HOUSTON — Narratives of early 20th-century visual art focus primarily on Avant Garde movements that were exhibited in art museums and galleries in America and Europe. Artworks displayed in these spaces were often made by white artists who did not encounter barriers in making and exhibiting their art. Black artists who were not allowed access to the walls of these spaces to hang their art often turned to publishing their graphic work in periodicals and books.
Two library exhibitions in Houston explore the richness of work contributed by these artists during the period recognized today as the Harlem Renaissance. Mined from the rare book collections at the University of Houston Special Collections and the Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, these exhibitions were developed by undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Harlem Renaissance art history course at UH, under the guidance of Caroline Goeser. The Harlem Renaissance course was one of several courses offered jointly at UH and the MFAH during fall 2019 and implements object-based learning. Rather than sitting in a dark lecture hall viewing slides of artworks projected on a screen, students worked directly with the objects they were studying.
In the Harlem Renaissance course, students encountered graphic works alongside the texts they illustrated. By reading essays by theorists like W.E.B. DuBois and Alain Locke at the beginning of the course, students developed a foundational understanding of the motivation of African American artists at this time to cultivate their own means of expression divorced from stereotypical representations which were rampant in mass media.
Other texts students studied included poetry and short stories published in journals like the National Urban League’s Opportunity and the NAACP’s The Crisis. These publications included essays and news articles relevant to African American interests and culture but also served as a platform for black creative expression, publishing poems and prose by renown writers such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay.
The UH Special Collections exhibition, “Blacker than a Thousand Midnights,” explores the ways illustrators responded to these texts, combing out larger visual themes including urbanism, Pan-Africanism and spirituality. The lefthand display case includes art inspired by the Harlem neighborhood in the urban setting of New York City. Illustrations featured in Opportunity (1930), Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea magazine (1927), Alain Locke’s The New Negro (1925), poetry book “God’s Trombones” (1927) and a collection of music called “Blues: An Anthology” (1926) take inspiration from Harlem’s nightlife, entertainment and changing perceptions of African Americans.
Aaron Douglas’ artwork for James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones interpret his Bible-inspired poems with black protagonists rendered in shades of grey gouache and Orphic-inspired tessellations. The page Douglas illustrated for the “Prodigal Son” re-imagines the biblical setting for a Harlem nightclub with contemporary vices, such as gambling and drinking, rendered in a Surrealist collage style. Douglas’ illustration “Dance Magic” in the December 1930 edition of Opportunity is taken from a mural commission for a whites-only jazz club at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. The central image of “Dance Magic” highlights the talent of African American jazz performers, while images on the left and right allude to African dancing and jungle scenes. At the bottom of the composition, menacing hands reach out towards the musicians alluding to post-slavery oppression felt by African Americans in the early 20th-century Jim Crow era.
The righthand display case features illustrations inspired by a sense of global blackness, with works featuring black figures in exotic settings with lush foliage outside of America including locales such as Africa and Haiti. “Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea” is featured again in this case, alongside a collection of plays edited by Alain Locke called “Plays of Negro Life” (1927), Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones” (1928), Countée Cullen’s “Copper Sun” (1927) and an English translation of the French writer Paul Morand’s short stories “Black Magic” (1928).
“Copper Sun,” illustrated by Charles Cullen, has an elaborately decorated cover featuring androgynous black figures in sensuous poses set against backdrops of Egypt, steamy jungles and the stage of a Harlem nightclub. Particularly haunting is a lynched figure hanging from weeping willows. The composite image is tied together with brilliant graphic outlines, stars and lightning strikes.
Set up next to the entrance of the Special Collections is a third display exploring the ways spirituality influenced graphic artists. Reproductions of Aaron Douglas illustrations from “Black Magic” and “God’s Trombones” are inspired by Haitian voodoo rituals and the Old Testament. Charles Cullen’s lynched figure also makes an appearance in a reproduction of an image from Countée Cullun’s book of poems, “The Black Christ” (1929). This powerful illustration compares the suffering of the crucified Christ with the threat of lynching endured by black people in America.
The Hirsch Library at the MFAH exhibition, “Echoes of Harlem: the Graphic Works of Aaron Douglas,” focuses on book covers for novels and poetry illustrated by Aaron Douglas. Showcasing works from the 1920s and 1930s, the exhibition considers Douglas’ artistic development and contributions during the Harlem Renaissance. The earliest works, including a 1926 cover of Opportunity magazine and Fire!, a singular publication featuring art and literature by young African American contributors, show the origins of Douglas’ trademark silhouetted figures with faces inspired by African masks. The success of these designs led to commissions for book jackets featuring Douglas’ signature figures in both urban and rural settings, oftentimes positioned straddling both reflecting the dual nature of black experience, leaving behind the chains of the past and embracing freedom in modernity.
“Blacker than a Thousand Midnights” at the UH Special Collections is located in the MD Anderson library and will be open until March 27. “Echoes of Harlem: the Graphic Works of Aaron Douglas” will open on March 10 and be on view until June 27 at the Hirsch library in the Law Building at the MFAH. Both exhibitions are free to view.
For more information, visit www.libraries.uh.edu.
Story by Caitlin Duerler, ISSUE staff writer