Picture this:  A balmy summer afternoon, you walk into Mom Young’s, and at the small table in the corner, Jean Toomer takes one last drag of his cigarette before plunging back into the latest draft of Cane.  Walk a few blocks to the Alhambra, and right there on stage, Bessie Smith is bringing the audience to tears.  Head over to the Lennox Lounge where Romare Bearden and Aaron Douglas greet you with a nod from the bar.  Enter the famous Apollo as Duke Ellington has the entire audience entranced with his latest jazz composition.  This was Harlem of the 1920s to 1940s, better known as the Harlem Renaissance, and according to Attitude Exact Gallery owner Barry Lester, “Artists and their immediate communities existed in a relationship where art was part and product of the community.”  Unfortunately, he asserts, this close-knit relationship is no more.

    During the Harlem Renaissance, many Black people lived and breathed art while artists feverishly cranked out more of it to satiate their intense admiration.  As Lester puts it, “Art was directly reflected in the hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations of the people.  In Harlem, art mirrored life and the artists of the time were not disconnected from the pulse and support of the community.”

    Take for example the life and work of renowned Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence.  One would expect him to credit his early success to Harlem’s extraordinary network of painters, musicians, and writers who befriended him as a teenager.  Instead, he credited the “ordinary” people he casually interacted with every day.  Lawrence stated, “Without the Black community in Harlem, I would not have become an artist.”  Added Lester, “It was the ‘ordinary’ people who nourished his talent, stimulated his imagination, and even provided him with financial support.”

    Lawrence showed his gratitude by painting master works that infused pride, and a sense of accomplishment and hope within the Black community.  For instance, his Toussaint L'Ouverture series (1937), a 41-painting collection that depicts the successful Haitian slave rebellion, brought him national acclaim, but more crucially, sheds light on a historical event that heralds the accomplishments of a formerly enslaved Black nation. 

    Tim Davis of International Visions Gallery in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. agrees that community support for Black artists has diminished since the golden years of the Harlem Renaissance and even in the past couple of decades in the nation’s capital. “In Washington, there used to be magazines such as The New Art Examiner, Museums and Arts, and The Koan that regularly featured local artists.  They are all now gone.” 

    Lester and Davis advocate that today’s artists, like their predecessors, artistically interpret and document Black life and need us to understand the role art plays in fostering progress in our lives and communities.  From his Barracks Row shop, Lester explains that Metro Washingtonians have many artists with whom to create such a bond.  “We have the privilege of having a plethora of talent such as established masters Sam Gilliam, Gwendolyn Aqui, and George Smith; neo avant-garde sculpturer Renee Stout, contemporary surrealist Michael Anthony Brown and Shaunté Gates; and the digital-age gurus Liani Foster, Michael Platt and Stan Squirewell, to name a few,” he says.

    It is wonderful that we remember the Harlem Renaissance and admire the explosion of artistic expressions of that period by keeping alive the plays that memorialize the artists’ lives, musicals that commemorate their masterpieces, and calendars that display their works.  However, Lester “urges all of us to take the opportunity and responsibility to interact with the contemporary artists” who are now documenting our feelings, emotions, and history.

Barry Lester
Attitude Exact Gallery

Opening Soon at

New Location!

1123-B Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Washinton, D.C. 20003
202-546-7186