The Ambivalence of African-American Culture. The New Negro Art in the interwar period

• Authors: Aneta Pawłowska

Title variants

PL

Ambiwalencja kultury afroamerykańskiej. Sztuka „nowych murzynów” w okresie międzywojennym

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Reflecting on the issue of marginalization in art, it is difficult not to remember of the controversy which surrounds African-American Art. In the colonial period and during the formation of the American national identity this art was discarded along with the entire African cultural legacy and it has emerged as an important issue only at the dawn of the twentieth century, along with the European fashion for “Black Africa,” complemented by the fascination with jazz in the United States of America. The first time that African-American artists as a group became central to American visual art and literature was during what is now called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Another name for the Harlem Renaissance was the New Negro Movement, adopting the term “New Negro”, coined in 1925 by Alain Leroy Locke. These terms conveyed the belief that African-Americans could now cast off their heritage of servitude and define for themselves what it meant to be an African-American. The Harlem Renaissance saw a veritable explosion of creative activity from the African-Americans in many fields, including art, literature, and philosophy. The leading black artists in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940 were Archibald Motley, Palmer Hayden, Aaron Douglas, Hale Aspacio Woodruff, and James Van Der Zee.

PL

Odnosząc się do kwestii marginalizacji w sztuce trudno nie wspomnieć o kontrowersjach ota-czających sztukę Afroamerykanów. W okresie kolonialnym, a także podczas krystalizacji ame-rykańskiej tożsamości narodowej, sztuka ta została odrzucona wraz z całością afrykańskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego. Uznanie znaczenia tej kultury i sztuki pojawiło się jako istotna kwe-stia dopiero u zarania XX wieku wraz z europejską modą na Czarną Afrykę uzupełnioną o jazzowe fascynacje z USA. Ważnym etapem poprzedzającym powstanie sztuki „Nowych Czarnych” były próby poszukiwania wyrazu dla afroamerykańskiej tożsamości, świadomie ignorujące różnicę w pigmentacji skóry. Były to wyraźne dążenia do znalezienia wspólnego głosu z białym etosem i tradycją amerykańskiej klasy średniej. Po raz pierwszy afroamerykańscy artyści jak grupa stali się dominującym elementem ame-rykańskiej sztuki wizualnej i literatury jako ruch “Renesansu z Harlemu” (Harlem Renaissance) w latach 1920 i 1930. Inną nazwą tego nurtu było określenie “Nowi Murzyni” (New Negro) ukuty w 1925 roku przez Alain Leroy Locke’a. Twórczości Afroamerykanów w tym okresie przeżywa prawdziwą eksplozję talentów w wielu dziedzinach, w tym sztuki, literatury i filo-zofii. Czołowi czarni artyści z lat 1920–1940 to: Archibald Motley, Palmer Hayden, Aaron Douglas, Hale Aspacio Woodruff, James Van Der Zee.

Keywords

EN

African-American; “New Negro”; “Harlem Renaissance”; Photography; “African Art”; Murals; 20th century; Painting

PL

Afroamerykanie; “Nowi Murzyni”; “Renesans z Harlemu”; fotografia; “sztuka afrykańska”; murale; XX wiek; malarstwo

• Publisher: Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe, Stowarzyszenie
• Journal: Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts
• Year: 2014
• Volume: XVI (XXV)
• Pages: 167-193

Dates

published

2014

Contributors

author

Aneta Pawłowska

• Department of Art History, University of Łódź

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Identifiers

ISSN

1641-9278