Motley is fashionably dressed in a herringbone overcoat and a fedora, has a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and looks off at an angle, studying some distant object, perhaps, that has caught his attention. That trajectory is traced all the way back to Africa, for Motley often talked of how his grandmother was a Pygmy from British East Africa who was sold into slavery. Motley's presentation of the woman not only fulfilled his desire to celebrate accomplished blacks but also created an aesthetic role model to which those who desired an elite status might look up to. Motley's portraits take the conventions of the Western tradition and update themallowing for black bodies, specifically black female bodies, a space in a history that had traditionally excluded them. They pushed into a big room jammed with dancers. Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, the first retrospective of the American artist's paintings in two decades, opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University on January 30, 2014. He reminisced to an interviewer that after school he used to take his lunch and go to a nearby poolroom "so I could study all those characters in there. It's a white woman, in a formal pose. What gives the painting even more gravitas is the knowledge that Motley's grandmother was a former slave, and the painting on the wall is of her former mistress. He used distinctions in skin color and physical features to give meaning to each shade of African American. He was born in New Orleans in 1891 and three years later moved with his family to. Born October 7, 1891, at New Orleans, Louisiana. Consequently, many black artists felt a moral obligation to create works that would perpetuate a positive representation of black people. [2] After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918, he decided that he would focus his art on black subjects and themes, ultimately as an effort to relieve racial tensions. Many of the opposing messages that are present in Motley's works are attributed to his relatively high social standing which would create an element of bias even though Motley was also black. Both felt that Paris was much more tolerant of their relationship. I didn't know them, they didn't know me; I didn't say anything to them and they didn't say anything to me." [5], Motley spent the majority of his life in Chicago, where he was a contemporary of fellow Chicago artists Eldzier Cortor and Gus Nall. For example, in Motley's "self-portrait," he painted himself in a way that aligns with many of these physical pseudosciences. In the 1920s he began painting primarily portraits, and he produced some of his best-known works during that period, including Woman Peeling Apples (1924), a portrait of his grandmother called Mending Socks (1924), and Old Snuff Dipper (1928). Subjects: African American History, People Terms: Motley died in Chicago in 1981 of heart failure at the age of eighty-nine. It was this exposure to life outside Chicago that led to Motley's encounters with race prejudice in many forms. School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Chicago, IL, US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Motley. Its a work that can be disarming and endearing at once. This retrospective of African-American painter Archibald J. Motley Jr. was the . ", "And if you don't have the intestinal fortitude, in other words, if you don't have the guts to hang in there and meet a lot of - well, I must say a lot of disappointments, a lot of reverses - and I've met them - and then being a poor artist, too, not only being colored but being a poor artist it makes it doubly, doubly hard.". He and Archibald Motley who would go on to become a famous artist synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance were raised as brothers, but his older relative was, in fact, his uncle. Born into slavery, the octogenerian is sitting near the likeness of a descendant of the family that held her in bondage. Du Bois and Harlem Renaissance leader Alain Locke and believed that art could help to end racial prejudice. The preacher here is a racial caricature with his bulging eyes and inflated red lips, his gestures larger-than-life as he looms above the crowd on his box labeled "Jesus Saves." His gaze is laser-like; his expression, jaded. Blues : Archibald Motley : Art Print Suitable for Framing. He took advantage of his westernized educational background in order to harness certain visual aesthetics that were rarely associated with blacks. That brought Motley art students of his own, including younger African Americans who followed in his footsteps. Archibald Motley, in full Archibald John Motley, Jr., (born October 7, 1891, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.died January 16, 1981, Chicago, Illinois), American painter identified with the Harlem Renaissance and probably best known for his depictions of black social life and jazz culture in vibrant city scenes. I walked back there. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. Motley is as lauded for his genre scenes as he is for his portraits, particularly those depicting the black neighborhoods of Chicago. There was a newfound appreciation of black artistic and aesthetic culture. The Renaissance marked a period of a flourishing and renewed black psyche. I used to have quite a temper. With all of the talk of the "New Negro" and the role of African American artists, there was no set visual vocabulary for black artists portraying black life, and many artists like Motley sometimes relied on familiar, readable tropes that would be recognizable to larger audiences. Critics of Motley point out that the facial features of his subjects are in the same manner as minstrel figures. One of Motley's most intimate canvases, Brown Girl After Bath utilizes the conventions of Dutch interior scenes as it depicts a rich, plum-hued drape pulled aside to reveal a nude young woman sitting on a small stool in front of her vanity, her form reflected in the three-paneled mirror. The main visual anchors of the work, which is a night scene primarily in scumbled brushstrokes of blue and black, are the large tree on the left side of the canvas and the gabled, crumbling Southern manse on the right. [17] It is important to note, however, that it was not his community he was representinghe was among the affluent and elite black community of Chicago. It was an expensive education; a family friend helped pay for Motley's first year, and Motley dusted statues in the museum to meet the costs. In the beginning of his career as an artist, Motley intended to solely pursue portrait painting. This happened before the artist was two years old. By breaking from the conceptualized structure of westernized portraiture, he began to depict what was essentially a reflection of an authentic black community. For example, on the right of the painting, an African-American man wearing a black tuxedo dances with a woman whom Motley gives a much lighter tone. ", "I sincerely believe Negro art is some day going to contribute to our culture, our civilization. You must be one of those smart'uns from up in Chicago or New York or somewhere." [4] As a boy growing up on Chicago's south side, Motley had many jobs, and when he was nine years old his father's hospitalization for six months required that Motley help support the family. After fourteen years of courtship, Motley married Edith Granzo, a white woman from his family neighborhood. The figures are more suggestive of black urban types, Richard Powell, curator of the Nasher exhibit, has said, than substantive portrayals of real black men. The mood in this painting, as well as in similar ones such asThe PlottersandCard Players, was praised by one of Motleys contemporaries, the critic Alain Locke, for its Rabelaisian turn and its humor and swashbuckle.. Picture 1 of 2. "[2] In this way, Motley used portraiture in order to demonstrate the complexities of the impact of racial identity. 1, Video Postcard: Archibald Motley, Jr.'s Saturday Night. His mother was a school teacher until she married. They act differently; they don't act like Americans.". These figures were often depicted standing very close together, if not touching or overlapping one another. He attended the School of Art Institute in Chicago from 1912-1918 and, in 1924, married Edith Granzo, his childhood girlfriend who was white. 2023 The Art Story Foundation. He treated these portraits as a quasi-scientific study in the different gradients of race. There are other figures in the work whose identities are also ambiguous (is the lightly-clothed woman on the porch a mother or a madam? Oil on Canvas - Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia, In this mesmerizing night scene, an evangelical black preacher fervently shouts his message to a crowded street of people against a backdrop of a market, a house (modeled on Motley's own), and an apartment building. I was never white in my life but I think I turned white. Many of Motleys favorite scenes were inspired by good times on The Stroll, a portion of State Street, which during the twenties, theEncyclopedia of Chicagosays, was jammed with black humanity night and day. It was part of the neighborhood then known as Bronzeville, a name inspired by the range of skin color one might see there, which, judging from Motleys paintings, stretched from high yellow to the darkest ebony. Artist Overview and Analysis". It could be interpreted that through this differentiating, Motley is asking white viewers not to lump all African Americans into the same category or stereotype, but to get to know each of them as individuals before making any judgments. In the image a graceful young woman with dark hair, dark eyes and light skin sits on a sofa while leaning against a warm red wall. Though the Great Depression was ravaging America, Motley and his wife were cushioned by savings and ownership of their home, and the decade was a fertile one for Motley. He is a heavyset man, his face turned down and set in an unreadable expression, his hands shoved into his pockets. In 1928 Motley had a solo exhibition at the New Gallery in New York City, an important milestone in any artists career but particularly so for an African American artist in the early 20th century. By doing this, he hoped to counteract perceptions of segregation. [2] Motley understood the power of the individual, and the ways in which portraits could embody a sort of palpable machine that could break this homogeneity. ", Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Oil on Canvas, For most people, Blues is an iconic Harlem Renaissance painting; though, Motley never lived in Harlem, and it in fact dates from his Paris days and is thus of a Parisian nightclub. "Archibald J. Motley, Jr. His use of color to portray various skin tones as well as night scenes was masterful. [2] By acquiring these skills, Motley was able to break the barrier of white-world aesthetics. The viewer's eye is in constant motion, and there is a slight sense of giddy disorientation. Archibald J. Motley Jr. he used his full name professionally was a primary player in this other tradition. The figures are highly stylized and flattened, rendered in strong, curved lines. [5] He found in the artwork there a formal sophistication and maturity that could give depth to his own work, particularly in the Dutch painters and the genre paintings of Delacroix, Hals, and Rembrandt. Click to enlarge. Above the roof, bare tree branches rake across a lead-gray sky. Consequently, many were encouraged to take an artistic approach in the context of social progress. Back in Chicago, Motley completed, in 1931,Brown Girl After Bath. [Internet]. (Motley, 1978). And, significantly for Motley it is black urban life that he engages with; his reveling subjects have the freedom, money, and lust for life that their forbearers found more difficult to access. After Motleys wife died in 1948, he stopped painting for eight years, working instead at a company that manufactured hand-painted shower curtains. Still, Motley was one of the only artists of the time willing to paint African-American models with such precision and accuracy. Upon Motley's return from Paris in 1930, he began teaching at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and working for the Federal Arts Project (part of the New Deal's Works Projects Administration). ", "But I never in all my life have I felt that I was a finished artist. Motley worked for his father and the Michigan Central Railroad, not enrolling in high school until 1914 when he was eighteen. Although Motley reinforces the association of higher social standing with "whiteness" or American determinates of beauty, he also exposes the diversity within the race as a whole. He spent most of his time studying the Old Masters and working on his own paintings. Though Motleys artistic production slowed significantly as he aged (he painted his last canvas in 1972), his work was celebrated in several exhibitions before he died, and the Public Broadcasting Service produced the documentary The Last Leaf: A Profile of Archibald Motley (1971). Unable to fully associate with either Black nor white, Motley wrestled all his life with his own racial identity. Archibald John Motley, Jr. (October 7, 1891 - January 16, 1981), was an American visual artist. At the time he completed this painting, he lived on the South Side of Chicago with his parents, his sister and nephew, and his grandmother. $75.00. Instead, he immersed himself in what he knew to be the heart of black life in Depression-era Chicago: Bronzeville. Both black and white couples dance and hobnob with each other in the foreground. She had been a slave after having been taken from British East Africa. ", Oil on Canvas - Collection of Mara Motley, MD and Valerie Gerrard Brown. His nephew (raised as his brother), Willard Motley, was an acclaimed writer known for his 1947 novel Knock on Any Door. Regardless of these complexities and contradictions, Motley is a significant 20th-century artist whose sensitive and elegant portraits and pulsating, syncopated genre scenes of nightclubs, backrooms, barbecues, and city streets endeavored to get to the heart of black life in America. He studied in France for a year, and chose not to extend his fellowship another six months. The exhibition then traveled to The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (June 14September 7, 2014), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (October 19, 2014 February 1, 2015), The Chicago Cultural Center (March 6August 31, 2015), and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (October 2, 2015 January 17, 2016). Many critics see him as an alter ego of Motley himself, especially as this figure pops up in numerous canvases; he is, like Motley, of his community but outside of it as well. Behind the bus, a man throws his arms up ecstatically. 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