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Revitalizing
Art Consciousness
By Goddonny Normil
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
739 8th Street, SE
Washinton,
D.C. 20003
202-546-7186
www.attitudexact.com
attexact@msn.com
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