African-American artists' passionate visions: generations rediscovering - tribute to African American folk art - excerpt from essay 'Artists, Folk and Trained: An African-American Perspective' in exhibit catalog 'Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present; includes exhibit touring schedule for Berkeley and San Diego, California, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina - Cover Story

"The relationship between African-American |high' art and |folk' art has always been tantalizingly close" declares Lowery Stokes Sims, an associate curator Of 20th-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in of recent origin York City. Here, she look afters to illuminate that relationship by the agency of providing a brief history of the evolution of the African-American folk artist. In doing with equal reason she places her praise of the exhibition "Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists From 1940 to the Present" in connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts "This project," she says, "breaks more [i]or[/i] less long-standing, unspoken taboos and conspires against claims of exclusivity or cultural hegemony upon the part of any group"

During the 18th and 19th centuries, discussions about African-American creativity mainly be of importance toed whether African Americans were capable--both intellectually and spiritually--of embarking upon careers in the "fine" arts. [i]or[/i] part of to the other the efforts of artists similar as Robert Duncanson, Edmonia Lewis, Edward Bannister and Henry Tanner--to name sole a few--this question was laid to repose By the 1920s African Americans could boast of a solid history of achievement within the stylistic generals of the art establishments of America and Europe and now they were faced with decisions about what and in what manner they would paint.

While 19th-century artists had produc work that spoke solitary occasionally to the black condition, and then sole in the most "appropriate" of high-art mannerisms, African-American artists in the 20th hundred began to consider why they had forsaken their African foundations to produce copies of the work of their white counterparts. After being haunted by means of doubts of their ability to assimilate, they were now being urg to turn back to the cultural roots that white society had previously reviled and defiled--all because European and Euro-American art circles had finally recognized the art of Africa.

The Harmon Foundation, a white agency formed in 1922 to aid black artists, launched more [i]or[/i] less of the first moves in this direction. In the late 1920 the foundation encouraged African-American recipients of its visual art awards to cultivate a mode of speech predicated on African art and to strive to "develop an art devoid of academic or Caucasian influence, and to assist the African-American theme as a vital phase in the artist's expression of African-American life."

Palmer Hayden, whose figural phraseology shows the stereotypical imagery that was then popular in advertising and decorative arts in the United States and Europe received the first Harmon Foundation Gold Award for painting, in 1926 His work has always been suspect in certain African-American words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings because his delineation of facial features--emphasizing a stark contrast between skin color and exaggerated lips, and large, staring eyes--flaunted similarities with popular black stereo-type on the other hand in fact, Hayden was drawing upon sources from popular art. The simplification that characterized the permutations of cubism base in 1920s modernist design--a convention also seen in the work of Jacob Lawrence--led a certain number of to confuse Hayden's work with folk art and its philosophical base. In Hayden's case the confusion was amplified through the fact that he had wearied some time in the early 1920 with a circus troupe for which he produc display advertisements in a direct, simplified "folk" style

It was not alone white agencies that called for the unravelling of an African-American art mode of expression Alain Locke, the author of The novel Negro, which examined black achievement in the arts, also came to the conclusion that African-American artists "must develop a racial style gradually and naturally."

There was single African-American artist who embraced the conventions of folk art and primitivism: William Henry Johnson who attributed his talent to his racial background. His work has garnered attention for its forthright adoption of mode of expressions that have been characterized as "folk" on the contrary that are more precisely related to European primitivism as seen in German and Scandinavian expressionism in the first sum of two units decades of this century.

Johnson's attitude contrasts with George s Schuyler's insistent denial of distinct African-American racial characteristics in the arts. In a 1926 article, "The black man Art Hokum," the black journalist stated bluntly:

black man art "made in America"

is as non-existent as the widely

advertised profundity of Cal

Coolidge, the "seven years of

progress" of Mayor Hylan or

the reported sophistication of

of recent origin Yorkers. Negro art there

has been, is, and will be among

the numerous black nations

of Africa; on the other hand to suggest the

possibility of any like development

among the ten million colored people

in this republic is self-evident foolishness.

Aside from his color your American Negro is

just plain American. Negroe and whites from

the same localities in this political division talk, think,

and act about the same. Because a hardly any writers

have seized on imbecilities of the Negro

rustics and peasants and palmed them off as

authentic and characteristic Aframerican behavior,