(Motley, 1978). But because his subject was African-American life, he's counted by scholars among the artists of the Harlem Renaissance. 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. Thus, this portrait speaks to the social implications of racial identity by distinguishing the "mulatto" from the upper echelons of black society that was reserved for "octoroons. He depicted a vivid, urban black culture that bore little resemblance to the conventional and marginalizing rustic images of black Southerners so familiar in popular culture. 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. Archibald J. Motley, Jr's 1943 Nightlife is one of the various artworks that is on display in the American Art, 1900-1950 gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. While Motley may have occupied a different social class than many African Americans in the early 20th century, he was still a keen observer of racial discrimination. School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Chicago, IL, US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Motley. She is portrayed as elegant, but a sharpness and tenseness are evident in her facial expression. During the 1950s he traveled to Mexico several times to visit his nephew (reared as his brother), writer Willard Motley (Knock on Any Door, 1947; Let No Man Write My Epitaph, 1957). There was more, however, to Motleys work than polychromatic party scenes. Archibald Motley - 45 artworks - painting en Sign In Home Artists Art movements Schools and groups Genres Fields Nationalities Centuries Art institutions Artworks Styles Genres Media Court Mtrage New Short Films Shop Reproductions Home / Artists / Harlem Renaissance (New Negro Movement) / Archibald Motley / All works I try to give each one of them character as individuals. 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. He goes on to say that especially for an artist, it shouldn't matter what color of skin someone haseveryone is equal. He also created a set of characters who appeared repeatedly in his paintings with distinctive postures, gestures, expressions and habits. [2] By acquiring these skills, Motley was able to break the barrier of white-world aesthetics. His gaze is laser-like; his expression, jaded. Originally published to the public domain by Humanities, the Magazine of the NEH 35:3 (May/June 2014). Motley is as lauded for his genre scenes as he is for his portraits, particularly those depicting the black neighborhoods of Chicago. Motley's work notably explored both African American nightlife in Chicago and the tensions of being multiracial in 20th century America. Click to enlarge. When he was a young boy, Motleys family moved from Louisiana and eventually settled in what was then the predominantly white neighbourhood of Englewood on the southwest side of Chicago. Organizer and curator of the exhibition, Richard J. Powell, acknowledged that there had been a similar exhibition in 1991, but "as we have moved beyond that moment and into the 21st century and as we have moved into the era of post-modernism, particularly that category post-black, I really felt that it would be worth revisiting Archibald Motley to look more critically at his work, to investigate his wry sense of humor, his use of irony in his paintings, his interrogations of issues around race and identity.". 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. Motley befriended both white and black artists at SAIC, though his work would almost solely depict the latter. Motley elevates this brown-skinned woman to the level of the great nudes in the canon of Western Art - Titian, Manet, Velazquez - and imbues her with dignity and autonomy. [7] He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,[6] where he received classical training, but his modernist-realist works were out of step with the school's then-conservative bent. Most of his popular portraiture was created during the mid 1920s. Many were captivated by his portraiture because it contradicted stereotyped images, and instead displayed the "contemporary black experience. [18] One of his most famous works showing the urban black community is Bronzeville at Night, showing African Americans as actively engaged, urban peoples who identify with the city streets. In Nightlife, the club patrons appear to have forgotten racism and are making the most of life by having a pleasurable night out listening and dancing to jazz music. 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. They are thoughtful and subtle, a far cry from the way Jim Crow America often - or mostly - depicted its black citizens. 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. He was offered a scholarship to study architecture by one of his father's friends, which he turned down in order to study art. Motley remarked, "I loved ParisIt's a different atmosphere, different attitudes, different people. [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. Fat Man first appears in Motley's 1927 painting "Stomp", which is his third documented painting of scenes of Chicago's Black entertainment district, after Black & Tan Cabaret [1921] and Syncopation [1924]. In depicting African Americans in nighttime street scenes, Motley made a determined effort to avoid simply populating Ashcan backdrops with black people. All Rights Reserved, Archibald Motley and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art, Another View of America: The Paintings of Archibald Motley, "Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist" Review, The Portraits of Archibald Motley and the Visualization of Black Modern Subjectivity, Archibald Motley "Jazz Age Modernist" Stroll Pt. After his wife's death in 1948 and difficult financial times, Motley was forced to seek work painting shower curtains for the Styletone Corporation. He stands near a wood fence. The Treasury Department's mural program commissioned him to paint a mural of Frederick Douglass at Howard's new Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall in 1935 (it has since been painted over), and the following year he won a competition to paint a large work on canvas for the Wood River, Illinois postal office. They pushed into a big room jammed with dancers. Her face is serene. 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. The overall light is warm, even ardent, with the woman seated on a bright red blanket thrown across her bench. During this time, Alain Locke coined the idea of the "New Negro," which was very focused on creating progressive and uplifting images of Blacks within society. He attended the School of Art Institute in Chicago from 1912-1918 and, in 1924, married Edith Granzo, his childhood girlfriend who was white. 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. He generated a distinct painting style in which his subjects and their surrounding environment possessed a soft airbrushed aesthetic. Motley himself was light skinned and of mixed racial makeup, being African, Native American and European. It's a white woman, in a formal pose. The background consists of a street intersection and several buildings, jazzily labeled as an inn, a drugstore, and a hotel. Motley painted fewer works in the 1950s, though he had two solo exhibitions at the Chicago Public Library. 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). 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. The slightly squinted eyes and tapered fingers are all subtle indicators of insight, intelligence, and refinement.[2]. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Archibald John Motley, Jr. (October 7, 1891 - January 16, 1981), [1] was an American visual artist. The Octoroon Girl features a woman who is one-eighth black. While Motley strove to paint the realities of black life, some of his depictions veer toward caricature and seem to accept the crude stereotypes of African Americans. Motley enrolled in the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he learned academic art techniques. Street Scene Chicago : Archibald Motley : Art Print Suitable for Framing. [2] The synthesis of black representation and visual culture drove the basis of Motley's work as "a means of affirming racial respect and race pride. Some of Motley's family members pointed out that the socks on the table are in the shape of Africa. Brewminate uses Infolinks and is an Amazon Associate with links to items available there. Shes fashionable and self-assured, maybe even a touch brazen. 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. All this contrasts with the miniature figurine on a nearby table. 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). 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. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Mary Huff Motley and Archibald John Motley Senior. Motley himself was of mixed race, and often felt unsettled about his own racial identity. 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.". 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. ", "I have tried to paint the Negro as I have seen him, in myself without adding or detracting, just being frankly honest. It was this disconnection with the African-American community around him that established Motley as an outsider. He took advantage of his westernized educational background in order to harness certain visual aesthetics that were rarely associated with blacks. Motley used portraiture "as a way of getting to know his own people". He also participated in the Mural Division of the Illinois Federal Arts Project, for which he produced the mural Stagecoach and Mail (1937) in the post office in Wood River, Illinois. In 1929, Motley received a Guggenheim Award, permitting him to live and work for a year in Paris, where he worked quite regularly and completed fourteen canvasses. Picture 1 of 2. There he created Jockey Club (1929) and Blues (1929), two notable works portraying groups of expatriates enjoying the Paris nightlife. ", "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'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. ", "But I never in all my life have I felt that I was a finished artist. He married a white woman and lived in a white neighborhood, and was not a part of that urban experience in the same way his subjects were. This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. The long and violent Chicago race riot of 1919, though it postdated his article, likely strengthened his convictions. One of the most important details in this painting is the portrait that hangs on the wall. In those paintings he was certainly equating lighter skin tone with privilege. ", "The biggest thing I ever wanted to do in art was to paint like the Old Masters. Motley married his high school sweetheart Edith Granzo in 1924, whose German immigrant parents were opposed to their interracial relationship and disowned her for her marriage.[1]. 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. Motley's beloved grandmother Emily was the subject of several of his early portraits. Motley strayed from the western artistic aesthetic, and began to portray more urban black settings with a very non-traditional style. 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). An idealist, he was influenced by the writings of black reformer and sociologist W.E.B. She wears a black velvet dress with red satin trim, a dark brown hat and a small gold chain with a pendant. Archibald Motley: Gettin' Religion, 1948, oil on canvas, 40 by 48 inches; at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She appears to be mending this past and living with it as she ages, her inner calm rising to the surface. In 2004, a critically lauded retrospective of the artist's work traveled from Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University to the Whitney Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Motley graduated in 1918 but kept his modern, jazz-influenced paintings secret for some years thereafter. (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.) 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. That year he also worked with his father on the railroads and managed to fit in sketching while they traveled cross-country. 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. A towering streetlamp illuminates the children, musicians, dog-walkers, fashionable couples, and casually interested neighbors leaning on porches or out of windows. Archibald Motley graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918. When Motley was two the family moved to Englewood, a well-to-do and mostly white Chicago suburb. 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. At the time when writers and other artists were portraying African American life in new, positive ways, Motley depicted the complexities and subtleties of racial identity, giving his subjects a voice they had not previously had in art before. Warm, even ardent, with the African-American community around him that motley. 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