintings by trained artists that employed similar, often folkloric motifs. In short, primitivism involved a preoccupation with elements of black culture that could be viewed as exotic, sexy, or “primitive,” for example, black music, dance, and speech. During this period, black artists such as Palmer Hayden, Archibald Motley Jr., and Aaron Douglas explored African tribal elements and African American folk forms such as jazz, blues, dance, and sermons in their work. Some of the titles of paintings reflect this interest in folk culture, including Stomp, Gettin’ Religion, The Barbecue, Saturday Night, and The Chicken Shack by Motley. This period was also marked by the government-sponsored Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which facilitated the employment of artists to alter public spaces with mural paintings. These projects provided a boost for black art and, in particular, supported art containing social messages. Douglas’ mural series, Aspects of Negro Life, painted for the New York Public Library in the 1930s, exemplifies the influences of governmental patronage in the creation of enduring black art that is filled with folkloric images.
In addition to primitivism, another significant movement in black art of the 1930s and 1940s is sometimes referred to as “neoprimitivism.” The exploration of folk materials and folklife was a key component of the neoprimitive movement, which included such prominent figures as William H. Johnson, Horace Pippin, and Jacob Lawrence. Neoprimitive artists were generally well-educated and trained painters, in contrast to primitive artists, who were, generally speaking, folk or vernacular artists. The neoprimitive painters chose to integrate elements of primitive art into their work. In some ways, this period in African American painting was a parallel development to the reliance on vernacular forms by Harlem Renaissance poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling A. Brown and by novelists such as Zora Neale Hurston. In both fields, there was an ideological shift toward folk aesthetics and a focus on black folklife as a subject of the art. Also, in both cases, there were black critics who objected to these trends on the basis that they seemed to collude with white stereotypes.
Stylistically, black artists of this period were also influenced by the aesthetics of one of the dominant American art schools, “the realism of the American Scene painters” (Driskell, 74). One of the characteristics of neoprimitive art is the focus on scenes from everyday black life, which usually involve some kind of folklore. For example, Pippin’s Domino Players is one of numerous depictions of domino-playing rituals among African Americans, in this case, among a group of women. Lawrence’s paintings are among the most widely known works by black painters and are filled with images of folklife and influenced by the sensibilities of black culture that cannot be boiled down to specific genres.
The end of federal support for arts projects invited a reflective consideration of the conundrums faced in the 1930s and 1940s by black artists. One of the most critical concerns addressed was the lack of patronage. In a 1934 article, Romare Bearden presented a number of factors that inhibited the development of black art, including the absence of critical standards of evaluation, the lack of appreciative audiences, the lack of patronage, and the lack of a guiding ideology. Driskell notes yet another major obstacle that black art has faced—the tendency of critics to evaluate the art on the basis of its social and political usefulness. He writes:
Black art, unlike black music, was never valued purely for its power to captivate the spectator. Instead the art object always served as a sign of some other cognitive interest, and could be neither pleasurable nor exciting unless it was “socially significant.” It had to be treated not as art but as a lesson in social history or an instrument of social change. (p. 78)
Hence, movements such as Afri-Cobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) have sometimes been criticized for having clear political and social agendas for their art. It is the view of some critics that while the formation of artist collectives, such as Afri-Cobra or the Spiralists, fostered a focus on realistic images of black history and culture, they also contributed to a more restrictive sense of art’s potential. Undoubtedly, the art that emerged from collectives of the 1960s, as well as that of many individuals since then, has consistently embraced folk materials. Such traditions have provided ongoing inspiration to artists, including games (e.g., Hale Woodruff’s Girls Skipping; Jacob Lawrence’s Pool Room, Elizabeth Catlett’s Girl/Boy/Red Ball); quilting; Black Baptist Church rituals such as sermons (e.g., Charles White’s The Preacher), shouts, and prayer (e.g., Jacob Lawrence’s Prayering Ministers, Elizabeth Catlett’s Singing/Praying); dance (e.g., William Henry Johnson’s Jitterbugs); food and eating rituals (e.g., Margo Humphrey’s The Last Bar-B-Que); festivals; funerals; and musical performances of all kinds as well as historical motifs such as lynchings (e.g., Fred Flemister’s The Mourners).
Furthermore, the aesthetic nuances of many of these forms, such as dance and music, have been a basis upon which to forge an African American aesthetic in the arts. The work of artists such as Romare Bearden, for example, visually captures the sensibilities of jazz music and the vibrancy of soul, of the intangible aesthetic that resonates in forms as diverse as dance, preaching, and quilting. Artists working in all types of media have employed folk materials in their work: painting, sculpture, printmaking, fabrics and textiles, charcoal drawing, mixed media, and photography. In fact, the numbers of artists who have embraced folk materials is too vast to cover in a brief essay. However, certain artists deserve special mention in this regard: Romare Bearden, Charles White, James Vanderzee, Betty Sayr, and Varnette Honeywood, to name a few.
There may be merit in the argument made by some critics that black art for many is equivalent to art that realistically captures enactments of black folk culture. However, this has not prevented the appreciation of black art for purely aesthetic reasons by many other critics, patrons, and general admirers. Nor has it hindered the development of black artistic expression in more abstract forms. By the end of the twentieth century, black art had become expansive and proliferous enough to include many approaches, styles, and subjects.
