Arts and Culture - Art Focus HARLEM RENAISSANCE Find out how artists, inspired by their African heritage and African American culture, created art in their own individual styles. In his 1925 essay, "The New Negro", Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke encouraged African American artists to create a school of African American art with an identifiable style and aesthetic, and to look to African culture and African American folk life for subject matter and inspiration. Locke's ideas, coupled with a new ethnic awareness that was occurring in urban areas, inspired up and coming African American artists. These artists rejected landscapes for the figurative, rural scenes for urban and focused on class, culture and Africa to bring ethnic consciousness into art and create a new black identity. The New Negro movement would later be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas (1898 - 1979) Born in Kansas in 1898, Douglas received a BA in art from the University of Nebraska. Douglas taught art in Kansas City for a few years until he decided to pursue a career as an artist and headed to New York to earn his MA from Columbia University. Douglas also studied with Winold Reiss, an illustrator from Germany, who encouraged him to look to African art and themes for inspiration in his work. Douglas soon began integrating African design in his work which caught the attention of Alain Locke, who later called Douglas the "pioneering Africanist." Douglas designed and illustrated Alain Locke's The New Negro and contributed regularly to such widely read journals as the NAACP's The Crisis and The Urban League's Opportunity. In 1928, Douglas became the first president of the Harlem Artists Guild, which was successful in helping African American artists obtain projects under the Works Progress Administration. In 1940 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded the Art Department at Fisk University and taught for 29 years. [Illustrations: Song of the Towers (1934); Into Bondage (1936)] Palmer Hayden (1890 - 1973) Hayden was born Peyton Hedgeman in Wide Water, Virginia in 1890. His artistic name, Palmer Hayden, was taken from the corrupted pronounciation of Peyton Hedgeman by a commanding sergeant during World War I. Hayden was among the first African American artists to use African subjects and designs in his painting. His 1926 still life Fetiche et Fleurs highlights a Fang mask from Gabon and Bakuba raffia cloth from the Congo. It won the prestigious Harmon Foundation's Gold Award. With the award and with a grant from a patron, Hayden was able to continue his studies in Paris, where he further explored his interest in ethnic subject matter. He returned to the United States in 1932 and worked steadily over the next several years for the U.S. government, including the U.S. Treasury Art Project and the WPA. In his later works Hayden focused on the African American experience, capturing both rural gatherings in the South and the urban milieu of New York. [Illustations: Midsummer Night in Harlem (1938); Where'd You Git Them High Top Shoes? (1944-1947)] Archibald Motley (1891 - 1981) Born in 1891 in New Orleans and raised in Chicago, Motley knew as a child that he wanted to be an artist. He studied art at the Institute of Chicago and in 1928, became the second African American artist to have a solo exhibition in New York City. Motley's early artistic endeavors include Old Snuff Dipper, a realistic portrait a working class southerner that won a Harmon Foundation award. After winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929, Motley left for Paris where he painted Parisian genre scenes, including Blues. When Motley returned to Chicago in 1930, he began painting portraits and genre scenes of the African American community in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, home to most of the city's African American population. Although he never lived in Harlem, his depiction of contemporary African American social life identified him with the Harlem Renaissance. [Illustrations: Old Snuff Dipper (1928); Blues (1929); Black Belt] Ellis Wilson (1899 - 1977) Ellis Wilson, whose father was also an artist, was born in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1899. Wilson went north to Chicago in the early 1920s to study and participate in the African American arts movement that was emerging in urban centers. He graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1923 and later moved to New York, where he participated in WPA art programs and exhibited with the Harmon Foundation, an organization that promoted the works of African American artists. In 1944 Wilson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel in the South and paint ordinary African Americans at work and at home. During this time he painted African Americans making turpentine, harvesting tobacco, and selling goods at the open air markets of Charleston, South Carolina. Wilson also drew his inspiration from his travels to Haiti, where he painted peasants at work. Wilson is probably best known for his painting, Funeral Procession, which was displayed in the living room in the popular television sit-com, THE COSBY SHOW. [Illustrations: Old Charleston Market; Summer Magic] Augusta Savage (1892 - 1962) Augusta Savage, who was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida in 1892, began molding clay at an early age. Despite great opposition from her family, Savage was determined to pursue a career in the arts as a sculptor. She moved to New York to study at Cooper Union, where she was soon commissioned to create a portrait bust of W.E.B. Du Bois and other African American leaders including Marcus Garvey. In 1924 the sculpture of her nephew, Gamin, won the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship which gave her the opportunity to study in Paris for one year. After returning home from Europe, Savage shared her art and experiences through teaching in the Harlem community. In 1932, Augusta established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts to provide adult art education. She also later became the first director of the Harlem Community Arts Center, where she played a crucial role in the development of young African American artists. This art center became a model for others across the country, including Chicago's Southside Community Art Center. [Illustration: Leonore]