Motley spoke to a wide audience of both whites and Blacks in his portraits, aiming to educate them on the politics of skin tone, if in different ways. InThe Octoroon Girl, 1925, the subject wears a tight, little hat and holds a pair of gloves nonchalantly in one hand. Stomp [1927] - by Archibald Motley. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University has brought together the many facets of his career in Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist. As a result we can see how the artists early successes in portraiture meld with his later triumphs as a commentator on black city life. The Renaissance marked a period of a flourishing and renewed black psyche. He studied painting at the School of the Art Ins*ute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. . He took advantage of his westernized educational background in order to harness certain visual aesthetics that were rarely associated with blacks. Joseph N. Eisendrath Award from the Art Institute of Chicago for the painting "Syncopation" (1925). Motley pays as much attention to the variances of skin color as he does to the glimmering gold of the trombone, the long string of pearls adorning a woman's neck, and the smooth marble tabletops. The presence of stereotypical, or caricatured, figures in Motley's work has concerned critics since the 1930s. George Bellows, a teacher of Motleys at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, advised his students to give out in ones art that which is part of oneself. InMending Socks, Motley conveys his own high regard for his grandmother, and this impression of giving out becomes more certain, once it has registered. I walked back there. Oral History Interview with Archibald Motley, Oral history interview with Archibald Motley, 1978 Jan. 23-1979 Mar. Motley was ultimately aiming to portray the troubled and convoluted nature of the "tragic mulatto. Motley spent the majority of his life in Chicago, where he was a contemporary of fellow Chicago artists Eldzier Cortor and Gus Nall. In The Crisis, Carl Van Vechten wrote, "What are negroes when they are continually painted at their worst and judged by the public as they are painted preventing white artists from knowing any other types (of Black people) and preventing Black artists from daring to paint them"[2] Motley would use portraiture as a vehicle for positive propaganda by creating visual representations of Black diversity and humanity. These physical markers of Blackness, then, are unstable and unreliable, and Motley exposed that difference. Picture 1 of 2. 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He generated a distinct painting style in which his subjects and their surrounding environment possessed a soft airbrushed aesthetic. Its a work that can be disarming and endearing at once. He lived in a predominantly-white neighborhood, and attended majority-white primary and secondary schools. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Mary Huff Motley and Archibald John Motley Senior. The excitement in the painting is palpable: one can observe a woman in a white dress throwing her hands up to the sound of the music, a couple embracinghand in handin the back of the cabaret, the lively pianist watching the dancers. Motley died in 1981, and ten years later, his work was celebrated in the traveling exhibition The Art of Archibald J. Motley, Jr. organized by the Chicago Historical Society and accompanied by a catalogue. She appears to be mending this past and living with it as she ages, her inner calm rising to the surface. Most of his popular portraiture was created during the mid 1920s. Martinez, Andrew, "A Mixed Reception for Modernism: The 1913 Armory Show at the Art Institute of Chicago,", Woodall, Elaine D. , "Looking Backward: Archibald J. Motley and the Art Institute of Chicago: 19141930,", Robinson, Jontyle Theresa, and Charles Austin Page Jr., ", Harris, Michael D. "Color Lines: Mapping Color Consciousness in the Art of Archibald Motley, Jr.". ", Oil on Canvas - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, This stunning work is nearly unprecedented for Motley both in terms of its subject matter and its style. His use of color to portray various skin tones as well as night scenes was masterful. While many contemporary artists looked back to Africa for inspiration, Motley was inspired by the great Renaissance masters whose work was displayed at the Louvre. She somehow pushes aside societys prohibitions, as she contemplates the viewer through the mirror, and, in so doing, she and Motley turn the tables on a convention. "[20] It opened up a more universal audience for his intentions to represent African-American progress and urban lifestyle. [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. Motley's use of physicality and objecthood in this portrait demonstrates conformity to white aesthetic ideals, and shows how these artistic aspects have very realistic historical implications. He also participated in The Twenty-fifth Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity (1921), the first of many Art Institute of Chicago group exhibitions he participated in. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Motley befriended both white and black artists at SAIC, though his work would almost solely depict the latter. But because his subject was African-American life, he's counted by scholars among the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. First One Hundred Years offers no hope and no mitigation of the bleak message that the road to racial harmony is one littered with violence, murder, hate, ignorance, and irony. The space she inhabits is a sitting room, complete with a table and patterned blue-and-white tablecloth; a lamp, bowl of fruit, books, candle, and second sock sit atop the table, and an old-fashioned portrait of a woman hanging in a heavy oval frame on the wall. This retrospective of African-American painter Archibald J. Motley Jr. was the . "Black Awakening: Gender and Representation in the Harlem Renaissance." Motley remarked, "I loved ParisIt's a different atmosphere, different attitudes, different people. 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. During the 1930s, Motley was employed by the federal Works Progress Administration to depict scenes from African-American history in a series of murals, some of which can be found at Nichols Middle School in Evanston, Illinois. During World War I, he accompanied his father on many railroad trips that took him all across the country, to destinations including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hoboken, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Unable to fully associate with either Black nor white, Motley wrestled all his life with his own racial identity. 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. Consequently, many black artists felt a moral obligation to create works that would perpetuate a positive representation of black people. ", "I have tried to paint the Negro as I have seen him, in myself without adding or detracting, just being frankly honest. I used to make sketches even when I was a kid then.". American architect, sculptor, and painter. Thus, in this simple portrait Motley "weaves together centuries of history -family, national, and international. This piece portrays young, sophisticate city dwellers out on the town. As Motleys human figures became more abstract, his use of colour exploded into high-contrast displays of bright pinks, yellows, and reds against blacks and dark blues, especially in his night scenes, which became a favourite motif. He requests that white viewers look beyond the genetic indicators of her race and see only the way she acts nowdistinguished, poised and with dignity. Many were captivated by his portraiture because it contradicted stereotyped images, and instead displayed the "contemporary black experience. Motley is a master of color and light here, infusing the scene with a warm glow that lights up the woman's creamy brown skin, her glossy black hair, and the red textile upon which she sits. Instead, he immersed himself in what he knew to be the heart of black life in Depression-era Chicago: Bronzeville. Motley strayed from the western artistic aesthetic, and began to portray more urban black settings with a very non-traditional style. (Motley 1978), In this excerpt, Motley calls for the removal of racism from social norms. This happened before the artist was two years old. When he was a year old, he moved to Chicago with his parents, where he would live until his death nearly 90 years later. He felt that portraits in particular exposed a certain transparency of truth of the internal self. In 1927 he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship and was denied, but he reapplied and won the fellowship in 1929. It was this exposure to life outside Chicago that led to Motley's encounters with race prejudice in many forms. The use of this acquired visual language would allow his work to act as a vehicle for racial empowerment and social progress. (The Harmon Foundation was established in 1922 by white real-estate developer William E. Harmon and was one of the first to recognize African American achievements, particularly in the arts and in the work emerging from the Harlem Renaissance movement.) He sold twenty-two out of twenty-six paintings in the show - an impressive feat -but he worried that only "a few colored people came in. Motley's portraits are almost universally known for the artist's desire to portray his black sitters in a dignified, intelligent fashion. His mother was a school teacher until she married. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. The woman stares directly at the viewer with a soft, but composed gaze. ", "Criticism has had absolutely no effect on my work although I well enjoy and sincerely appreciate the opinions of others. While in high school, he worked part-time in a barbershop. In the midst of this heightened racial tension, Motley was very aware of the clear boundaries and consequences that came along with race. 1, Video Postcard: Archibald Motley, Jr.'s Saturday Night. He stands near a wood fence. Archibald Motley, Jr. (1891-1981) rose out of the Harlem Renaissance as an artist whose eclectic work ranged from classically naturalistic portraits to vivaciously stylized genre paintings. 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 portraits and genre scenes from his previous decades of work were never frivolous or superficial, but as critic Holland Cotter points out, "his work ends in profound political anger and in unambiguous identification with African-American history." He sold 22 out of the 26 exhibited paintings. In this last work he cries.". The owner was colored. He graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago. Painting during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, Motley infused his genre scenes with the rhythms of jazz and the boisterousness of city life, and his portraits sensitively reveal his sitters' inner lives. We're all human beings. Motley was the subject of the retrospective exhibition Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, organized by the Nasher Museum at Duke University, which closed at the Whitney earlier this year.. 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). Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Corrections? Other figures and objects, sometimes inherently ominous and sometimes made so by juxtaposition, include a human skull, a devil, a broken church window, the three crosses of the Crucifixion, a rabid dog, a lynching victim, and the Statue of Liberty. School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Chicago, IL, US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Motley. Artist Overview and Analysis". While he was a student, in 1913, other students at the Institute "rioted" against the modernism on display at the Armory Show (a collection of the best new modern art). They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. It's also possible that Motley, as a black Catholic whose family had been in Chicago for several decades, was critiquing this Southern, Pentecostal-style of religion and perhaps even suggesting a class dimension was in play. By doing this, he hoped to counteract perceptions of segregation. Though Motley could often be ambiguous, his interest in the spectrum of black life, with its highs and lows, horrors and joys, was influential to artists such as Kara Walker, Robert Colescott, and Faith Ringgold. 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." Motleys intent in creating those images was at least in part to refute the pervasive cultural perception of homogeneity across the African American community. 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. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet. 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. An idealist, he was influenced by the writings of black reformer and sociologist W.E.B. 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. In the foreground, but taking up most of the picture plane, are black men and women smiling, sauntering, laughing, directing traffic, and tossing out newspapers. in Katy Deepwell (ed. It is telling that she is surrounded by the accouterments of a middle-class existence, and Motley paints them in the same exact, serene fashion of the Dutch masters he admired. Click to enlarge. Robinson, Jontyle Theresa and Wendy Greenhouse, This page was last edited on 1 February 2023, at 22:26. That brought Motley art students of his own, including younger African Americans who followed in his footsteps. He is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, a time in which African-American art reached new heights not just in New York but across Americaits local expression is referred to as the Chicago Black Renaissance. The rhythm of the music can be felt in the flailing arms of the dancers, who appear to be performing the popular Lindy hop. [2] By acquiring these skills, Motley was able to break the barrier of white-world aesthetics. Motley is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem . The crowd comprises fashionably dressed couples out on the town, a paperboy, a policeman, a cyclist, as vehicles pass before brightly lit storefronts and beneath a star-studded sky. It was with this technique that he began to examine the diversity he saw in the African American skin tone. Motley scholar Davarian Brown calls the artist "the painter laureate of the black modern cityscape," a label that especially works well in the context of this painting. His sometimes folksy, sometimes sophisticated depictions of black bodies dancing, lounging, laughing, and ruminating are also discernible in the works of Kerry James Marshall and Henry Taylor. 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." Motley died in 1981, and ten years later, his work was celebrated in the traveling exhibition The Art of Archibald J. Motley, Jr. organized by the Chicago Historical Society and accompanied by a catalogue. Archibald John Motley, Jr. (October 7, 1891 January 16, 1981),[1] was an American visual artist. Still, Motley was one of the only artists of the time willing to paint African-American models with such precision and accuracy. Oil on Canvas - Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio. It is also the first work by Motleyand the first painting by an African American artist from the 1920sto enter MoMA's collection. She had been a slave after having been taken from British East Africa. However, Gettin' Religion contains an aspect of Motley's work that has long perplexed viewers - that some of his figures (in this case, the preacher) have exaggerated, stereotypical features like those from minstrel shows. During this period, Motley developed a reusable and recognizable language in his artwork, which included contrasting light and dark colors, skewed perspectives, strong patterns and the dominance of a single hue. As art critic Steve Moyer points out, perhaps the most "disarming and endearing" thing about the painting is that the woman is not looking at her own image but confidently returning the viewer's gaze - thus quietly and emphatically challenging conventions of women needing to be diffident and demure, and as art historian Dennis Raverty notes, "The peculiar mood of intimacy and psychological distance is created largely through the viewer's indirect gaze through the mirror and the discovery that his view of her may be from her bed." These figures were often depicted standing very close together, if not touching or overlapping one another. It was where strains from Ma Raineys Wildcat Jazz Band could be heard along with the horns of the Father of Gospel Music, Thomas Dorsey. In his portrait The Mulatress (1924), Motley features a "mulatto" sitter who is very poised and elegant in the way that "the octoroon girl" is. 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. For example, in Motley's "self-portrait," he painted himself in a way that aligns with many of these physical pseudosciences. Recipient Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue . [5], Motley spent the majority of his life in Chicago, where he was a contemporary of fellow Chicago artists Eldzier Cortor and Gus Nall. Above the roof, bare tree branches rake across a lead-gray sky. Motley worked for his father and the Michigan Central Railroad, not enrolling in high school until 1914 when he was eighteen. Archibald Motley Self Portrait (1920) / Art Institute of Chicago, Wikimedia Commons Despite his early success he now went to work as a shower curtain painter for nine years. During this time, Alain Locke coined the idea of the "New Negro", which was focused on creating progressive and uplifting images of blacks within society. ", "I sincerely hope that with the progress the Negro has made, he is deserving to be represented in his true perspective, with dignity, honesty, integrity, intelligence, and understanding. Motley used sharp angles and dark contrasts within the model's face to indicate that she was emotional or defiant. He describes his grandmother's surprisingly positive recollections of her life as a slave in his oral history on file with the Smithsonian Archive of American Art.[5]. The Nasher exhibit selected light pastels for the walls of each gallerycolors reminiscent of hues found in a roll of Sweet Tarts and mirroring the chromatics of Motleys palette. 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, 1978). Motley was "among the few artists of the 1920s who consistently depicted African Americans in a positive manner. The family remained in New Orleans until 1894 when they moved to Chicago, where his father took a job as a Pullman car porter.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. Here she sits in slightly-turned profile in a simple chair la Whistler's iconic portrait of his mother Arrangement in Grey and Black No. The Octoroon Girl was meant to be a symbol of social, racial, and economic progress. Once there he took art classes, excelling in mechanical drawing, and his fellow students loved him for his amusing caricatures. Light dances across her skin and in her eyes. [16] By harnessing the power of the individual, his work engendered positive propaganda that would incorporate "black participation in a larger national culture. 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. The naked woman in the painting is seated at a vanity, looking into a mirror and, instead of regarding her own image, she returns our gaze. After fourteen years of courtship, Motley married Edith Granzo, a white woman from his family neighborhood. He treated these portraits as a quasi-scientific study in the different gradients of race. By displaying the richness and cultural variety of African Americans, the appeal of Motley's work was extended to a wide audience. Motley Jr's piece is an oil on canvas that depicts the vibrancy of African American culture. ", "I think that every picture should tell a story and if it doesn't tell a story then it's not a picture. Motley himself was of mixed race, and often felt unsettled about his own racial identity. Motley's paintings grapple with, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, the issues of racial injustice and stereotypes that plague America. Alternate titles: Archibald John Motley, Jr. Naomi Blumberg was Assistant Editor, Arts and Culture for Encyclopaedia Britannica. Physically unlike Motley, he is somehow apart from the scene but also immersed in it. His mother was a school teacher until she married. Motley died in Chicago on January 16, 1981. [2] Thus, he would focus on the complexity of the individual in order to break from popularized caricatural stereotypes of blacks such as the "darky," "pickaninny," "mammy," etc. The background consists of a street intersection and several buildings, jazzily labeled as an inn, a drugstore, and a hotel. [8] Motley graduated in 1918 but kept his modern, jazz-influenced paintings secret for some years thereafter. His use of color and notable fixation on skin-tone, demonstrated his artistic portrayal of blackness as being multidimensional. While in Mexico on one of those visits, Archibald eventually returned to making art, and he created several paintings inspired by the Mexican people and landscape, such as Jose with Serape and Another Mexican Baby (both 1953). Omissions? Archibald J. Motley, Jr. was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1891 to upper-middle class African American parents; his father was a porter for the Pullman railway cars and his mother was a teacher. Then he got so nasty, he began to curse me out and call me all kinds of names using very degrading language. Nightlife, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts a bustling night club with people dancing in the background, sitting at tables on the right and drinking at a bar on the left. I just stood there and held the newspaper down and looked at him. Hes in many of the Bronzeville paintings as a kind of alter ego. 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. Archibald Motley was a master colorist and radical interpreter of urban culture. Motley's family lived in a quiet neighborhood on Chicago's south side in an environment that was racially tolerant. Born in 1909 on the city's South Side, Motley grew up in the middle-class, mostly white Englewood neighborhood, and was raised by his grandparents. Motley himself was light skinned and of mixed racial makeup, being African, Native American and European. He used distinctions in skin color and physical features to give meaning to each shade of African American. Birth Year : 1891 Death Year : 1981 Country : US Archibald Motley was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Men shoot pool and play cards, listening, with varying degrees of credulity, to the principal figure as he tells his unlikely tale. Harmon Foundation Award for outstanding contributions to the field of art (1928). The mood is contemplative, still; it is almost like one could hear the sound of a clock ticking. Archibald John Motley, Jr. (October 7, 1891 - January 16, 1981), was an American visual artist. By asserting the individuality of African Americans in portraiture, Motley essentially demonstrated Blackness as being "worthy of formal portrayal. In his attempt to deconstruct the stereotype, Motley has essentially removed all traces of the octoroon's race. It was the spot for both the daytime and the nighttime stroll. It was where the upright stride crossed paths with the down-low shimmy. "[10] This is consistent with Motley's aims of portraying an absolutely accurate and transparent representation of African Americans; his commitment to differentiating between skin types shows his meticulous efforts to specify even the slightest differences between individuals. Saturday night if not touching or overlapping one another intentions to represent African-American progress and lifestyle! Refute the pervasive cultural perception of homogeneity across the African American the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke has! 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